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WHY SHOULD A YOUNG GIRL TALK
ABOUT POP’S AND MOM’S FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY?

THAT’S pop and mom’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. It took them that long to grow old and gray together. It doesn’t take that long nowadays. No, the people didn’t check their eyes at the door. That’s a flashlight. Yep, that’s me in the back of the celery. I squint awfully when the explosion comes and then the smoke goes in your mouth and the photographer charges you fifty cents for a picture that makes you look like the police wanted you.

Now, I wasn’t such a bad looking girl at that time, even if I do say so myself, who shouldn’t. But pop was sort of nibbling at some domestic homebrewed wines, that he had said later had a kick like the fox gnawing at the bosom of the Spartan youth.

One peculiar thing about pop was that he knew Riley Wilson and had a porcelain eye. He lost his eye during the Civil War. He wasn’t in the army. Because if pop had been in the army, all he could have lost was a heel.

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