Yes, Americans can produce products that are both good and cheap, and I mean cheap in a good way!  I recently stopped for the first time at Hilsher’s General Store in Port Trevorton, along the Susquehanna River about eight miles south of Selinsgrove.  I’ve gone past it hundreds of times, never realizing what a gem I was missing.

In one stop, you can eat homemade chicken and dumplings, stock up on local cheeses, buy a candle or knickknack for your mother-in-law, pick up those hard-to-find nuts and bolts for that job you’ve put off, buy muck boots for monsoon weather in Pennsylvania, pick out paint for your patio, and prepare for fall with feed to lure the deer in and buy a grinder and seasonings in hopes that the feed does its job.

Hilsher’s wraps a wonderland of miscellaneous goods around its Ace Hardware core.  It’s a Walmart before Walmart became too big, too predictable, and too much “Made in China”.  You can wander though Hilsher’s and find products and brands that you haven’t seen in years or have never seen.  I found two new-to-me brands of “Made in the USA” products and wondered why they aren’t on Walmart shelves.

Rada Cutlery knives – I bought a parer, a tomato slicer, and a bread knife.  They are sharper than any knives I’ve ever owned – sharper than my German-made blades and definitely sharper than the Farberware and Chicago Cutlery knives, which Walmart brings to us from Asia. Competitively priced from $5.50 to $9.00, give the Rada Made in the USA products a try.

Onguard Industries muck boots – with the recent flooding in the northeast, I was just one of many trying to find rubber boots to wear while hauling mud out of basements.  I had given up finding boots not made in Taiwan or China until I happened into Hilsher’s.  I was so excited to see “Made in the USA” stamped on the side of the boots; I bought three pairs and surprised my husband and father.  We’re all amazed at how comfortable, well made, and “cheap” they are at only $16.99 a pair.

It’s kind of sad that finding something made in the USA is such an exciting occasion.  Rada Cutlery and Onguard Industries prove that companies in the U.S. can make high quality products at competitive prices.  Our biggest challenge is to find these companies and products.  Check out these websites (Oh, and check out Hilsher’s General Store too!):

Made in USA

Made in USA Forever

Still Made in USA

Americans Working

Save Our Country First

Written with my friend Missy B. in mind.  Keep up the good fight!

Image by catd_mitchell

With less than an hour left before the sale-ending noon deadline, I rush toward the dressing room, trying to beat the grey-haired lady who is heading there from the opposite direction; trying to beat her there, that is, without actually breaking into a run.  With a sharp turn left, a tight squeeze right, and a short speed-walk finish, I beat her by a body length, only to find myself behind several other beat-the-clock triers-on.  Eight doors stand in front of us, closed and locked.  It’s sales day at Bealls, where the shoppers are mostly savvy seniors serious about saving a buck.

I watch the doors, willing them to open.  From my vantage point, I see bodyless ankles and feet beneath the doors of the middle four stalls and shadows moving about beneath the outer two on each end.  But, wait!  There’s no movement in that stall on the far right!  I catch the eyes of the ladies behind me, silently staking claim to my place in line and step toward the stall in question.  Bending down, I peek under the door, immediately calculating that 12.5% of the dressing room capacity is unused behind this locked door.  I eye the distance from door-bottom to floor – twelve inches at best, so I step back into line.

The line moves so excruciatingly slowly, I’ve got time to count the number of rooms (eight minus one), divide by people ahead of me (eight), and multiply by an average dressing room stay (four and one half minutes).  I won’t make it to the front counter in time for my 50% discount, my additional 35% off, my bonus dollars, my senior day bargains, my free gift, my LAST BIG SALE OF THE CENTURY, my MEGA-MADNESS BARGAIN OF A LIFETIME!!!  Time for drastic measures …

Stepping past the ladies behind me, I face the far-right door, throw my new clothes to the floor, take a deep breath, and drop to the floor.  My well-dressed, perfectly coiffed, fellow shoppers turn toward me with questioning eyes.  Imitating my husband’s best Corvette-frame-fixing move, I shimmy head first, back-to-the-floor, under the door, only wishing for his four-wheeled creeper to smooth my journey.  Unlocking the door, I open it to smiles, cheers, and applause!

I’m still savoring my hero status a few minutes later when the clerk says with a cheery voice, “Thank you for shopping with us.  You just saved sixty-seven gazillion dollars today!”

