Dear Sister,

Hope you’re coming for Thanksgiving. We painted the dining room and Lester finally sawed a new leaf for the dining table. If we use the piano bench we can seat twelve now.

Harla and Darla have a new Girl scout troop leader. Her name is Martha Stewart. No, not that fancy one from T.V. that makes cookies in the shape of snails and dyes her lingerie with tea to make it look 100 years old. Who would want their underwear to look 100 years old anyway? Well, she always gets crank phone calls from people who think she’s the other Martha Stewart. She just laughs and says No, I’m not her, but I wish I had her money.

You know she’s almost as talented though. She has the girls makin things out of just about everything imaginable. They always have some project or another goin, so’s I’m afraid to throw away any plastic margarine tubs or Popsicle sticks anymore.

They made a vacuum cleaner cover out of some panty hose, socks and an old nightgown and robe of mine. It looks just like Momma, and really does camouflage the vacuum cleaner. I never know what to do with it while I’m actually vacuuming. I’m thinking about getting another vacuum cleaner so I can leave it out in the den permanently, undisturbed.

Speaking of bein disturbed, Did I tell you that Gaylynn Gants husband Wiley got a brain tumor that pressed on the part of his brain that effects his temper? He went completely outta his mind and chased her out into the street in her bra and panties chasin her with her Sunbeam no-stick waffle iron. He said he was gonna bash her brains in with it.

A couple of the neighbor men who are always standin out by their 57 Chevy drinkin beer heard the commotion and held him off of her. Wiley got in a couple of good whacks with the waffle iron and broke the one mans glasses. They held him down on the asphalt ‘til the ambulance came. By the time the E.M.S. guys got there Wiley was blubberrin like a baby and singing "Billy Don’t Be A Hero" at the top of his lungs. Gaylynn just kept sayin over and over "I can’t believe Wiley knows all the words to that.... All four verses. Girl did you know there were four verses.

Well anyway they sawed the top of his head off and removed almost half of his entire brain. Lester says with half a brain he’s got the same amount as his wife now and maybe the marriage will work after all.

But don’t you believe it. We think that she’s been seein that Ozarka Water man. Dora Lee Huffman saw him carry in some of those big ol Ozarka jugs more than once late in the afternoon. Sister, we have all been in her house and know that she does not even have one of those Ozarka coolers unless it’s under the bed.

Wiley’s been out of the Hospital two weeks and Gaylynn has practically got that water Jug guy moved in. Wiley doesn’t even know his own name and sits slumped over in a wheelchair starin off into space. We think that Gaylynn probably pushes him out in the hall and entertains that Ozarka man right there on Wiley’s own Superior Waterbed that he bought for them when he got back from Desert Storm. Talk about burn in hell. Like Granny Peveto used to say they are gonna have turn up the burners on high when she gets there.

Harla and Darla have overheard most of the goins on and keep askin questions.

I just tell them that Mr. Gant is sick and they can’t play with their kids til he gets better. I never really liked the Twins to play with their girls anyway. Little Randa Jo and Wylene are the strangest melancholy little kids I ever did see. They just don’t seem right. Randa Jo is always fallin down and brusin her face and arms, at least that’s what Gaylynn told Beverly Hutto's Sister, Ivy, the school nurse. And poor little Wylene was supposed to be a boy and be named Wiley Don Gant Jr.. Instead she is Wylene Dawn Gant and her Daddy has treated her like a boy since day one. She gualks around in Striped overalls and they have her hair whacked off short like she was in an insane asylums.

Lester says that he thought those girls Momma was the ugliest human he had ever seen till he saw both of them girls. Somebody told me that Gaylynn was a right pretty somebody right out of High School. But she and Wiley practically lived in the Beer Joints and Honkey Tonks all along FM86 till she drank her looks away. To make it worse she had to have a Hysterectomy after Wylene came. Breach birth or somethin they say she pulled about half of it out with her.

Somebody said that we should have those little girls over for dinner, and maybe a sleepover with the girls. What they need right now is to be in a good Christian home with a good Christian family. I just don’t know if I can go that far. I was always pretty sure that Harla and Darla got the ringworm from Randa Jo that time right before Christmas.

Both Harla and Darla were in the Christmas pageant and we had to shave their heads. Shave em both bald headed the night before they were to appear as Beautiful little Dollies that Santa had just laid under the Christmas tree. All the stores were closed and I had to make em wear a couple of Momma's old wigs she had worn in the Nursing home. I tied great big red striped satin bow ribbons on em so nobody could tell my natural blonde naturally curly babies had short gray Dynell hair.

The bottom line is, rather than have my girls risk catchin whatever those girls have now, I think I’ll just leave a couple of garbage bags filled with Harla and Darla's clothes that they have outgrown. I’ll leave them on their porch in the middle of the night while they’re asleep so they won’t know where they came from. They’ll think that they’re from just some good-hearted Christian that means them well but doesn’t want their Cooties.

Lester says he thinks they’ll recognize the girls old twirlin outfits and their two years ago Halloween costumes. I just think they’ll be so proud to have em and glad for four new outfits to wear to school.

Please let us know if you are coming Thanksgiving. And if you bring somebody that’s a Atheist or Buddhist or somethin don’t you dare insist that they say grace at the table. I think you did that last time to deliberately humiliate me in front of our Minister of Music and our Interim Pastor of Youth Fellowship. They both said that they pray for you often. They might be here this time too, cause they still neither one of them has married and don’t have any family to spend Turkey day with.

And please try to dress like a normal human bein this time. I don’t care if that was the same outfit that Miss Barbra Striesand wore in the " Owl and the Pussycat", it was not appropriate for the Thanksgiving Dinner table. If she hadn’t of already just two weeks before, your Momma would have died. She would have D.I.E. died.

Bye now , and remember we love you ,anyway