One Thousand Acres

Just finished reading Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the above name.  Like her fictional Cook family, my ancestors spent generations acquiring and working one thousand acres of rich Iowa farmland only to see it all sold off in the end. It's a very sad novel, but it sure did bring back some memories.

As a kid who ended up spending most of his childhood living on a lovely Missouri lake, nothing ever seemed as long as a summer day spent in rural Iowa. After exhausing all of the usual amusements in a few hours, the afternoons and long evenings would stretch out interminably.

One of the few amusing parts of Smiley's book was when she described an unconventional farmer whose menagerie included a parrot and three well-trained dogs. As she described it, when no one was around and a dog happened to wander into the living room, the parrot would give it commands. And the dog would obey.

I'm not really sure why this strikes me as so funny; perhaps it's not knowing whether the participants were oblivious or that the parrot actually knew it was toying with the dogs' misguided obedience. Either way one imagines it, though, it would look pretty darn silly of the dog.

I Dated a Murderess

Hello again and okay, make that an 'alleged murderess'.

I don't know if you ever saw a TV movie called “Murder in the Hamptons”, but I found out a week ago that it features a woman named Generosa Rand. Not only had I dated her just before moving from LA to New York, but, as I was soon to learn, she had followed me east the following year band had even taken the same sort of job I'd first had there - as a real estate agent... kinda like she was emulating me.

I never saw her again after she moved to Manhattan, but she ended up in a marriage that fell apart in 2001. Subsequent events included nasty allegations, adultery, divorce proceedings, and the gruesome murder of her husband just in time for her to inherit his entire $80 million estate.

Then her ex-con boyfriend divorced his wife and married Generosa the very next day. Her new hubby, an ex-con, soon got locked up for four months on a DUI conviction, got out, got thrown out of her house, beat up a crew member on a tour boat, etcetera. Meanwhile, Generosa succumbed to cancer in 2003, missing learning about his conviction for murder the following year.

There's a lot more to the story I was inspired to write on this subject, but I had to chop it out here as I'd like to sell it to the New Yorker. Suffice to say that she turned out to be creepy, and crazy (just like her dear old mom), and, if she had been stalking me, I'm rather glad she never found me. I mean, sheesh, life's short enough as it is!