Ah, the simple pleasures …

Image by roboppy

I thought of my great-Aunt Belle the other day while frying Spam. She spent all of her long life in the northeastern hills of Pennsylvania busily cooking, gardening, teaching, living. Starting when I was about six and continuing for the next seven years, I made an almost daily trek the half-mile to her house, sometimes on foot through the woods, now and then on horseback through the fields, or most often pedaling my Western Flyer out the rough dirt road.

Together, Aunt Belle and I baked cookies, picked corn, weeded carrots, made Christmas presents, fed calves, and cleaned cupboards. Most of our conversations slid lightly from cats to cows, from school plays to picnics, from ice skating to the weather. At times, we grew more serious, welcoming Alaska and Hawaii into the family, wishing John Glenn bon voyage, worrying about what Fidel might do to us, wondering about Martin’s dream speech, and joining Walter to say good-bye to JFK.

Like most farm wives, my aunt knew how to save a penny in all that she did. The work was ever present – darning socks, patching jeans, hanging out wash, growing a large garden, canning fruits and vegetables, picking berries, plucking chickens, hacking up home-grown beef, skinning rabbits and squirrels, cleaning fish, making do. In some ways, she stretched a penny beyond recognition. I especially remember eyeing our chocolate chip cookies set out to cool on the counter. My recurring challenge? Find the one with more than three chocolate chips! She economized at dinnertime too. Her meals were often a conglomeration of the previous several nights’ meals, kind of mystery casseroles. Like the Spam, they were tasty, but better not to ask what was in them or how old the ingredients were!

As I opened the Spam can recently and picked up a knife, I smiled to myself, thinking of Aunt Belle and her subtle influences on my life so many years later. With three sons and a hungry husband, our Spam slices grew in number over the years from seven to eight to nine to ten, until that little block of meat yielded eleven very thin slices to feed my family of five. I rationed the slices; three for Gary, two each for the boys and me. The funny thing is that it just never occurred to me to buy two cans! Aunt Belle would understand.

She’d understand about the refrigerator too. We bought a new one earlier this year, so when I called Tyler in California, I mentioned the new purchase. “Does it have a light in it?” he immediately asked. His question puzzled me for a minute until I realized he was teasing. Our old refrigerator light burned out about fifteen years ago, and I never replaced it. Did you know that if you put your eyes level with each shelf and squint you can see pretty well all the way to the back without a light?

Today, I’m making chocolate chip cookies. The recipe calls for a twelve ounce bag of chips, but as always, I’ll ignore old Toll House and side more closely with my aunt’s count. Tonight, when it’s cookie time, I’ll just try to find the ones with more than five chips before Gary gets to them. Now, about that missing light in the oven…

Missing my Aunt Belle.

Image by annieo76

Already five minutes late for meeting my husband in the food court, I weave my way quickly through the racks of skinny clothes in Macy’s junior section, beating a fast path toward the mall center. With just a few feet to go before the doorway, I swerve left, eyes drawn to the familiar purple Poison bottle, calling out to me under the bright fluorescent lights. I glance left and right, hoping to sneak a free spray before the helpful young woman with the one-counter-over-perfect make-up can snag me with her sales pitch. Successful, I wave my wrist a couple of times, take a big whiff, and head out the door. Ah, perfume…

Perfume proves there’s a difference in body chemistries. My husband came home one day raving about the perfume a young woman at work wore called Fire & Ice. An internet description said it all. “For the woman who plays with fire and skates on thin ice. Fire & Ice is a provocative fragrance that’s both sensual and passionate, yet cool and mysterious.” How could I lose? So, off to K-Mart I drove, anxious to light the match and test the ice. Back in the car, I tore open the package, spritzing this direct route to passion onto my wrists and neck. By the third spray, I was opening the windows, hoping to dilute the stench (hint of singed feathers doused by cold water) with the frigid January air! With great diplomacy, Gary told me that it smelled pretty good on me, but we agreed to donate it to his coworker so that he could continue to enjoy it at work!

Fortunately, Jean Carles created a masterpiece for Dana in 1932. Tabu ranks right up there with my other favorite smells – cotton towels fresh off the clothesline, homemade apple pie in the oven, and corn silage pitched out of the silo. Recently, I read a review of Tabu, feeling slightly offended by the description. “Tabu smells … like a viscous brew of maple syrup, patchouli, and incense. It is an odor that is almost tangible, like walking through a thick-napped velvet curtain.” Another site describes it as leathery tobacco! OK, so it’s cheap, but Gary sure loves me with Tabu – fortunately even better than that young woman with her Fire & Ice!

