The Reindeer Keeper

When I was in high school, girls were more often than not encouraged by their guidance counselors to go into nursing or teaching. Or, they had their own plan to get married and raise a family. Throughout my senior year, my mother kept after me, "What are you going to do after graduation?Where are you going to apply?" It didn't help that my two best friends had known all along what they wanted to do and they had their applications in to prove it. One was going for nursing; the other teaching. I was clueless. While I never liked high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do when it was finally over. Well actually I did but my mother would have kicked me out of the house. You see, all I wanted to do was write. It didn't matter what I was writing as long as I was in that mode. So if I'd had my way I would have stayed sitting at my desk in my bedroom writing. Needless to say, that never happened. Throughout that last year my mother kept throwing ideas at me. Sh...

To this day, there’s absolutely no explanation for my infatuation with classic Ford Mustangs. I know nothing about cars. I never did. But I can tell you when I first took notice of the Mustang, I fell head-over-heels in love-for a car. My parents were always trading cars. Because of their friendship with an Oldsmobile dealer, brands like Cutlass, Toronado, and the Ninety-Eight took turns sitting in our driveway. My father also had a thing for Lincoln Continentals. He was a funeral director so those cars were always black-always spotless and always off limits to those of us just itching to drive something-anything. Once in awhile during the summer he’d come home for lunch in a funeral van sort-of-thing. It too was black. He’d let us take it out beyond the hayfield while he ate. My cousins and I had lots of fun going over the wooden planks that spanned the creek. Then stepping on the pedal, we’d fly up the gravel road and across the open space to the woods. We never told my father ho...