In again,..out again,..Finnagan!! And I should be online at home again in about two weeks! I have access online about two hours a day, but that should be enough to run my google searches and make the contacts that I have to make.
A few years ago,..I was fussing at my son because he seemed to become obsessed with being on the internet. Now,..I myself,..can't seem to get off of it!! It is just so nice to be able to talk to other people and not have to have the conversation be a continual guessing game. I never realized what a blessing that it must be to have a conversation with someone and not walk away from them trying to figure if I have really understood everything they have said to me.
I can talk on the telephone and often do,..but what the other person is saying to me is repeated oft-times by a second person, who is mouthing the words to me from a connected phone..near by..usually a cordless model..that sits by the regular attached phone. Most people think that if one TALKS on the phone that one must also be listening to what the person on the other end is saying to one. My son could tell folks that this is not so because he is the person, who gets caught with a, "Hey,..Bill! Telephone! Be my ears for a while!!"
The lady with whom I have met up with on Sunday in Cleveland seemed not the least bit surprised about the clarity of my speech,..but I don't think that it really struck her that I was not following every part of the fast flowing conversation until she saw me signing to the gentleman, who is totally deaf, who is married to Buzzy Bee. He was half asleep because he had been up since about seven Sunday morning and had been running with the Bee all day long. I signed to my deaf friend, "Heh! Don't get sleepy here!"
He signed back to me, "Heeeey! You,..yourself look like you are going to drop off if these yak-boxes don't slow down!"
"Be nice!" I signed back, "You wife is one of those yak-boxes!"
"Blaaah! Blaah! Blaaah!" the old fellow signed back to me, "It is getting more and more windy in here!"
"What are you signing about?" the distinguished lady looked me straight in the face and smiled at me. She caught me off guard. I thought that the Buzzy Bee had her attention,..but the Bee was caught off-guard, and now I was faced with an actual conversation.
"Hmmmmmn!" I mused for her edification, "My deaf friend and I were just talking about how breezy it is up here on the lake today!"
I found ou that the distinguished lady, Ms. Hoffman, had grown up within a few miles of the very place where I had grown up!! I named off a few people and she knew exactly what and who I was talking about!! She even knew the name of the conservative little church, that I had gone to as a child!
"I have always wanted to meet you !" she smiled at me, "There were so many newspaper articles about you!"
I think that I turned as red as a beet with embaressment.
"That was a long, long time ago!" I muttered.
I really was wondering if she had read in our local paper about "the church of the flying chickens" and remembered that story? The little white church, that I attended as a child and young teener, would have a yearly "chicken barbeque." Naturally, the women and girls of the church had the job of filling up the chickens with a reversible vacuum cleaner, and then, scraping and cleaning the dead birds. To make my part of the job easier, I filled up some whole chickens with butane gas for the barbeque. I didn't know that before one put the chickens on the fire...one was to let the air or gas...OUT OF THE CHICKEN!! I did not know about the combustable properties of the butane gas as I had not had any really in-depth science courses. Let me just say that the news of the exploding chickens lit up the peaceful country sky around the little white church, which I mentioned a few lines before, and the news that the LORD, Himself,..had condemned chicken barbeques with a mighty roar and a flash of flying chicken flesh,....hit the newpapers, the next day,..and caused that particular church to only have chicken "roasts" from that day forward.
But back to Ms. Hoffman, our book has been made into a "promo script," which is being entered into several contests and it was positiviely decided by all members present at the meeting in the Rev.'s hotel room that we will enquire if the larger studio that had contacted us a few months back,..is still interested in making the movie.
A few times and dates must be tended to, and I have to get back to Questing Truth with the news of the dates that we are to meet with her in Columbus,..Ohio about the up coming book that she and I are supposed to be working on together. I'll bet that she thinks that this is a slow process! And if she thinks that,..she is correct. It took us FIVE YEARS..to write WALKING FREE: THE NELLIE ZIMMERMAN STORY,..and none of the three of us...the Rev., Buzzy Bee,..or me..has quit our day jobs, but we HAVE with a little perserverrance and pressure sold fifteen hundred books of that story..without a major publishing house......yet!!