I’ve actually been pretty much perfume-free over the past few years, feeling empathy for my boss who has a super-sensitive, beagle-like nose. I figured it was a fair trade off, considering our work in the chemical industry; a perfume-free office in exchange for an on-site, coal-mine canary, able to alert me to any strange smells long before I could catch wind of any dangerous concoctions. Now semi-retired, I’m swooping into those perfume counters more often, trying to find that perfect mix of Tabu with notes of sunshine-dried Tide, hot pastry, and fermented corn. Perfumers: this is your challenge!

My mother’s long-time favorite is Chantilly. Brought to life in 1941, Chantilly’s recipe calls for a chaotic mix of lemon, jasmine, rose, orange blossom, carnation, sandalwood, moss, vanilla, musk, and more exotic-sounding ingredients – bergamot, nerolic, tonka bean, and ylang-ylang. My mom can’t put into words why she picked this fragrance, other than to say that it just smelled good to her. At least one other soul is more expressive. One evening, about forty years ago, my mother attended a local dance, wearing her beloved Chantilly. As the last words of Eddy Arnold’s “Bouquet of Roses” faded away, the guy she was dancing with stepped back and made her day, saying without cracking a smile, “You smell really good. You smell almost as good as mashed potatoes and gravy!” Must be the ylang-ylang…

Spray away, but don’t kill the canary!
Deecee

Image by DeeCee

”How do you put the stuff in the middle?” my niece asks, turning the sugar cookie round and round and upside down, trying to find a clue to the mystery. I just smile and say, “It’s Christmas magic!”

Beverly, my co-worker from many moons ago can claim ownership to the original, but non-magical recipe for these soft, savory sugar cookies. Her writing still scrawls across a yellowed calendar page with Monday, May 14th, 1979 dated on the back. Recommended cups, tablespoons, degrees, and minutes have miraculously survived vanilla stains and Crisco smears from many Christmases past.

In a moment of holiday good will toward all, please accept this gift from my house:

2 C sugar 4 ½ C flour
1 C Crisco 2 t baking powder
2 large eggs 2 t baking soda
1 C milk ½ t salt
1 T vanilla

Cream sugar and Crisco together in large bowl. Add eggs, milk and vanilla. In another bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. Mix dry ingredients into sugar mixture. Roll out on floured surface and cut into shapes. Place on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 350° for ~12 minutes or until edges turn light brown. Yield: ~ 4 dozen

Adding magic is painfully time-consuming, but transforms these sugar cookies from very tasty to melt-in-your-mouth, when-are-you-making-more, don’t-give-them-away, most-favored cookies! The magic:

Roll the dough a bit thinner. Cut out pieces and place them on the cookie sheets. Spread jam (raspberry is our favorite) on each circle, leaving ¼” around the edges without jam. Put another cut dough piece on top of each jam-covered piece and seal the two edges together. Bake at 350° for ~16 minutes or until edges turn light brown. Sprinkle colored sugar on top while still warm. Yield: ~ 2 dozen

So, try the cookies – you’ll be a hit with all who taste the magic!

Merry Christmas,

DeeCee

Image by Patrick Gage

In 1907, my great-grandma and her six young daughters departed from the western port of Glasgow, Scotland bound for the U.S. in the dirty, stinking, rocking, noisy, damp belly of the S.S. Columbia. Pinned inside her dress was enough money to deliver them all to Ohio where her husband anxiously waited. Unfortunately, after nine difficult days at sea, her kind, caring heart kept them stranded on Ellis Island, just short of mainland America.

“Someone stole all my money!” a fellow lady in steerage cried out. “If you give me yours so that I can get off the Island, I’ll get money from my husband and bring it back to you.” Reluctantly, my great-grandma handed over her savings and gathered her girls close to wait for the lady’s return. The hours slowly ticked by before desperation finally descended; her troubles, when viewed from today’s perspective seem bone crushing. No cell phone to call her husband. No debit card to replace the lost cash. No friend to call for help. No open border to slip through. No way off the island until help arrived from Ohio several days later.

