A new story, from the blue ball

Stories from the Blue Ball

Curiosities

Mil carefully spread the finds of the day on Aunt Buck’s curious table. Buck said it had been a dressing table until she took off the mirror. Now it was in front of the window in the spare bedroom, which Mil thought of as her own. There was a curtain on arms that swing out from the edge of the table which made it a perfect puppet theatre.

 Aunt Buck’s house was full of curiosities. It was older and smaller than any of the houses near it. Once it has been a farmhouse, and the had been a cotton gin between it and a highway, but now the farm was a subdivision with a golf course and a little lake. The farm had behind to Buck’s brother Cedric, who has died before Mil was born. He has given the farmhouse and a half acre to his sister. After his death, the family had developed the rest of the farm.

Aunt Buck was the oldest person Mil knew, but she didn't act much like most adults. She was short and trim, and in her jeans and sweatshirts and tennis shoes, could pass as a teenage if you saw her from the back. She was also the only person who called Mil by her full name, even if she weren't angry, which she never was anyway, and which she did now, calling from the kitchen.

‘Mildred Cedric Davidson, you better start washing up. Dinner’s almost ready.’

'I will, Aunt Buck. Just let me bag my specimens.’

Mil collected specimens. She was a naturalist. She always took a picture of them in situ before gathering them, recording when and where she found them. That information she stored on her phone as a description of the specimens. They were all assigned numbers which  she wrote carefully on the plastic bags in which she kept them.

Today's finds started at number 892, a bit of a bird's wing. She could not identify the species yet, but thought it was from an immature robin. It has been under the privet hedge that separated her aunt's yard from the golf course, and robins often nested there.

Number 893 was part of what seemed to be a receipt from the cotton gin. It has also been under the hedge, blown the apparently by some long ago wind. There wasn't much left of it, but the heading, 'Needham Gin’, was still clearly visible. The date seemed to be 9/14/63, but it was pretty faint. Only  two numbers on the receipt, ‘17’, were left. Mil could not guess what else it might have said.

A bottle cap, too rusted to identify the brand, was Number 894. Mil's grandfather had run a sure back when this was still out in the country, and there were many bottle caps around. They were therefore not a major find, but this one still showed a bit of purple color that Mill liked. She would research what soda pop had purple caps later.

Number 895 was a golf ball, but an unusual one. It was a sort of dull metal color instead of the white or yellow that Mill usually found. That fact was why she kept it instead of returning it to the club house for a small reward. It also send unusually heavy, and a little warm. More research for later, about golf ball materials.

The prize find of the afternoon was Number 896: a corn snake shed, still with most of its colors and in one piece.

'Mildred Cedric Davidson, dinner's ready.’ 'Here I come, Aunt Buck.’

Mill tripped to the table, happy that her brother was of at scout camp and she had her favorite aunt to herself. Thomas was alright as brothers go, but still. He was just two years older, but he made it seem like decades, and he called her Dred. She got slight revenge by calling him Theodore, which was no part of his real name but which bugged him delightfully.

Meals were always just about the best part of staying with Aunt Buck. She didn't cook anything unusual, really, except maybe her lemon meringue pie, but all her cooking just tasted special somehow. Tonight's dinner was simple, with tomatoes and cucumbers sliced and soaked together in a mild vinegar, Lambertson green beans cooked with ham, and not corn bread. No pie, but there were muffins, the kind Aunt Buck called just muffins because there was nothing filling  or frosting them. Everything tasted lovely, and Buck asked Mill about her specimens with genuine interest. She thought the bottle cap was probably from a Grapette, a soda long discontinued, but delicious in its day.

Buck, who had acquired her unusual name because she had married a man named Rogers and she had always been interested in space travel, let Mill bring her phone to the table so they could explore their questions. They discovered that the Grapette caps has not been purple. Probably Nugrape, then, was Buck's suggestion. Mill was surprised that Grapettes had come in six ounce bottle, since she had grown up in a world that mostly started with sixteen ounce bottles. She had learned something from collecting an old bottle cap even if it wasn't rare.

Back at the dressing table after not having had room for a muffin because she had eaten so much corn bread, she once more surveyed her afternoon haul.