Bloodmobiles and Bookmobiles

June 16, 2011--Today, I donated two pints of blood using the ALYX method for a lifetime total of TEN GALLONS. I accomplished one of my goals. Since I started rather late in life, and most of my donations were one pint at a time, I wasn't sure if I would achieve the goal or not.

I'm telling you this for two reasons. First, I'm proud of it and want to share my achievement with you all. But, mostly, I want to encourage you to donate if you're not already.

I gave blood in Austin for the first time when Dudley Baker scheduled the Bloodmobile to come to our church, Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Austin, Texas, in April, 1986. I was forty-nine at the time and had never donated blood in Austin, and only a few times elsewhere.

We turned in chits to the church each time we donated to provide blood for anyone in the church if it was ever needed. This gave me the incentive to continue donating over the years. I wasn't always regular, and sometimes got banned for a year at a time because of travel to places where malaria was a problem. In my case, parts of Mexico and China. The blood bank also monitored my travel to Europe, and I almost hit the maximum days in the mad-cow areas. Between 1992 and 1996 I had been in Europe eighty-four days and the limit was ninety days.

It took me twenty-five years to donate ten gallons of blood. But, the only reason I got started is because a friend at church asked me to. How about you? Are you donating blood? If half of the people reading this give a pint of blood, there would be another ten gallons available for those in need. Wow!

Okay, what does this have to do with bookmobiles?

The first time I donated was in the bloodmobile, which is similar to a bookmobile. When I drove a bookmobile, I learned the library would send us to places where they were considering building a substation. And that's what bloodmobiles do. When they find an area where business is good, they open a substation. That's what happened here in Georgetown.

Let me know if you donate a pint or two.

Suds In Your Eye by Mary Lasswell

This is a humorous story by Mary Lasswell about three retired women, Mrs. Annie Feeley, Miss Agnes Tinkham, and Mrs. Erna Rasmussen, who live in Southern California, probably San Diego, during World War II. Mrs. Feeley is a widow who runs a junk yard called Noah's Ark (it has two of everything) with the help of Old-Timer (her working man) after her husband died. She is uneducated and can't read.

Miss Tinkham, a retired music teacher, relies on rent from a home back east and she is looking for a less expensive place to live when she meets Mrs. Feeley.

Mrs. Rasmussen, also a widow, is a nationalized citizen from Denmark living with her daughter and her daughter's family, paying rent, cooking and taking care of the grandchildren. They insist that she get home by 10:00 p.m. Worse yet, her son-in-law doesn't drink and is a vegetarian.

Mrs. Feeley has no children, but she has a nephew, Danny Malone, who is a Chief Yeoman stationed on a ship, who apparently has lost his parents.

Mrs. Feeley invites Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen to move into her one-room house and they build walls to provide privacy between the beds. Mrs. Rasmussen does the grocery shopping and prepares the meals. Miss Tinkham plays the piano. The two things the three have in common are their love of beer (thus the title) and their ability to get things done.

While Danny is home briefly, Miss Tinkham invites them all to visit the Spanish class she is taking and Danny falls in love with the teacher, Kate Logan, and she is instantly attracted to him. We know this quickly because of the viewpoint. Books written today are most often written in one character's point of view for each scene. However, this book came out in 1942 when it was more popular to use limited omniscient viewpoint, which means you have a God-like perspective of the story and can switch viewpoint from one character to another as needed, even within a scene. In other words the reader can read the minds of all characters in a scene, not just one.

The three ladies are struggling financially and manage to get by only by pooling their resources. Danny offers to help and is turned down. Then his ship leaves for a military mission and he is unavailable to help even if his aunt would let him.

Mrs. Feeley learns her junk yard and home are being sold because she hasn't paid her taxes for several years. Turns out the lawyer she'd hired to take care of it has stolen the money. If Miss Tinkham hadn't been there to read the letter to Mrs. Feeley, it would have been too late.

The three ladies and Old-Timer go to work at the tuna cannery to raise the money for the taxes by the deadline, plus a little extra for the trip to Tijuana the Spanish class has planned.

This book contains a few profanities that you wouldn't find today in a humor book and the only mention of Christian was this: Mrs. Feeley was glad to see that Kate Logan was a Christian when it came to drinking beer. It would have been almost too much of a disappointment if she had turned out to be the kind that liked the sweet stuff.

They manage to pay off the taxes and penalties and end up with enough money for the trip to Mexico with the class. While there, they find the lawyer and help the police catch him. Later, back in the United States, they get a reward for catching him.

Danny comes home and marries and Kate Logan and they have a huge party at Noah's Ark.

Great story.

There was more of a plot to the book than I remembered from reading in back in the 1950s. Although we didn't learn about the possible loss of the property until half way through the book, it was a significant event that put tension on the ladies to find a solution within a fixed time frame, the recipe for a good novel.

I think the reason I thought about Suds In Your Eye when I started writing about Liz Siedo and the bookmobile was that Liz gets things done and has a positive attitude about life, just like the three women in Mary Lasswell's books. I don't know yet, but I suspect Liz might enjoy a taste of beer from time to time.