After I read all of the Trixie Belden books I could find
My aunt Janice allowed me to read one of her Nancy Drew books
She had a book case filled with them.
She was chintzy with them, only allowed me to borrow one at a time.
I used to beg to take two, but she had her standards.
So I took one at a time, disliking how she was slowing down my progress.
I never liked Nancy Drew as much as Trixie Belden anyway.
Trixie Belden was a marvelous book find for me.
She was a blonde dynamo with Encyclopedia Brown’s talent
For finding, following, and solving mysteries
delightfully female with Honey, her sidekick best friend.
Encyclopedia Brown had not been penned yet anyway.
I remember paying three dollars for each Trixie Belden book.
It was my allowance for the week if I ironed, dusted, gardened,
watched my brother, swept, cleaned the pantry, etcetera
we were not handed things for free in the sixties
We had to earn them.
Trixie Belden was worth every penny
I think I appreciated her more because I had to earn her
Before Matilda, before Harry Potter and Hermione Granger,
When I was a child, there was Pippi Longstocking, full of danger.
Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden were my mystery go-to books.
You could not rouse me from their adventures with grappling hooks.
I discovered Jo March in Little Women Christmas Day 1964.
Robin Hood and Little John I was soon also rooting for.
Atticus Finch in to Kill a Mockingbird was lovely to read.
I devoured books the way a horse eats with a bag feed.
Today children have so many heroes and super heroes.
But back in the day, we did not have nearly as many.
After I discovered science fiction and Guy Montag,
I guess I started opening my horizons; then I had plenty.
Mystery books have been devoured by preteens since the fifties.
I remember graduating from Nancy Drew to Trixie Belden.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
In eighth grade I discovered Agatha Christie and “Then there were none”.
I think a few boy readers read The Hardy Boys, but not many.
Boys wanted to be moving usually, not reading.
Today’s preteens are reading the Goosebumps books.
Each chapters ending in a cliffhanger, to urge you toward the next chapter.
I read a few chapters of them. They are not intriguing.
They did not entice boys, but the Captain Underpants book did.
The summer of 1964 I spend in a tree with cats
Reading Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew
Discovering Agatha Christie
While I spy on the neighbors
Mr. and Mrs. Dellabetta are in their nineties.
Their voices are raised, they argue in Italian.
We do not understand the words, but we get the inflections.
I keep my face down on my book, pretending to read a page.
The women are outside hanging up the wash.
It must be 10:00. That’s when they all head out there
So they can chat and laugh while they pin shirts to their lines.
Mrs. McWhirter is the only one who brings out giant panties.
Mom’s laughter comes up to me, and I smile.
She loves chatting with the hens of the neighborhood.
The cats are yawning, wanting a nap.
Nothing is holding you here, I tell them but they will not leave.
Laura Ingles Wilder
Her prose were milder
Than poetry or verse
Intended to coearce
Louisa May Alcott
Wrote tales I bought
About women and boys
With hearts sure to poise
Miss Nancy Drew
Wasn't such a shrew
She solved every crime
In her own spare time
Little Trixie Belden
Mysteries were well done
Dancing with shadows
Which she would expose
The brothers Grimm
Wrote tales that did brim
With joy, hope and love
Sent down from heaven above
My crushes are so numerable, it is crazy to try to remember them all.
When I love you it’s in a full blown puppy way, in your lap with Tarzan’s call.
Sky King, Mighty Mouse, Bugs Bunny, The Pink Panther, Howdy Doody.
Yes, I know it is dating me. I also crush on things sweet and fruity.
Cobbler, filled donuts, eclairs, turnovers, any kind of pie especially cherry.
I loved being outside picking fruit, peas, beans, and all kinds of berry.
I crushed on mushrooms fresh from the woods full of tiny ants.
When I got a bit older I crushed on bell bottoms, the hippy pants.
Crush on Elvis, Johnny Cash, John Wayne, Maureen Sullivan and others.
Cannot get enough of Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, and Agatha Christie.
Love all things shiny dazzling – rhinestones, aluminum foil, names like Trixie.
Attracted beyond belief to Tina Turner, Cher, Bette Midler and Adam Lambert.
A hippie throwback with a green thumb; I love to wear a three tiered skirt.
TV is not my thing at all, but I love to paint, swim, dance, play racquetball.
