<![CDATA[Diane Stringam Tolley - On the Border]]>Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:36:30 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Wondering About Alice]]>Sat, 19 Sep 2026 06:25:30 GMThttps://www.dianestringamtolley.ca/on-the-border/wondering-about-alice
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Click hNow, before I begin, there are a couple of things I want to say…
If Alice in Wonderland was simply a story that little Alice made up, well and good.
I may have made up a few of those in my day.
Ahem…
But if it’s a dream, I have to say that I’ve had a few kookie dreams in my time.
But this one tops them all as the most confusing dream ever!
Ready? Let’s dive in!
Alice and her sister were drowsing on the riverbank near their home on a hot summer afternoon.
I have it on the best authority that all of their chores were done and they had permission to be there and weren’t simply ‘hiding out’.
Suddenly a white rabbit hopped past moaning something about being late and muttering, “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
Now, at first, Alice simply dismissed him.
Because we all know white rabbits are well known for their complaints and penchant for worrying.
Ahem…
It wasn’t until Alice noticed said rabbit was neatly dressed in waistcoat and carrying a pocketwatch that she perked up.
I mean, everyone knows rabbits almost always wear sweaters and sport wristwatches.
Sheesh.
But follow, Alice did and soon found herself climbing into the rabbit’s burrow behind him and falling down a long, strange shaft where time lost all reality.
Kind of like when one is sitting through an interminable meeting.
But I digress…
Alice ended up in another tunnel. This one filled with doors.
Okay, I have had that dream…
She found a little, glass table with a key.
And, of course it fit the smallest door – which she couldn’t possibly squeeze through.
She found a bottle of liquid that said, ‘Drink Me!’
Raise your hands, anyone who says that drinking this might be…oh, I don’t know…dangerous?
Alice did investigate it for signs of poison. Which, of course would be obvious.
And finding none, drank it.
Then shrank. (Shrinked?) You know, the old adage: Drink to shrink!
No? Well, it is allegorical…
She shrank to just the right size to pass through the door, then discovered that she left the key up on the table. And had no way to get it.
Unless she ate some of the cake under the table in a box labelled, ‘Eat Me!’
Huh. Imagine that.
She did eat the cake and grew to monstrous size.
Then was so frustrated, she cried.
Monstrous tears.
The white rabbit appeared with lovely gloves and carrying a fan, which he dropped when she asked him for help and with which Alice fanned herself and shrank – again.
You know, this makes me think of diets I’ve been on. Grow. Then shrink. Then grow.
Sigh.
There was some fracas with Alice and other animals being washed along in the pool of her tears, then staging a caucus race to dry out, etc.
And Alice, becoming increasingly confused after witnessing a Duchess, who’s baby became a pig and a cook with no sense of either proper culinary technique or decorum, ended up, once again following a road leading to nowhere.
What followed is the most important information in the story, supplied by the Duchess’ strange, floating cat who possessed an even stranger, floating grin.
Alice asked this creature where she should go, and was told:
‘Where you go is completely dependant upon what path you choose. If you don’t care where you go, it doesn’t matter which path you take!’
By this point, I know which path I’d like to take – right into a different story!
But Alice pluckily carried on and discovered a giant ‘eat-one-side-and-grow-eat-the-other-side-and-shrink’ mushroom, topped by a hookah-smoking caterpillar.
Now this begs the whole ‘Is smoking bad for caterpillars and other assorted bugs?’ question, but Alice ignored that, preferring instead, to speak to the caterpillar which brought up, surprisingly, the question of ‘Who are we, really?’
Alice wandered off and took an uninvited seat at a garden tea party, where the only participants were a March Hare, a Mad Hatter and a very sleepy dormouse.
Just the people I’d invite to a party…
What followed was a very confused conversation revolving through such topics as bad manners, the gender of Time, silly riddles, and goofy rhymes.
At which point, Alice escaped, only to find she had wandered into the original garden she glimpsed at the beginning of her adventures.
This time, however, she was able to witness the goings-on in said garden, beginning with strange horticultural practices, wending through rather brutal Royal decrees, an unwinnable croquet game played with flamingo mallets and hedgehog balls and ending with the trial of the century featuring a heretofore unseen knave accused of stealing the queen’s tarts – and where nearly everyone is ordered executed.
But Alice, grown tall once more, simply scattered the card-like folk of the kingdom and
found herself once again sitting on the riverbank with her sister close by.
Whew.
What a story!
The ‘big windies’ I told my family when I was young pale by comparison.
Think of the trouble I could have avoided.
