Steve

Dear Sister,

Haven't heard from you in I don't know when. Things have been topsy-turvy around here what with gettin Nedra Darlene ready for her prom and all. You might remember that I had promised a real nice dress for her Junior Prom, if she could make it till then without gettin pregnant, runnin off, or gettin drowned, chopped up, or run over. Well, she held me to it.

First off, we went down to the fabric store and looked at all the Simplicity Patterns. Nedra didn't think she saw anything like what she had imagined. She said she saw somethin on a video that she liked. I could only imagine the worst. The girls on those videos are always traipsing around half naked, lollin around on top of somethin, or wallowin in mud or God knows what, flickin their tongues at the camera.

Well, would you believe she wanted this dress she saw Tony Braxton, whoever that is, wearin with the front and the sides all cut out. The material just barely fits together in a few places and that’s all. I told her it wadn't gonna look the same on her cause she idn't black. She didn’t buy that. She told me if I wouldn't make it for her she'd hire it done with the money she'd saved from the pierced earrings she makes out of fishin lures and sells at the Flatonia Flea Market.

We finally got it done but I had to send off for another brand of pattern, that I don't use. Vogue, must be French. It had instructions on the flip-side that were in French or somethin. Couldn't make ‘em out anyway. I didn’t make it as revealin as it was suppose to be, and she didn't seem to notice. I think once it got down to it, she realized she wasn't willin to go outside with her crack showin.

The boy that took her is a sacker at Food City on the Inter-State. Darryl Dwight Kennedy. He says his Momma said even though their last name is Kennedy, they felt more political in tune with Eisenhower. I don' know where the Hell they got the Darryl part. He has one of those little souped-up trucks with the great big tires. It's a way up off the ground. She managed to get up in it, in her dress, but him and her Daddy both had to help her.

Did I tell you Timpy Lee Parker finally had her tumor removed? Remember when we was kids she looked like she was pregnant, but Momma said no, It was a tumor, and bein a devout Jehovah Witness, Timpy didn't believe in havin surgery. Even Papa Daddy didn't know, and he asked her one time at the Post Office "When was she due"? He told us later that he'd been wondrin because he figured she'd been expectin for about three years. Anyways, her tumor was bowlin ball sized and the doctor is gonna keep it cause of it bein what he called a curiosity.

Momma felt sorry for her. It evidently got to chokin her insides so bad, she was out of her head, and her oldest daughter signed the papers to operate. Momma, and another lady from her Sunday school class, took her some gold slip-on bedroom slippers with little pointy toes and some Blue Gardenias toilet water, to the Hospital.

Their house is still the trashiest lookin place in town. They've got all those bird feeders and windmills that Timpy makes out of old Clorox bottles, hanging in their trees. We were makin fun and Daddy said: "At least with all that Clorox she uses, she must have a clean wash." "Are you kidding?" Momma said. She gets those bottles out of other peoples trash. She hasn't combed her hair or done a load of wash in 12 or 15 years, at least not since they got a TV. They have two old wrecked cars in their yard and a whole bunch of twisted up sheet metal and boards and stuff. Somebody said it was a chicken coop that fell down, but it was so long ago that there's nobody alive now that ever remembers seein it standin, so they're really not sure.

Did you ever try my recipe for peanut butter coated chicken? Well don't!

I don't think that lady at the beauty shop told me right. Mine got all stuck in the skillet and set off the smoke alarm. I used a whole box of S.O.S. soap pads tryin to get that burnt-on peanut butter out of my good Iron skillet. We couldn't have corn bread for three days.

You be good and write us. Remember, we love you anyway, Darlin.