My mother gave me a present for my birthday while we were both at Darrouzett the other day for her party. She told me to wait til I got home to open it. Just as soon as I saw the size of the plastic bag that it was in, I started hoping that it was a certain item that I thought one of my brothers had stolen from me. It turns out that my mother had merely misplaced it, I guess. Or she may have forced my brother to give it back, I'm not exactly sure.
Anyway, I guessed correctly:
An 11 inch tall ceramic turtle made by Hazel Thompson of Rapid City SD, possibly 40-50 years ago.
This turtle is special because it involves a combination of a nightmare about driving a combine harvestor while I was around seventeen years old while listening to Elton John's 'Mad Man Across The Water' album on an eight-track tape player while wearing headphones.
I fell asleep in the dark listening to my new album with headphones on. In my dream I lose the headlights to my combine harvestor and the front part of the machine starts digging into the dirt of field. (In actual life I was just learning to use this piece of equipment.)
In the commotion of my dream I somehow ripped the headphone plug out of its jack, causing the audio to go out the regular speaker system.
My parents bedroom is just a few feet away.
My father wakes up to Elton John music blasting out the speakers and someone (me) cussing up a storm about his combine in the neXt room.
He goes in the hallway and switches on the light. What he sees next totally cracks him up laughing.
I am sitting on the floor with the headphones still on and talking (!!!) combine gibberish loudly AND the ceramic turtle is between my hands as a steering wheel.
I am not sure which song was playing.
I am glad my turtle is finally safely at my house. I noticed there is writing on the bottom of the turtle where my mother had stated that this turtle was given (?) to me in the year 1997 at Thanksgiving.
I just remember asking for it a few years ago.
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4 comments:
It is good when something has history like this and I am glad it has made it back to you after all this time.
I have two cousins who for years exchanged the same christmas present which was a rather strange looking ceramic Salmon that they both hated. But with time they started to look forward to getting the salmon back. . . It just goes to show there is more to a gift than money.
Rob: Salmon have absolutely no idea what we do with them. Imagine if there were space alien children somewhere playing a game where the pieces were little RZT statues and there were monkeys everywhere, yes, and poodles. And it was how chess got started in a time warp a long time ago, but a short warp ago. Oh, I giggled just now in my eXtreme tiredness saying just those four words, "a short warp ago".
Esby pics are special and that one certainly qualifies. Is that called livin' the dream?
fmcgmccllc: Maybe back then it was more, "Livin' The Nightmare". The dryland wheat crop was short and running your header into the ground happened too often. I smile every time I pass by my turtle, turtle smiles are infectious, y'know.
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