]]><![CDATA[Gratitude Over Greed?]]>Thu, 03 Sep 2026 18:47:01 GMThttps://www.dianestringamtolley.ca/on-the-border/gratitude-over-greed
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]]><![CDATA[Cause Blonde Is Better]]>Wed, 29 Jun 2016 13:53:39 GMThttps://www.dianestringamtolley.ca/on-the-border/cause-blonde-is-better​My Father-in-Law (hereinafter known as FIL) did not like blondes.
And my Mother-in-Law hated beards.
These two statements go together.
Just give me a moment . . .
So . . . back to my FIL.
No one knew why he did not like blondes.
And they did ask.
“Dad! Were you dumped by a blonde?”
“Dad! Did some blonde do something horrible?”
“Dad! Could I borrow twenty bucks?” Oh, wait, that has nothing to do with this.
Back to my story . . .
He passed away without ever sharing the reasons for his aversion.
But his family knew it well.
Whenever one of his five sons asked to borrow the car for a date, the first question was, invariably, “She’s not a blonde, is she?”
To which the invariable answer was, “Oh, no, Dad! She’s not a blonde! Definitely not a blonde!”
Even if she was.
The keys would be produced.
The date embarked upon.
All was well.
Yep. FIL’s aversion was well known.
Sometimes a little too well known.
His wife had an aversion as well.
To facial hair.
Here it comes . . .
If her husband ever suggested that he was considering growing a beard, she had the perfect answer.
“I’ll dye my hair blonde!”
Even the remote possibility of beard growing disappeared instantly.
Genius.
In his later years, he did make allowances.
I mean, he personally picked me for his son, and I had the white-blonde hair only found in people of Swedish heritage (like me) or points north.
And, in fact, two of his sons married blondes.
Call it parental opposition.
But the mystery remains.
The only other statement we ever heard from him concerning blondes was, “You know why blondes have more fun, don’t you? Because they get dirty quicker!”
Hmm . . . was that a hint?]]><![CDATA[Over the Mountain and Through the Woods]]>Wed, 29 Jun 2016 02:19:08 GMThttps://www.dianestringamtolley.ca/on-the-border/over-the-mountain-and-through-the-woodsIn 1912, ‘going to visit the family’ took on a whole new meaning.
Let me tell you about it . . .
My Gramma and Grampa Stringam, with their (then) three children, moved to southern Alberta in 1910, leaving their extended family behind them in Utah.
They settled in Glenwood and started to farm.
Outwardly, all was well.
Inwardly, one of them missed her mother.
Finally, after two years of pining and tears, the decision was made for an extended visit.
Gramma and her (by then) four children packed up and, kissing Grampa goodbye, boarded the train for Salt Lake.
The trip there was fairly uneventful, the highlight - seeing the sprinkler system in the Salt Lake depot.
But what came afterward . . . wasn’t.
Uneventful, that is.
Gramma and the kids climbed aboard another train for Salina and then the mail stagecoach from there over the mountain to Thurber and Teasdale.
A short hop by today’s automobile.
But a considerable prospect for the white-top mail buggy of the early 1900’s.
In the rain.
On one particularly steep pass, soaked through and tired, the team of horses gave out. Despite considerable encouragement, they refused to move one more step up the mountain, choosing, in typical balky-horse fashion, to back up instead.
They succeeded in backing the coach until they, quite literally, ran out of mountain. When the driver finally got them stopped, the vehicle was dangling right out over the edge of the canyon with the wagon tree tipped up and the horses' hind feet barely on the ground.
Gramma and the kids were frantically extricated, followed by their baggage and the mail bags. They gratefully took shelter under a large spruce, where they turned, as they had been taught, to prayer.
While they were thus engaged, the driver tried--unsuccessfully--to remedy the situation. The wagon remained hanging over the edge of the cliff.
Can anyone say,"precarious?"
Meanwhile the little family under the tree had finished praying. And it was as that exact moment that a second white-topped buggy came up over the hill.
A buggy that was empty, save for the driver, a local real estate agent. Who, to the little family huddled under the tree, suddenly took on the aspect of a saviour.
The man stopped and surveyed the situation, then climbed down and, using a knife, cut the traces holding the horses to the buggy (allowing the wagon to drop into the canyon several hundreds of feet below) and led the animals to safety.
The mail man thanked him, threw his mail bags over one horse and mounted the other, and rode on over the mountain, abandoning his little group of paying passengers without a backward look.
On the side of a mountain. In the rain.
Don’t you hate days like that?
Fortunately, the real estate man was very kind and loaded Gramma and her kids into his buggy and delivered them safely to the nearest village.
The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful.
Let’s face it. After this experience, most events would pale by comparison.
Gramma and her brood got their visit.
And, for generations to come, a story to tell.]]>