Wheee, yippi i a, off we go

Barbara elvy Strate

A funny thing happened at the Flathead Bank when I was there a few weeks ago. I waited a few minutes for a teller to take care of my need for spending money. The teller to my right was waiting on a tall elderly man, dressed in jeans and a checkered shirt. He looked my way. "You're a pretty lady," he said.

Though surprised at the compliment I managed to say, "Thank you."

Compliments are few and far between for this wrinkled, white haired, golden oldie.

Then he said to me, "You need a haircut." Which was more of a surprise, as I had just spent an hour at my hair stylist getting rid of my shaggy sheep dog hair-do.

The stranger left. The teller who waited on him gave us a little background report.

"He lives alone way back in the Swan area and comes to town once a month," she said, "Do you know him?" the teller who waited on me asked.

"I've never seen him before," I said

"I thought by his remarks you knew each other," the informative teller said.

With good humor I added, "He probably thinks every woman is pretty if he only gets out to civilization once a month, but I don't understand why he thought that I needed a haircut."

The tall stranger sported a grey beard that reached his collarbone and long, shaggy gray hair that dangled over his shoulders. I related the incident to Hubby that evening as very few interesting happenings come our way to liven up our lives. The daily horoscopes on the computer that he reads every morning rarely pertains to us but that day Hubby thought it did.

He said, "Your horoscope this morning said that you were going to have a romantic evening tonight. Now, who are you going to meet?"

I said, "The old man of the mountains that I met this morning."

One shouldn't let the mind wander when at the wheel of a car, but periodically something catches my eye that reverts my attention, and I pull off to the side of the road to make a note of it on the pad I keep handy for such times. It's not the only pad and pen I have handy. I have one on the bedside table to jot down a column thought that invariably comes to me the minute before I enter dreamland. I have a set on the kitchen counter, another in the laundry room, and on the coffee table in front of where I sit to watch TV and nap. Naptime invariably sets my creative juices in motion, as do the mundane chores of laundry and cooking.

The side of the road stops are something that have piled up during the past few months and when this column is out of my head I'll only have the notes from kitchen, laundry room, coffee table and a few other handy places about the house to retrieve for another column or two…Personal license plates became my reason for parking at the side of a road. I can't do two things at once so it was stop or forget what had caught my eye.

The plate WITE OUT is on, what else but a sleek, long white automobile. A really cute one that made me smile is PUDY TAT. The person driving this car wanted it be known that they were NOT HOME and the owner of another car could help in an emergency as IMA RN license plate spells out the occupants vocation. TWA 747, I would presume is connected with the airline. OFF WE GO are possibly travelers who might join the owners of YIPPI I A for a bit of fun together and the owner's of beautiful apple green Volkswagen that expounds WHHEE could join them. The last one is DOOR and I think it's time to close it on this nonsense.