Movie Trivia Answer 9/26

Whoops!  Let me get this in before Tuesday's over.

 In the movie, "To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar", what theme for the Strawberry Festival did the women decide on?

Mighty Mom got the answer: Red hot and Wild!  (She emailed me with the answer after watching it and I forgot to post it in the comments.)

It's one of my  favorite "men in drag" comedies,  3rd only to "The BirdCage" and my #1 favorite: "Tootsie".

Thanks for playing, everyone!  New question on Saturday--and I promise this one won't be a scary one, even though we ARE entering my favorite month of the year!

Naked Yard

Remember this tree? The one that started turning brown during last summer's drought?

Well this is how it looked earlier today:

And this is how it looks now:

"But, where did it go, Mom?"

And next to the driveway, earlier today:

And now:

"Didn't there used to be something here, too?"

I'm glad not to worry about the trees coming down in tornado-force winds or an ice storm, and I'm thrilled the juniper bushes are gone, but it sure makes the yard look bare now. See the gap on the side there?

And that space on the corner?

That's where 2 Bradford Pear trees used to be.  We lost them in the remnants of Hurricane Charlie several years ago, and lost large limbs of other Bradfords and a dogwood in an ice storm.

The men were supposed to chip some of it up for mulch for me, but I think they forgot.  They did remember to chop some up for firewood for DD, who will be down for Halloween and may carry a trunkload back with her. And if we get a chance to go up to visit her, I'm thinking we'll probably be carrying a bundle up there.

In the meantime, there must be a way I can use this pile for Halloween.

Because now, there's an awful lot of staging to do for just the front yard.

We'll think about how to fill in those blanks later.

Saturday at the Movies 9/26

All right, ladies, here's a Patrick Swayze movie trivia question just for you!

In the movie, "To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar",  what theme for the Strawberry Festival did the women decide on?


Answer on Tuesday!

Graveyards, Part 2

The same afternoon, I made a trip to another cemetery, that of Mud Creek Baptist Church, a very large, modern church not to far from the tiny Mud Creek Church.  They are as different as night and day, as are their graveyards.  This one was larger, better tended, with most tombstones larger in size and more ornate.
(click on photos to enlarge)

There were unusual shapes and carvings, some very detailed and elaborate:

A memorial stone:

:

I find it interesting that they listed this man's name, but not his wife's name:

Someone admired this woman very much:

 There were whole family plots, some with very sad stories to be read:

This must have been Drake's first wife, but not the mother of his children:

And this may have been another wife, but also not the mother of ALL his children, though maybe one or two of them:

There were a lot of Drakes in this cemetery. Here are a few more:

I love what they said about this Drake lady:

And then I stumbled upon this gravesite:

She was my patient.  It was very startling to come upon her stone--I had no idea she was buried here.  I pass her house almost every day; she always decorated for the seasons and I used to look forward to seeing what she had up next.  Dixie would have had cute autumn decorations on her front porch by this time.  It appears her husband still lives there, but these days the porch stays bare.

(To Be Continued)

Movie Trivia Answer 9/19

Okay, this week's questions were about the movie "Changeling" with Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich.

1. What was unusual (by today's standards) about the equipment worn by the telephone operator's supervisor in the 1920s?  Maggie and Jen got this one correct--the supervisors wore roller skates and skated quickly from one operator to another along a long wall of, um, whatever those were--switchboards, I think they were called. She had her own set of headphones that she plugged into the switchboard to speak to the caller.

(image from this site)

2. Why was Stanford Clark originally brought to the police station?  The boy was brought in because he was a Canadian citizen currently staying with his uncle in the US, and was apparently seen in another town.  The police brought him in to ship him back to Canada.
 
This is a disturbing movie, on several levels, but Angelina did a terrific job--very understated and subtle, but effective.  Just plan to watch something light afterwards to pull yourselves back out of the glooms.
 
New question on Saturday!

Graveyards

In preparation for carving on my foam tombstones, I made a trip to a couple of nearby cemeteries, camera in hand.

There is an old abandoned graveyard on a small hill sandwiched between a backroad to the grocery store, and some railroad tracks that I have not seen used since moving here.

There are no signs, no formal entrance; just tire paths where hearses must have backed up to unload their cargo.

 Based on one of the epitaphs, I'm thinking this is an old Negro cemetery, possibly from a small church.

The epitaph is not spaced well--the words run on to the next line with no hyphens or regards to division of words.

 It reads: "Jackson Holback

Born April 15,  1833

Died May 11, 1915

Help to organize the

first baptist associat

ion for colord peop

le of this section

Aug 1867 member

of the mud creek ch

50 years"

I can't read the bottom from my photo, and didn't write it down.

Lots of the markers have the same last name, even if they aren't in close proximity to each other--Singletary, Simmons, Edwards--leading me to believe this was a collection of families, possibly from  the one-room country church about 1 1/2 miles from my house: Mud Creek Church.

Some of the headstones are very legible;

Others, not so much so.

Some cannot be read at all.

There are soldiers

And babies.

Elaborate stones

And simple markers.

I wonder about this woman:

Surely she isn't still alive.  Was there no family member left to carve her date of death on this stone?

I left this small, all-but-forgotten cemetery

 and drove to a larger one only a couple of miles away.

(to be continued)