Millye and the bats

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How Millye saved the bats.

Millye was my mother………an absolute dynamo of 105 pounds and 77 years. She solely owned our family house till she died a few years ago. It’s a graceful, older colonial with 6+ bedrooms, 4 baths and lovely wrap around porch. It sits in the center of the town near the major galleries and university.

Occasionally bats have invited themselves in. On the wall in the bedroom in which they entered there are signatures of Willie Misconi and Minnesota Fats (rhymes with bats) A famous pool table sat up there for a while http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/15/39 ... d-big.html.Kling I think owned our house before we did. I went to Raytown in the afternoons and played pool all the time with the manager. I don't think he ever charged me.. I was just company for him to play with.

There were numerous ways for the bats to enter between the ¼ circle push-out windows and the chimney shaft on the 3rd floor.. One year she paid my husband the carpenter to fix the shaft and rebuild the window, sealing the holes.

After the windows and chimney had been fixed, 3 bats apparently came down through the hollow walls and entered the dining room through a sliding door opening. My brain damaged brother was calmly able to catch and release the bats, The next night, 2 more bats entered the dining room. My mom figured they were trapped inside the attic space because the window area had been tightly sealed. She was afraid the remaining bats would starve to death. Another brother, who served in the Peace Corp for ten years in New Guinea, agreed to cut a whole in the 3rd floor bathroom ceiling large enough for him to go up into the attic area on a ladder which he dragged up the stairs (only gouging the walls twice).

The hole was cut and my brother spied 28 bats in a line on the wall. They sealed up the bathroom with towels around the door cracks and left the bathroom window open so the bats could escape. Millye did not want to fix the hole in the bathroom ceiling, in case there are baby bats that they cannot see in the dim light. I do wonder if the bats even wanted to ‘escape’. I wonder if they knew they needed to find a better home. It was a pretty nice house and attic.

I remember catching a bat when I was a child. I had spied it on the back of a tree. I then trapped it with a jar and took it home to show her with a piece of paper sealing the jar. She almost had a heart attack and called Mrs. Hopfinger to help me release it and not be given rabies.

[Manna]

It seems like you're calling Willie Misconi and Minnesota Fats bats. Bats invited themselves in ... and signed the wall.

It's strange that you continue to call your mother by her first name. It seems to imply a lack of affection between you. If that is your intention, it doesn't come across strongly enough. And if it's not your intention, then a warmer title might be better.

Also, it would be nice to write this in scenes. Maybe give us a sense of what the bathroom looked like before the hole was cut, and after. Dust? Trinkets? The smooth ceiling getting a jagged hole? The noise? The more details, the better (within reason).

Also, for the scene of you catching the bat, I'd be interested in what was going on in your head, how the bat looked on the tree, how it behaved upon capture.

I don't get what the pool playing/pool table aspect has to do with this story.

I think there's a lot of potential in this. So much, that I'd be interested in taking it and re-shaping it for myself.
I hope this was helpful.
m

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i absolutely adored Millye - we all called her mom. Sometimes we called her Millye cause it is such a cute name. She was the best ever.... the mother of nine. I miss her dreadfully. She died in 2004. She really was my best friend. I really wish she was with me now. I was the oldest kid and we always had a special bond. I have a unique family with a brain damaged brother who is very cool.. just 14 months younger than myself.




Willie Misconi and Minnesota Fats signed the 3rd floor bedroom wall because the pool table was up there for a decade or so. and FATS rhymes with BATS. The pool table article just happened to be published a couple days before
I decided ti 'pulblish' the bat story.. Their signatures are still there, tho covered with wall paper and now paint. The pool table and the bats were in the same room. I used to play on that wonderful table in Raytown. I'm taking son #1 to go play at the pool hall next week. There is a link to the published story of the pool table is in the 'story'. I tend to be very succint... don't like to waste ink.

I don't know why i caught the bat.. because I could, I guess. I was about 10.

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Manna, thank you. Your post reminds me that i need to bring my writings up to snuff. I have saved many anecdotes over the years and people seem to like them. I have a degree in creative writing - I've never used it really... I've edited and proofread, worked for farming publications, and law firms tho. (i was a patent agent for a while. talk about boring).