I love what I love, and I mean for the rest of my life, flat out in a puppy way.
So if you want to be my friend, make sure it’s forever because I don’t play.
The desert at sunset, comes alive in the dying light
The cool quickening breezes, glimmering in light
White sand beach, the foaming surf effervesces
Dark caves under waves—edges churning light
A morning sunbeam illuminating a moss bed
For only a moment—a spark of green light
Windswept fields of delicate golden dried stalks
How far you waved to reach this softness of light
The amber glow in a dying flame
Shifting the shadows of firelight
I Belden, walk in the pines every evening
For the orange display and to say—ah the light
A rainy autumn day
when memories come calling,
ushered in like the gently
perused pages of
a Victorian novel,
read with a cup of steaming cocoa
are the scented leaves
of my life story.
Beside a lavender scented lake,
I sat one summer,
breathing in the sights and sounds
of Mother Nature’s breast;
Each plop, plop of a fish leaping,
imprinted its' elation upon my psyche.
Blooming roses in my garden,
scents of tranquility
birthed in splendor
filling my mind with memories
of childhood and my loving grandmother.
How many of those did I press
between the pages
of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden?
Scented leaves sleeping now
upon my bookshelves.
Each leaf on a tree or flower
tells its’ own story.
Each leaf of a favorite book
turns, as do the autumn leaves
in their quest for renewal;
each chapter in life’s book,
a new beginning;
ah, breathe the fresh scent
of rebirth!
11-13-19
SCENTED LEAVES Poetry Contest
Kim Rodrigues
A Trixie Belden Mystery Novel!
lost in the bowels of the closet
Opened the missive slowly.
Felt like coming home
Smell you can get nowhere else
From nothing else
Wafted into my nostrils.
The smell of an old friend,
A book from my childhood
It is not found in any sprays or candles.
Cannot be duplicated, replicated or even hinted at.
The smell of an old, familiar, wonderful childhood book.
As a kid, I loved reading “Nancy Drew” and “Trixie Belden” mysteries. As a teen I couldn’t ingest enough mythology; dragons, dwarves, elves, gnomes, centaurs and fairies were pure gold for my cache of thrills. As a young woman, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie novels and terrors of Stephen King’s nightmares, owned my time and now biographies, philosophy, poetry and history crowd my personal library with one difference…since “Harry Potter” moved in with his friends; I revisit my inner child for respite.
Stories abound in
Nature; each leaf reveals one
As it, rides the wind.
In my child’s mind a gumshoe sleuth detective
that would be me.
Nancy Drew or Ms. Marple, invented by Agatha Christie.
Trixie Belden and Honey too,
there were so many choices you see.
I spent many an hour reading these books,
training for the detective in me.
How many job choices along the way could there
possibly be?
Lots of common blue collar jobs before I finally
got a degree.
If I am honest, I might have to tell you a total
of around thirty-three.
There was no book-reading in those days,
except the boring texts assigned to me.
I am a Gemini oozing with flexible thinking, it is
my main and only true-blue decree.
In my thinking, a gum shoe sleuth detective
is what being a guidance counselor has
made of me.
I’ve been a pirate since I was seven
And read Pippi Longstockings.
I’ve been a pirate since Swiss
Family Robinson came onto the
Screen, and I was allowed to see it.
I’ve been a pirate since
Realized that pirates get to
Do what they want,
Not having mothers.
I’ve been a pirate since
I fell in love with Peter Pan.
And sometimes I would
Switch from Pirate to
Peter Pan, not wanting
A mother to tell me
What to do.
I’ve been a pirate,
And a lone wolf, and
Trixie Belden, girl detective.
With my friend, Honey Wheeler.
Yes, I have been all of
These and more, based on
The book I was reading at
The moment. We did not
Have lots of movies when
I was growing up.
But we had lots
And lots of books.
I spent two or three
Summers in the back
Forty about thirty feet
Up a double Cottonwood
Tree, with sandwiches,
And red Koolaid,
Reading a pile of books.
Not a book.
Not two books.
A pile of books.
And I did not come
Down until I heard
My mother yell my
Last warning, which
Meant my first,
Middle, and last
Name.
When I heard that
I knew I had better
Hightail it out of
That treehouse,
And land in my
Supper-eating chair.