While I was home last month for my mom’s birthday party, I took the opportunity to visit a high school pal who has a beautiful farm.  Tina was raised in the country, and her whole family farmed, raised animals, participated in 4-H and rodeo.  She and her sisters wore hats and boots to school when the rest of us were just playing Urban Cowboy.

I still have the hat.

She was a very smart cookie and graduated 2nd in our class.

Right behind THIS loser! Hi Roy! 🙂

Tina and I ran in different circles in High School.  She was a hard-working, good girl who knew what was important for her future and I…wasn’t.

Quite possibly the only photo in existence of Debbie & Tina. I’m background right turned away from the camera FOR ONCE!

This was “Hillbilly Day” and we all had on our overalls, straw hats and blacked-out teeth. (No offense to any hillbilly readership!)  In the back LEFT of the photo is a future Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader!  Hi Cynthia! 🙂

Tina met her sweetheart at a 4-H event when she was in middle school and married him shortly after high school graduation.  Tina’s daddy insisted that she go to college before she was married, but this plan didn’t suit my friend, so she did the next best thing.  She married Jeff and THEN went to college.  The young couple had three boys in rapid succession, (Jeff jokes that his mojo is so powerful he only had to walk by his bride to get her in the family way!) and all three grew into strapping young men.

All three handsome, college educated and SINGLE! What’s wrong with this picture???

They all graduated from college and moved back to work the farm and manage the many other family businesses.

And two of them moonlight as Super Heroes!

I asked Tina and Jeff to tell me all about their various businesses but the list got so long, I’ll just say that THESE PEOPLE ARE VERY, VERY BUSY!  The brothers help with all the Dickens’ enterprises, and I recently became interested in an event that happened on the Lazy D farm.  One of B. J.’s cows gave birth to twins.  She got sick and was unable to nurse them, so the whole family got involved in keeping the babies alive until a surrogate moooooommy could be found.  It was hard work, but the twins soon got a reluctant mom to come nurse them. The B’game family visited on a very nice sunny day and were treated to a great lunch, a tour of the farm and some fun walks down memory lane.

B. J. Cousin Connor & Chase. Brother Corey was absent this day.

The goofy one on the left is my offspring.  I’ve joked with Tina for many years that she has a very nice bachelor farm; and I’m only HALF joking when I say that I’d be happy if one of them called me maw-in-law.  🙂

Hannah got to pet a baby cow! I hear they’re actually called “calves”.

B. J. said this lady was not too happy being recruited as a milk supply at first.

Later on, she got into the job and became a very nice adoptive mom.

My hat is off to B. J. and the whole Dickens crew. What a lot of work!

I have a feeling that Tina never gets bored with these three “ne’re do wells” about.

Her husband Jeff is no mud-fence himself, and I can tell that Tina still likes her “manly-man” of 31 years.

Although he is certainly not afraid to explore his feminine side!

I really loved Tina’s tricked-out greenhouse and garden shed that Jeff built for her.  It looks like a little playhouse.

You really should paint this pink Tina. I hear it’s all the rage.

Again, thanks Tina and to the Dickens clan for showing us around.  I graduated with a weird and wonderful group of kids from Dear Old PHS back in 1981 and I could actually write a blog post on all of them and never run out of material.  (OK, 96 posts anyway)  You really don’t realize who the “cool ones” are/were until you get old what an idiot you were back then.  Thanks for the hospitality Tina, and for being one of the coolest.–Deb

One DICKENS of a family.