Steve

Dear Sister,

I wish you coulda been here for the Springtime festival Parade. It gets better ever year. And this year we got there early and had our foldin-lawn-chairs, front and center, on Main by the HAIR-DO Hut.

It started out with the marching band from the High School, marchin and performin under the direction of that new little man that took over, when Miss Phyfenburger died. He's real shy and quiet and he's never been married. He's just as pale as he can be and it looks like he lightens his hair. He walks just like Aunt Reena. You know, those funny little steps she would take when she was late for Sunday school? Well, anyway, as odd as he is, he has whipped that band into shape.

It's kinda like when you came home from you first tap lesson and told Momma you were afraid of that Mr. Alfonso guy. I remember she told you not to be afraid, that all truly talented people were usually peculiar looking. That's just the way God makes em.

Next up after the band, was the kindy-garten kids, ridin on a flatbed trailer, wearin hats they had made out of paper plates and cut up egg cartons. They were awful cute except for Arnold Huffmeyer and Ryleen Stumps little boy, Doodle, who both were bawlin like babies cause their hats had blown off. One just passed the old colored cemetery, and the other one flew into Darryl and Twynell Tuttle’s Fish Hatchery.

Next after that, came the ladies auxiliary "Gone With the Wind Float". They do it every year. Once those ladies figured out that they can have bar stools and lawn chairs up under those hoop skirts with nobody knowin, they aren't about to give it up. They could ride all day and not tire out.

They used up-ended sewer pipe for the columns in front of Tara and two real trees, in pots covered with danglin Spanish moss. So, what with the two Cazeberry twins also bein on the float, it was about to tump over from the weight of the whole thing. Especially on the turns.

Then came the "Important Moments in History", floats. There was only three of em this year, thank God. There was the Rylander Family Massacre of 1852. Where, all of the Rylanders was brutally scalped and dismembered by wild Indians, except for Augustus Dolph Rylander, our Towns founder who hid from the Indians under a bushel basket, while all his kin was savagely slaughtered.

Donny Toops and his brother Timmy really looked like Indians cause they are both are dark complected like their Italian Momma, and they didn't wear swim trunks under their buckskin loin cloths either, which I think looks so fakey when they do.

Leeta Overstreet supplied them with hairpieces that looked like real scalps, and I loaned em that big old bushel basket that you sent me all that fruit and candy in, from the Harry and David catalogue, that time you accidentally shoved me off the front porch and I broke my hip, while I was pregnant with Harla and Darla.

Then the next float was planting the flag on Iwo Jima. They had some old World War II vets on that float. Thank goodness Cooter Threadgood cemented that flag pole in the center of that Flat bed truck, cause that was all those old war veterans had to hang onto, and Lester Peavy's boy Rusty was drivin that float way too fast. Their strugglin to hold onto the flag looked real natural, as if they were really under fire and so on. It was Marva Beemis who told us she saw the expression on her Daddy's face when he went past her at about 35 mph, that let her know that they was havin a bad time of it.

Then came Cleta Ortloff, portrayin Jacquelyn Bouvier Kennedy, (She wudn't Onassis yet), In a pink suit and pillbox hat, ridin in Dora Lee Hutto-Randolph’s mint condition, 1963, Black, Lincoln Continental Convertible. This year they got that old Sears mannequin that they used to have in the window of the stamp catalogue store, to play J.F.K., because last year Darby Broadenax kept wavin and blowin kisses to pretty girls while all he was supposed to do was be slumped over.

This year though It was just chillin how real it looked. Cleta was just beautiful even though she said she ruined the knees of her panty hose crawlin around on the trunk of that limousine.

Last, but not least, was a tribute to Mr. Walt Disney's 101 Dalmations. Turns out that nobody in Town really has a Dalmatian, so anybody fool enough to bring their poor dog down there and make it walk 5 miles on burnin hot concrete was welcome to it. There were chijuajuas in costumes and great Danes pullin wagons.

Mr. Havenhuffer even had his big ol collie-dog, Laddie Boy, towin him in his wheel-chair with a length of clothes line. I was sorry the girls had to see a big ol Weimeriner havin his way with Dorothy Ridley's Toy Poodle," Snickers". That thing was runnin down the street at a gallop, with poor little Snickers bobbin mercilessly impaled from behind, with her tiny purple party hat still cocked over one eye, with an organdy rainbow colored ruffle around her little neck, and the most horror stricken and startled expression on her teensy poodle face. The girls asked so many embarrassing questions, I liked to died, I liked to D.I.E. ..Died. Well as usual, you should have been there.

Do let us here from you, and not just one of those awful 3-D postcards. Where in the world do you get those anyway? If I didn't throw them away as soon as they come, Harla and Darla would have them stuck all over my new Lady Kenmore self-defrosting Ice box that Lester and the girls gave me for my Birthday 2 weeks ago. It will seem awfully suspicious to me if I should receive one of those Happy Belated Birthday cards with a elephant on it, or some such three or four days after you get this. So I'm tellin you now, don't bother to waste the postage. Remember we Love you anyway , no matter what you are doin or how you look.

Love always,

Your Sister Leona