Urban Poverty Law Center A Time of Thanks

Friends,

Thank you for making the Urban Poverty Law Center your vehicle to help America's down trodden. Your prayers and financial support have brought our Dozer for Detroit fund razer to almost $113, and this does not include the $50 we anticipate from Thelma Whitehead's church bake sale this weekend.

Many of you, like me, are alone for the holidays for the first time. I was recently orphaned by an event at the Metropolitan Cedar Grove Bingo Palor/ Food Bank that took the most wonderful
person I have ever known, my mother, Dorothy Lucille Maybolt. I know we all have regrets in our lives and my greatest regret is that I was not with her the night she died.

My mother was very particular about her appearance and she was born with a rare condition called alopecia which means she did not have a hair on her body. But to look at her you would never know it. She painted her eye brows on with great care and wore a long dark wig. She even wore a merkin out in public. Some of my earliest memories as a child was playing with mother's merkins. She would wash them by hand and I would get into her merkin drawer and use them for beards and a toupee. She would get so mad and somehow always know when I had been in her merkins.

How I love the sweet smell and feel of a freshly washed merkin. Tell the truth I still get them out from time to time just to smell them and reminise. Did you know there are internet sites called "Mad about Merkins" and "Jerking with My Merkins." Is there no lower limits to human depravity!?

I usually attended the bingo parlor with her, but that night back in March I was down with a bladder infection and she insisted I stay at home, that she'd be OK. I was in her merkin drawer when the call came in about mother. She always said something bad was going to happen to me if I kept getting into her merkin drawer. She was right, but I never dreamed it would take 53 years. It seems a sevier punishment for such a small sin. All I meant to express is that I miss my mother and will spend my first lonely holiday season without her. I did not mean to lay all this on you, but aren't holidays for making people feel especially bad so they can feel good the rest of the year? I got to put these merkins away and feed the cats. More later. Thanks for being my therapist.

Jack D. Maybolt PhD
Chief Human Resources, Urban Poverty Law Center

"I'll bet she raped awful easy!" Mother Maybolt's comment to Granny Lockerbee when she learned of Cousin Martha's out of wedlock pregnancy reportedly conceived at a fraternity party while Martha was away at college. 1920-2008