I’ve heard this story many times since I was a child. My imagination always pictures the villainous women, laughing with evil delight as she leaves the island with her ill-gotten cash. Once on dry land, she disappears forever into the crowded streets of New York City, never looking back at or worrying about the seven sad souls left behind. She lives the rest of her life without guilt or regret, but surely someday pays for her dastardly deed. Or, so I chose to believe until recently…

“Did you ever think that maybe she tried to take the money back to your grandma?” my friend asked after hearing the story. “Maybe something or someone stopped her.” I started to protest, but stopped and looked at her with wide eyes, already beginning to create a new ending to an old story. “Wow, you’re right! What if her husband wouldn’t let her go back? What if she couldn’t get back to the island? What if she were just as frantic as my great-grandma?

Perhaps this mystery woman lived the rest of her life with a heavy heart, wondering what happened to the kind, caring woman with the six little girls! Is there another great-granddaughter somewhere out there in America who also heard this same story, but from the other perspective? We’ll never know what really happened that April morning a century ago, but I’ve rewritten the storyline. The feud’s finally finished with no shots fired, and I feel better!

How often do we pass judgment on someone’s actions or words without knowing what truly happened or what is in the person’s heart? In being quick to judge, we take on and carry the heavy baggage of anger, resentment, and blame. I’m convinced that it’s never too late to lighten our emotional loads with a new, positive perspective. Letting go… Having a change of heart… Giving the benefit of the doubt… Forgiveness… It’s worth a try!

Image by Benimoto

“What kind do you want?” I ask, turning sideways from behind the booth counter so that I can point out the goods. “This apple with two crusts or Aunt Marie’s apple crumb? The fat blueberry or Suky’s fresh-off-the bush-today blackberry? Red cherry or that lemon with mountains of meringue? Fresh peach or Janet’s heavenly coconut cream? Allyson’s creamy peanut butter or the home-grown pumpkin? It’s the annual Wyalusing Volunteer Firemen’s Carnival, and I’m hawking the best deal on the grounds – homemade pie!

It’s summer 2008. In many restaurants around the country, three to four dollars buys a day-old, refrigerated, artificial-tasting, barely tolerable piece of pie. In contrast, our fair pies, all donated to the cause by individuals still versed in the noble art of pie baking, arrive freshly baked, sometimes still warm, and all mouth-watering good. Baking a real pie is time-consuming, kitchen cluttering, and sweaty-August hot, so at a dollar-fifty a piece, it’s a baker’s labor of love and a buyer’s bargain.

My aunts and cousins run the pie booth four of the five nights of the fair. Each year we have the same conversation following this typical exchange with a hungry customer. “I want a piece of coconut cream,” the man says. “Which one do you want,” I ask, pointing to pieces from three different coconut cream pies. “I don’t care, just pick one,” he answers, not even glancing at the table behind me. I choose the one that looks least tempting, guessing that he’ll never fully appreciate the finer nuances of pie excellence.

After he leaves, the conversation begins. “How could he let me pick without even looking? I ask, starting up where we left off a year ago. “Yeah, I can’t even imagine that,” my cousin adds. My aunts chime in with equal exasperation. “Not care? How can he not care whether the crust looks flaky or tough?! Doesn’t it matter to him whether the filling is fresh-cooked or second-rate instant?! Can’t his taste buds distinguish between real whipped meringue and artificial gunk from a can?!”

Homemade pie…so good, it’s a melt-in-your-mouth, blast-to-your-taste-buds, can-I-have-another-piece kind of sensation. I fear for the future of homemade pies. Even the definition of homemade is shifting as the fast-food frenzy wipes away memories of the how-to and the tastes-like. Many restaurants and bakeries claim they serve homemade pies when the only connection to the real deal is the oven temperature. Shame on these imposter pies and those who dare to serve them! Sympathy to those who eat them for they travel through life without true pie knowledge!

Fortunately, we can stop the impending demise of perfect pies. It’s a radical, but necessary solution: baking at home. Putting a store-bought frozen pie in the oven does not count! Imagine a pie world freed from high fructose corn syrup, food coloring, and preservatives. Envision a pie so good it sends shivers down you spine with the first amazing taste-jammed bite. You owe it to your family, to your community, and to your country to protect the future of real pie. Generations to come will thank you.

So, pie bakers of the world unite! Roll out those real crusts! Pick those berries! Cook that filling! Whip that meringue! Teach your pie-making secrets to your children, grandchildren, and friends and pass on your pie pans before it’s too late. Be proud. Be strong. Go forth and bake!

