The jig is up

Jan and I spent a long weekend at Linda’s one spring when she still lived in New York State, hanging out, working jigsaw puzzles.  That's where we met Goose.  Concrete geese as lawn ornaments were already past their prime when Linda had to have one; nevertheless, she felt such a need that one came home in her van.    

Very old goose

Everything old is new again.  A 1920's goose.

Back then the geese actually were made of concrete, in size extra large.  Those geese moved about on hand carts.  They must have come unpainted, too, because when we first encountered Goose, Linda was negotiating with her daughter to have it painted.  Before we left that weekend, Goose had a lovely white body, a yellow beak, and yellow feet with green grass under them. 

While Cara and her boyfriend put several careful coats of paint on Goose, Jan, Linda and I worked on a complex new puzzle.  In truth, I did little; jig saw puzzles make me crazy.  Jan and Linda, however, have a knack and an obsession.  The last morning I got up much earlier than those two, who had spent the wee hours bent over the puzzle. 

I brushed my teeth and washed my face with a washcloth I found in a cupboard, and fitted maybe half a dozen little pieces when the two of them put in an appearance.  Linda dangled my morning wash cloth off the end of her finger and said just one cupboard over were towels and washcloths; why did I pick an old rag from the rag cupboard.  Over the course of the day, probably also due to my puzzle ineptitude, Linda teased me a whole lot about washing up with a rag.  When it was time to leave, I made sure that rag was tucked away in my suitcase.

Zipping down the New York Thruway going home I told Jan I not only had nicked that rag, I would figure out how to do something with it she couldn’t throw away, or put in the rag bag.  We were tossing a couple of ideas around the front seat when the phone rang in the back seat.  This was 1997, those phones were big and loud.  I jumped a foot, unfastened my seat belt and dug around the back seat while it kept on ringing.

“Hello.”  (No caller ID back then.)

“The jig is up!”

I almost dropped the phone or threw it up in the air on my way back into my seat.  How did she know I took that washcloth!?

“What jig?  What are you talking about?”

“I just put the last piece in the puzzle; the jig is up,” Linda said.

Well, it was sort of funny.  We chatted a couple more minutes and hung up.

“She’s in for it now,” I told Jan.  I stitched a goose on that ratty wash cloth.  Then I had it framed.  In gilt.  The frame shop really didn’t get it; when I picked the piece up they had tucked in the six inch long raggedy ripped off edge.  But they couldn’t hide thin and seer, or the hole.  It really was a fun weekend, and that goose is hanging in her Ohio bathroom now.