When I called Boyd to enlist his participation in this project, suffice it to say, he didn't have any idea what a blog was. I think he said something about not knowing "how to even turn the darn thing on" and that he wasn't "even sure that emails existed." That he preferred " a rotary dial with an operator on the other end" After pullin' my leg clean off and making my belly ache from so much laughing, he told me his Sweetie Pie would help him out when she returned from out of town. When she got back and unravelled the mysteries of the email I had sent him, he read how he could dictate over the phone and opted for that route.
He told me about how back in the day, he used to have to go to Grandma's house to use the phone once a week, but preferred riding his quarter horse around. The phone number was 410J (I may have written that down wrong) and they shared the line with four other families. You cranked it a few times and told the operator who you wanted to talk to. Usually all you had to say was the name and she'd know how to connect you. BUT ANYWAY...
Then he dictated the following to me.... I'll try to get it as close to his actual words as my notes allow:
"If there's one thing about Dean, it's his creative memory. He likes to tell how, as a wee babe, he potty trained himself. I'm sure he's made more than a few think he was a child prodigy with that yarn, but what I'd like to know is how in the hell he made the trek from the house to the out house, 'cause that's what we had back in those days, without fallin' in the hole? That's what I'd like to know!"
And then there's the legend of the Great Dean and his haircut...
One day when Lyle and Dad were going in to town to the barber to get their hair cut, Dean got upset over somethin' and lost the privilege of going into town. Hell, I was workin' in the fields with the hired man, so he wasn't left all alone. He was about 9 or 10 or maybe even younger at the time. He decided to get Mom's haircuttin' stuff and just do it himself. Now that consisted of some spring loaded clippers, which half the time pulled out just as much hair as they clipped 'cause the human hand can only move so fast. Now if you are doing this to yourself, and you may or may not be using a mirror...
anyway he got it to where he had it like a mohawk on top and he knew he'd messed up. So then he got lookin' around in Mom's stuff and found some black shoe polish and figured since he had such dark hair he could fix it with that and no one would be the wiser.
From a block away you could see somethin' was wrong, and it just got funnier and funnier the closer you got. HE WAS SUCH A HARD HEADED LITTLE VARMINT!! Lyle, who is just a little older than him, takes after Mom, he's quiet, mellow and easy going, but Dean got a lot of those Davis genes in him...but thankfully he got just enough of Mom in him to make him bearable. (tongue in cheek)
He said to make sure I told you congratulations and to give you his best tomorrow.
Can you guess which way he votes on the T-shirt poll?
As for the other poll, He said it was a close one, but decided Lili was the most innocent minded. She's always insisting that's the case, but none of us believe her. You have a new reason to love Boyd, Mom.
When we moved to Quincy and our new lawn was near death he took the shovel a big tin can and rode a mile or two into the country on his bike and returned with the can full of earth worms. He scattered the worms on our very sick lawn and it lived.
With Uncle Lyle's help they made a KILLER batch of cookies--equal parts of salt and sugar. He gave himself a haircut and covered the mistakes with shoe polish. He loved to work in the garden with Mom and Dad.
When we moved to Quincy and our new lawn was near death he took the shovel a big tin can and rode a mile or two into the country on his bike and returned with the can full of earth worms. He scattered the worms on our very sick lawn and it lived.
With Uncle Lyle's help they made a KILLER batch of cookies--equal parts of salt and sugar. He gave himself a haircut and covered the mistakes with shoe polish. He loved to work in the garden with Mom and Dad.
