Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Handbaskets Here

Welcome back to the second half of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's "Hillmomba Needs More Handbaskets" address. No need to shove. There's plenty of room around the tree stump my soapbox sits upon. I hope you found the refreshments of lemonade and dill pickles to be refreshing, and that y'all are not too puckered nor pickled to pay attention. Now where were we...oh, yes. Bicycles belong NOT ON THE ROADS.

Story #2, ripped from the below-the-fold headlines of the Hillmomba Daily News, is a tale of Auntie, Auntie, Who's Got My Elderly Auntie? Seems an 80-year-old woman was found by a family of hikers laying along the train tracks in a rural area even more remote than Hillmomba. "Huh," they wondered. "Where did this old lady come from?" Auntie had a broken leg, hip, collar bone, femur, a punctured lung, multiple bruises, lacerations, cuts, and a concussion, according to the Hillmomba Daily News. Not the condition one would expect an 80-year-old hiker in a remote wooded area to be in. (Remind me to suggest anatomy and physiology lessons for the reporter, since any student of the human body and its functions knows that a femur is a leg bone, and lacerations are cuts.)

Later reports contradicted the initial information. Two boys went out to play in their backyard that abutted the railroad tracks, and found Auntie wrapped around a tree. That kind of put a damper on their plans to play along the tracks. They told their parents, who reported the find.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Auntie's niece was going to the train station to pick her up for a routine visit. That's what Niecie said. A routine visit, riding Amtrak alone from New York to Texas. So...Amtrak officials called Niecie to tell her not to come to the station just yet. She found out later that was because they discovered Auntie was no longer on the train. According to Niecie, Auntie's train compartment window was found open, with a stool under it. Amtrak said the windows had locks, and could only be opened in an emergency. Later reports revealed that Auntie had actually walked to the last car of the train, and jumped.

Auntie is recovering in a St. Louis hospital. Niecie asked Amtrak what they're gonna do about Auntie's predicament. They offered a free train ride to Texas when she's healed. Niecie says heads are gonna roll, because WHO would want to ride a bumpy train after healing all those broken bones, especially after the trauma of what happened to Auntie. She says Amtrak is responsible, because they should have been checking on Auntie the whole trip to make sure she didn't disappear. Sounds like she's gonna sue.

The comments on this story declare that Amtrak is not a babysitter. Why should they watch Auntie for her cross-country trip? All they do is check tickets every so often. That must be when they discovered they had one less person aboard. AND why was Auntie traveling alone if she needed to be watched? Maybe Niecie was negligent, because she let a confused old lady travel by herself.

Handbaskets! Let them all travel in handbaskets. And not to Texas.