D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
February
2008
Voice of Ranch Woman, Part Four
Page: 3Me: "Kristy and J.L. got us a flashlight that works when you shake it." Jerry: "Well, you'll get old and get palsy and it'll light right up."
Me: "I like these new shoes. I just wish they hadn't cost me $40." Jerry: "Well, you got the box with 'em, didn't you? That ought to be worth something."
Me: "They've got digital cameras that'll take pictures underwater." Jerry: "You'd have a big time in the bathtub."
Me: "Oh, here's an anti-wrinkle pill!" Jerry: "What does it do, make you go blind?"
The McDonalds are always making jokes. One time I was helping brand cattle and some way that calf got up and I was astraddle of it backwards. Then I fell off.
Grandpa was sitting over there on a five-gallon can laughing with his hat over his face, just laughing his head off. He didn't ask me if I was hurt; he was just sitting over there laughing, he thought it was so funny.
I didn't think it was so funny.
Sometimes their humor does have a bit of a bite to it, especially if you're the focal point.
One time, it was 1903 or 1904, Jerry's Grandpa Jeremiah McDonald's wife Mitchel Ann had gone to have a baby — Aunt Jane — and Jeremiah was there by himself. His wife usually trimmed his mustache, but he decided he'd trim it himself, and maybe he messed it up, because he decided to shave the whole thing off. He got to looking at himself in the mirror, and he got to laughing. He decided he'd go pull a joke on the neighbor who lived just over the hill here.
Grandpa Jeremiah got a suitcase, and dressed up as he would have if he was coming from Ireland. He went over there to the neighbor's and talked in this Irish brogue: "By Jove, I'm coming from Ireland. And I'm Jerry's brother" — or cousin, or something — "and I've lost my way. Can you tell me how to get there, to the McDonalds'?"
The poor neighbor actually brought him over here and showed him the place. He said, "I don't know where he's gone to. This is a fresh fire. He can't be very far."
Jeremiah McDonald had gone to a great deal of effort to trick that neighbor. He'd walked over there, and it was at least a mile and a half or so over there, and in the winter. He began to laugh, because he had totally tricked him, without that mustache, that he was his own relative.
It made the neighbor so mad he wouldn't speak to him for years.
The McDonald family kind of has their own language. Granny used to give the kids "spondooliks." Spondooliks is money.
But the one word Grandpa Jonnie McDonald used to use a lot was "bonjolips." I'd cook for the cowboys and I'd always have a dessert fixed for 'em, and he called dessert "bonjolips." And my son Bo, he was a clever little boy when he was growing up, too, and he would call a hamburger a "cacaronirooch."
The McDonalds have a lot of words that are their own.
I loved Jerry or I wouldn't have married him. I knew he would be a good father to children. But falling in love with him wasn't just a flash. It's been a gradual thing.
I do feel like the more you know a man, the more you live with him, and even though you know him and there are things that irritate you about him, you love him more and more all the time.
And the way we believe, in the Church, this marriage isn't just for this life. This is forever.
I told him one time, "Well, you're stuck with me, because this is going to go on forever!"
Hopefully it will, if we live worthy of that.