A CHRISTMAS CARD FROM HEAVEN!

Look what came in my mailbox today! It must be a Christmas card from heaven! On the far left is the late L. O. Bruster-Smith, my mother, and on the far right, as you all know, is the late E. L. Bruster-Terrell, my grandmother! These are the most influential elder women in my short, but wonderful life! These two women instilled a diligent, steadfast, hard-working ethic in me since birth. (I fell out of the womb with a cotton sack on my back!) “If you want to eat, you got to work”, my grandmother would say. Mom broke it down a little gentler, but the message was clear, I was to become a human mule until my intellect matched or exceeded my physical strength, (that just happened yesterday, so I have been a mule for several decades).

L.O. Bruster-Smith taught me to be a gentleman, “Never raise your hand to a woman, son. No matter what!” she would say. “Don’t cuss, don’t lie, and don’t steal!” she would add. “If you want something, work hard and you will get it someday.” I bought my first car for $35.00! It was a 1953 Desoto, with a 351 Hemi engine, that was built like a tank! I worked cleaning up a garage for months to earn that $35.00; bought the car from the garage owner, (yes, he got his money back); and then quit that job to move on to bigger and better things, (like cooking and washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant).

E.L. Bruster-Terrell taught me an even harsher financial lesson. When I spent the summer in Reno, Nevada, I worked my hips off! Her husband, Bill, who was no blood relation to me, turned me into a gardener, janitor, and illegal driver before I had so much as a learner’s permit. Grinding gears on the old panel wagon, hauling tons of dirt and cow manure from some distant farm to his show-winning garden home; then emptying said panel wagon of its odious cargo and transporting the contents in a wheel barrel that was twice my size, was slated to be my daily grind for the duration of the summer. In addition to this arduous daily task, I managed to water and mow lawns, which earned me a tidy sum of $3.00 a day! I counted my money at the end of every day and had earned a whopping $270.00 by the end of summer. Since that was way too much money for a Junior High School-aged boy to carry around all day, I entrusted my earnings to the bank of ELBT! When it was time to go back to California, at the end of that summer, I wanted to withdraw my hard-earned funds from the Bank of ELBT, but to my chagrin, I learned that my account was overdrawn, depleted, empty, (and there was no more money)! “How did that happen?” I asked. “Well you ate, didn’t you? You had a place to sleep, didn’t you? Well then!” was the answer I got. Lesson learned! Never again, my friends. Be very wary of financial institutions that are owned and operated by your family, in their home!

The two sweet little girls in the middle of the Christmas card have their own story to tell, so we will leave that for another time. It is funny though how a single picture can speak more than a thousand words, and bring back memories that were stored away for many winters, like a pre-historic acorn. Does anyone want to share this “acorn butter and jelly sandwich” with me?