Library Notes
September 24, 2004
By Pansy Hundley, Librarian.
You know how it is when someone you know gets a new – different – car and you realize about the time that you pass them, and do not return their wave, that was ole’ hoodle-dink, as my Dad would say, or hoodle-dinkess.
Well, no one has spoken to me in a week! You know what that means. I bit the bullet, I spent the money. I am now gliding, rather than riding. Yep, I’m back in my eighth Mercury and I love it. It rides so smooth and drives so smooth, nothing compares. I do have this foot problem, however. My foot disease usta’ be called "foot-in-the-carburetor", but with no carburetor, we can change the name of the disease, like the world is changing everything else. We could re-name it "foot-in-the-injectors". It just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?
I even broke two of my long-standing rules to buy this car. It only has 12,000 miles on it, so it’s almost new, just broke in good. I bought this car from a woman salesman – er – person, and I traded my Ford in on it. I’ve lost my mind, you can tell.
I have not traded in a car in years and years. I usually sell mine. But I didn’t want the hassle. I had two cars a long way from home and hated to put someone out to go to Denison with me, independent Pansy. And besides that, I did not want to park that Ford in my front yard with a For Sale sign on it and kill that grass I’ve been working so hard on.
And, of course, I gave too much for this car. It’s a 2004 Mercury Sable, Gold Ash, with only 12,000 miles. How in the world do you buy a car these days and not give too much for it? The world has gone mad and very expensive.
I’d been keeping a look-out for a car all summer. My Ford had 64,000 miles on it and it was time to replace it. I had called Texoma Ford in Denison about six months ago, after I saw one of their flyers. That gave the gal, Christy, my name and phone no. She would contact me now and then during that time. She called me a week and a half ago and said she had two cars I should look at. So, I went and looked and drove and haggled and bought. And, Christy is a very nice, down to earth gal and I liked her.
That car wanted to go home with me. It called to me. It enticed me. It said "I’m nearly new and I want to live at your house. I want to fit in your carport." You didn’t know a car could talk to you? Well, that just goes to show, some of us are special. Because we can hear that car talk. It purrs in my carport, after I very carefully drive it in. It’s somewhat bigger than that Contour and it’ll take some getting used to, but before long I can zip right in there, without listening, and cringing for, the sound of scrapping metal.
The only problem is that I have been driving a car with a floor shift for about five years. This lil’ darlin’ has the gear shift on the column. However, that does not keep me from reaching automatically for that floor shift every time I drive it. After I grope out there in midair for a while, it dawns on me that that floor shift ain’;t there no mor’.
I shall adapt. Just give me a little time and a little driving and I’ll quit grabbing the air toward the floorboard.
Therefore, when you see the slightly cream/slightly gold/slightly light green car gliding toward you, wave to me.
Now that I have raved unconscionably about my car, it’s time to stop it and proceed with the business at hand.
Hot Dog! Let’s read a brand-new Sandra Brown book! Just out and just on our shelves, is "White Hot". And, here’s the low-down on it.
"When she hears that her younger brother Danny has committed suicide, Sayre Lynch relents from her vow never to return to Destiny, the small Louisiana town in which she grew up. She plans to leave immediately after the funeral, but instead soon finds herself drawn into the web cast by Huff Hoyle, her controlling and tyrannical father, the man who owns the town’s sole industry, an iron foundry, and in effect runs the lives of everyone who lives there.
As she feared, Sayre learns that nothing has changed. Her father and older brother, Chris, are as devious as ever, and now they have a new partner-in-crime, a canny and disarming lawyer named Beck Merchant, who appears to be their equal in corruption.
Soon, Sayre is thrown in closer contact with Beck and becomes convinced that something more sinister is at play than her father’s usual need to dominate people and events. As she sets out to learn just what did happen to Danny, she comes to realize that there are many secrets in Destiny—secrets that hide decades of pain and anger, and that threaten at any moment to erupt and destroy not only her father and brother, but perhaps Sayre herself.
Underneath the rigid control that the Hoyles exert over the town, trouble is brewing. Old hatreds foster plans for revenge, past crimes resurface ,and a maverick deputy sheriff determines that Danny Hoyles’ death was not suicide, but murder.
As tensions mount, threatening to ignite a powder keg of long-held hostility, Sayre finds herself inextricable drawn into a struggle with striking laborers, her unscrupulous father, and her own emotions over the love/hate relationship that is growing with Beck, a man apparently with his own agenda, and mysteries of his own."