OK, so my family might be a bit radical when it comes to pie expectations. I even had to look at over 500 pictures of pies before finally choosing the one at the top of this post! If you know good pie, you already understand the seriousness of picking the perfect piece. If, on the other hand, you are pie-challenged, find someone in your community known for homemade pie and discover one of life’s small, but perfect pleasures. Now, let’s talk about that store-bought ice cream…

Image by Don Fulano

Tina Turner probably doesn’t need another back-up dancer anyway. Not that I had a real shot at it, since I never took dance lessons, and standing tall, I max out at five foot one inch and just a little bit more. “Man, I’d still love to dress my sturdy thighs in fishnet stockings and dance to “Private Dancer” behind Tina,” I thought when I read through the old list. Have you seen Tina sing and dance her way through that song in her video “One Last Time in Concert?” The super-slim back-up dancer, in the red dress slit way up the side, brings her long, lean leg straight up in front of her face. Well, I can’t get my face that close to my leg while sitting down and bending over, so that to-do will have to come off the list.

I found my things-to-do-before-I-die list stuck to the back of a catch-all drawer and hidden by receipts, buttons, paper clips, matches, rubber bands, pot holders, batteries, pens, markers, locks, candles, cards, incense sticks, keys, bubbles, rolls of tape, scissors, flea collars, flashlights, and stale gum. “GTE SYL” in blue lettering caught my eye on the top fold of the paper, opening out to “GTE SYLVANIA, Quality Through People and Technology” when unfolded to full page. Written in 1992 just before GTE pulled out of Towanda, my list lay hidden for sixteen years.

So, how’d I do? Cross-country ski? Yup. After the first grueling outing, my arms ached so much from uphill poling that for three days it hurt to push down the water fountain button. Buy a 65 Mustang? Check. Great time cruising – abruptly interrupted by brakes gone bad at the top of a hill. Win a tennis tournament? Yes. Small-town, small-time tournament, but hey, the first-place trophy sits on my bookcase!

I checked off three of the ten to-dos, but what about the rest? Backpack on horseback in the mountains? Never. Take a cruise? Nope. Shoot at the national field archery tournament? Never going to happen. Learn to read German? Nein. Go to Scotland? Not yet. Write a book? Not even one page. “Wow!” I thought. “What have I been doing all these years? The Tina gig was always a long shot, but all these other to-dos were reasonable. So, what went wrong?”

Maybe nothing went wrong… My cruise ship may still be dry-docked and bagpipes wail too far off in the highlands, but I’ve roamed the streets of Berlin, Taipei, Saltzburg, Kyoto, Daegu, Helsinki, and Lisbon. My German is still limited to ordering spaetzle or spargel, but in the meantime, I’ve tackled sign language and brushed up on Spanish. A tennis racquet now feels just as much at home in my hand as a compound bow did years ago, and a recent hour-long horseback ride reminded me that I’d rather watch, smell, and clean-up after horses than ride them! Fortunately, life quite often offers excellent unplanned adventures equally satisfying as those once imagined and anticipated.

“OK,” I thought, pulling out a clean piece of paper. “I’ll make out a new list just for the fun of it. “Write a book” goes back on the list, and I’ll add my grand schemes to save the world.” A few minutes later, nine to-dos looked back at me. “These are great, but what truly serious challenge can take the place of Tina?” I wondered. Just then, as if on cue, “Whiskey River” started playing on the radio. “Yeah, that’s a definite! ” I thought excitedly as I completed the list…

#10 BACK-UP SINGER FOR WILLIE NELSON (long legs not required)

Image by ptofnoretrn77

“Rats, I’ve really done it this time. Gary’s not going to believe this!” I started the long walk up the hill, imagining his reaction to my latest fiasco as I stared into the darkness ahead of me.

“You locked the key in the van when you stopped at the mailbox?” He asked. “Well, yeah, I must have bumped the lock with my knee. But, that’s not the only problem. The other key is in my pocket book, and that’s in the van. And there’s one more thing. The van’s still running and the headlights are on!” I smiled at him, he rolled his eyes, and we climbed into the truck to go back down the hill.

His eye roll said it all…just one more in a long line of rescue missions for Diane’s many locked-in keys or lost pocketbooks. Or, at least, it started as another typical rescue. Little did we know…

Under the truck’s lights, we circled the van trying to find a way to open the doors or the hood latch. Unfortunately, the locks on the doors weren’t reachable with a coat hanger like in the old days, and we didn’t even consider breaking a window or a latch on our two-day old Astro van. We decided to go back to the house and try to call someone from the Chevy dealer.

