Being Number One...Taken Too Far

I know I should have posted something about our Thanksgiving gathering at Road Creek before now but it has taken me a while to recover. No, I didn't eat too much, or eat too fast, or drink to excess. Well, maybe a little, but that's not what got my blood to boiling and fired up my ulcers again. No, it was the sight of the display atop Mom's china cabinet.

There, overlooking the whole Thanksgiving celebration, meticulously arranged and angled so all could see, someone had erected a ME-chelle Shrine. I don't know what else to call it. It was almost more than I could bear.

As everyone arrived, carrying what they brought for the feast, they entered, went over to the kitchen table and lay their dishes down there in front of the ME-chelle Shrine. It looked like they were making an offering to the great and powerful ME-chelle. I had to go out on the front porch for a while.

Time to eat came and someone suggested we all gather in a circle and hold hands, there in front of the ME-chelle Shrine. To a stranger it would have looked like some weird pagan ritual. Mom began to say the blessing and darned if everyone else didn't bow their heads and close their eyes, right there with that infernal ME-chelle Shrine looking down at all of them. I couldn't do it, I bowed my head but I kept one eye open. I think I heard ME-chelle giggling in the kitchen.

Thank goodness it takes a lot to spoil my appetite (it must 'cause nothing ever has.) I was able to turn my back on that ME-chelle Shrine long enough to eat a generous helping of most everything on the alter, I mean table. Just as I was finishing second dessert however, someone spoke, I turned and caught a glimpse of that shrine again. What I noticed this time froze me in my tracks. There at the right hand end of the shrine sat Mom's little brown glass container with the baby deer on top!

At various times in my life I have seen that container filled with bobbie pins or stick pins, buttons and thimbles, earrings or nickles and dimes. But it has always been there! When I was a little fellow, pointing up at Mom's dresser and saying, "I'm-a-Doo, I'm-a-Doo," setting there on the top shelf beside my Choo-Choo train was that little brown deer. Seeing it where it sat now, all I could think was, "Blasphemy, Blasphemy, I say!" I had to go to the Meaner Mart to cool off before heading home.

That night a frightful image kept popping into my head, I could see the little brown deer and there beside him was Davy Crockett. They were both stashed away in some dark recess in London, KY. I had to eat some more dessert to calm my worried mind.

Christmas will be here soon and it will be time to make another pilgrimage to Road Creek. I don't think that ME-chelle Shrine will be a problem this trip though. You see, I borrowed Dad's sledge hammer and pole axe a while back and I need to return them. No, I don't think that shrine will bother me at all this trip.