My cousin Deborah had a new hairstyle. It has very unusual texture for hair. Very squiggly but not curly. Sort of like delicate dreadlocks but not kinky. Soft. I realized (that) part of the politics involved vote by association. Knowing the huge crowd that congregated 3 of 4 because we were not. But I cried, NOT allowed to eat candy, but we didn't have any money anyway. Smokey had this white plastic frame (about 5 Ft. square) stuck on his face. It was stuck with some kind of glue. I was standing across the lake and I yelled, "Hold on Smokey, I'm coming!" But poor Smokey was getting nervous. He could not eat his feed. He started slamming his head toward the ground to try and knock the plastic frame off with all the force he had and quarter horses are STRONG. He was getting very upset and slamming this frame (stuck to his head) against a tree and I was trying to get there to help him. About this time--BAM--he broke half the frame off his head. Next jolt he got the white plastic frame off and started eating his food, chewing the way horses chew. We were in church--me and my mother and Dora. We were singing the benediction hymn when the preacher makes his plea for people to turn their life over to Jesus. He was standing in the center of the wide center aisle, pleading for lost souls when the cops barged down the aisle in uniform. They mumbled to the preacher and charged up to an unsuspecting girl who was holding her hymnbook singing. They said, "Hands behind your back!" And she calmly put the hymnbook down and put her hands behind her back and the rest of the congregation's singing dwindled off noticeably. A few hardcore Christians kept the song going but most were watching the arrest with wide open eyes. The gossip was already flying. My mother said, "Hold my stuff. That's one of our clients who just got arrested." And she followed the girl and the cops 15 feet behind them--with determination. Me and Dora had been left alone in church and for a while we didn't have to do what ANYBODY said. I had no intention of picking up my mother's purse and socks and stuff, but Dora said, "We better." So I put the dirty socks inside the purse but I didn't feel like hooking the clasp so I carried the purse by one handle, hanging open. Dora carried the church bulletin, the Bible and my mother's Sunday School lesson book. Then we were in the flower bed and I decided to root some flowers to grow because I didn't have money to buy any. Dora said, "Merri, do you know how?" I said, "Well, not exactly, but I'll figure it out." She said, "Merri, don't, you'll get in trouble." But by this time I had pulled up the tulips and daffodils out of the ground. They had not bloomed yet. They never would now. The bulbs and green stems were laying in the dirt and only wild onions were left growing alive.