About catching the bat... I spied it on a tree at shoulder height. It was only about 2 inches long and motionless. I found a trash jar on the street and gently covered the bat and then slid a paper under neath before running home. I was pretty darn happy.

Here is another story for you. As I said - i like succintity.

A funeral in Kansas

Here in Kansas, a brother of a friend of mine, a fireman with a gambling and drinking problem, committed suicide in jail after being picked up for driving under the influence. One of my free lance jobs is playing the organ at funerals.

He lived in on the northwestern side of the metro where the houses are pink, grey and crumbled, surrounded by wild dogs, and sometimes have Chief's logos painted full size on the side of the house that has NO windows. Tattoo parlors abut homemade churches of questionable denomination and the roads have no curbs or drainage conduits.

William was a bagpiper. After the funeral, which was well attended by sturdy legged firemen whose pants were all too tight, who sported handlebar mustaches and shaved heads and probably had Harley-Davidson wannabees in their detached sheds, 25 firefighters gathered in the vestibule with 8 fully dressed bagpipers.

A fireman said "We will sound the final alarm for our brother William" They had brought at least 8 big brass bells (the kind that used to ring in firehouses to call the firefighters and dangle above the front of the trucks). The 8 bells started clanging in a reverberating church of stucco and tile, the bagpipers started playing, and the huge old church bell started peeling. For at least 3 minutes this unbelievably loud cacophony sounded. The congregation was clustered at the back of the church by the firemen and bagpipers. After about a minute of this wonderful noise, everyone broke into the most unfettered sobbing I have ever witnessed. Not a person was spared from the sobs of utter sorrow.

When the clamor died, one of the firefighters, I guess to lighten the mood, said "Dang it - Bill owed me ten bucks". The very elderly mother of William opened her purse and gave the firefighter a ten dollar bill which he stuck in his pocket to the dismay of all the other firefighters.

Life is very short.

[fishfishquaileye]

I also have a degree in creative writing. If only I knew how to put into words how that makes me feel.

[Cate]

I do not have a degree in creative writing.

I enjoyed both stories Mary. Millye sounds like she was full of character and charm.
I remember as a little girl lying on the dock at nighttime, watching the bats swoop over the lake. There was so many and they moved in an almost magical way swooping down and up. I can understand your Mothers compassion/tolerance for them.
I liked the side story about "big Bertha" the pool table as well.

[fishfishquaileye]

I do not have a degree in creative writing.

I enjoyed both stories Mary. Millye sounds like she was full of character and charm.
I remember as a little girl lying on the dock at nighttime, watching the bats swoop over the lake. There was so many and they moved in an almost magical way swooping down and up. I can understand your Mothers compassion/tolerance for them.
I liked the side story about "big Bertha" the pool table as well.

ye's you is. you have lots off degress in creation righting. you is good and strongs righter. you speaking sense oftens and peoples shout "hooray" many times and again. i donmt know why you lie about your educationing, so short and so easy remembers but you like like a person not like truth, like truth is a stranger to you. "knock, knock, my name is Truth" "go away, you is a stranger to me". I am angry with you Mr Cate and wish you stop so people shout hooray again when here your name not throw bananas and little frogs as you walk down streets to school. this is s ad story of losing talent and integritty. I just dont understand why you do thi's times and time agains. and this sad story makes me sad, oh yes!

[Cate]

Madame fish - you're starting to sound like those weird letters that you send.

creative righting – well yes, actually I do hold a degree in genetic engineering and have been working diligently on righting several mistakes - bumble bee wing size, humming bird feet (do they have feet? I think so, not that it matters they’ll soon have better ones and finally be able to stand around)

ye's

haha (did you see Manna's note to apostrophes - brilliant)

[Manna]

I'm sorry you have only one degree in creative writing. I have about 69 degrees in Fahrenheit, and about 22 in Celsius. Cate does not have a degree in Genetic Engineering. Cate has a degree in Johnny cake, Molasses and Sassafras Tea from Cornell. And the Fisheye one has several degrees of freedom, though she may have lost one or two as she is getting old.

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you are too funny