Climbing into the truck, Gary turned the key, but instead of the welcome sound of the engine starting, we heard, click, click, click, click, click, click – dead battery! So, leaving the truck to keep the van company, we walked the six-tenth of a mile back up the hill, still in pretty good humor considering the situation. We wondered how long the van would idle on three-quarters of a tank of gas!

We couldn’t reach anyone from the Chevy dealership, so Gary called a local locksmith, who kindly agreed to help us at that late hour. We drove down the hill to meet him in our 67 Corvette, again leaving the lights on, but this time also leaving the motor on to preserve the battery. First, the locksmith tried each of the 400 master keys on his giant ring, but with no luck. “If I can get a good look at cuts in the key, I might be able to make a key that will open the door,” the locksmith said as he shone his flashlight into the van at the key dangling down from the steering column. As he drove away to get his hand-held key cutter, we turned toward the Corvette, just in time to hear cough, cough, sputter, cough, sputter, sputter as the engine died – out of gas!

We stood looking from van to truck to car in stunned disbelief. I looked at Gary’s face in the glow of the van’s headlights, expecting him to explode in frustration, but instead, he just quietly said, “And all I wanted to do tonight was eat popcorn and watch Dallas!”

The next fifteen minutes passed in silence except for our footsteps and heavy breathing as we trudged up the hill again. An hour later, with no more wheels to choose from, Gary walked down the hill to meet the locksmith. He made several attempts at keys, but finally gave up and went home. Gary gave up too and made the final, long, lonely trek up the hill, leaving behind the idling van, the dead-battery truck, and the gas-hungry Corvette. “Is it still running? I asked as he slipped into bed. “Yup,” he said, “guess it gets pretty good gas mileage!”

The van ran all night, but by the time Gary walked down the hill in the morning, it was silent, turned off by the conscientious locksmith who returned at daylight to successfully defend his key-making reputation. By 8:00, the van, truck, and Corvette all sat safely at the house, ready for another adventure. Good car key habits – needed them then, still need them now! See Locking Keys in the Car.

Image by biddit

“He just shot out of the back seat before we could catch him.” My mother-in-law apologized over and over again, as I fought back a wave of panic. “Why in the world didn’t they put him in the cat carrier,” I thought. Biting my tongue, I quickly told her not to worry. My in-laws are wonderful, kind, and caring people and also animal lovers, so I knew how terribly they must have felt as Mutton raced up the driveway and disappeared into the woods behind the vet’s office.

I first met the escapee cat at a Little League baseball game. Another parent brought tiny kittens to the game hoping to find homes for them. One little gray ball of fluff, whose face reminded me of a gorilla baby, looked at me and we bonded instantly. I took him home hoping that my husband would also find him irresistible. He did, so we christened our new family member Mutton. Now, nine years later, we mourned his disappearance into the wilds six miles from home.

We searched the woods for a couple of days, put flyers in peoples’ mailboxes, and advertised in the local paper, but Mutton was gone. As the days turned into weeks, fond stories of Mutton surfaced at family gatherings as we remembered his gorilla-like face, his raccoon-shaped body, and his calm, trusting personality. Well-loved and hard-missed, Mutton remained alive in my thoughts as the months passed.

Then, one day six months after the disappearance, I was ironing in the basement and saw something move across the small window at the top of the wall. Curious, I went upstairs and out onto the porch. You guessed it! As I walked toward the far door, I saw Mutton coming up the steps onto the porch. He seemed a bit confused about whether he was really at the end of his six month, six-mile odyssey, but I called his name, and he came to me. You can imagine my excitement! I picked him up, calling to my husband, and we fussed over our thinner, but healthy-looking miracle cat.

This story so far isn’t too unusual. I’ve read other tales of pets returning home from even longer distances and in shorter timeframes. What’s the crazy twist to this story? A couple of days before Mutton returned, I dreamt that he came home. That might not seem too unusual either, since I still missed him and thought of him often. Here’s the kicker: in my dream, I walked across the porch toward the far door as Mutton came up the steps, exactly like it happened just two days later!

Did I see the future? Can our minds travel across time barriers? Did Mutton send me a message? Did I send a message to Mutton? Can we communicate with animals or with each other directly with our minds? Or, was it just a strange coincidence?

We recently traveled to Florida, taking Mutton with us and worrying all the way about losing him again. Fortunately, he settled comfortably into his new temporary home. Good thing. At his walking rate of one mile per month, it would take him one hundred years to find his way back to Pennsylvania!