Sprinkles on the Gruel

By Larry Parry Neilson

Anna was raised in an orphanage. One day when she was dumping the disgusting toilet bucket, she heard a voice say, LOOK FOR THE SPRINLKES. Looking around, however, there was no one there. On her way back down the hill she fell and got some of the terrible smelling gunk on her dress. In an attempt to wash off the foul smelling liquid in a nearby river, she almost drowned. The adventure that followed would change not only her life, but the lives of everyone in the orphanage along with the lives of everyone they met.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490765198

Larry Parry Neilson

I am a seventy five year old grandfather. This is my first attempt at writing and publishing a book. My wife and I were riding in the car and we were talking about things we did not like to eat. I mentioned that I hated mush. She then said, “Maybe if you put some sprinkles on it, you might like it.” I said, “Sprinkles on the Gruel, hum, that sounds like the name of a book.” My wife then said, “Then why don’t you write it?” So I accepted the challenge and wrote the book mainly for my children and grandchildren, however, many people who read the book encouraged me to publish it. So, here we go; let’s see what happens.

Book preview

Copyright 2015 Larry Parry Neilson.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN

: 978-1-4907-6517-4 (sc)

ISBN

: 978-1-4907-6518-1 (hc)

ISBN

: 978-1-4907-6519-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015915172

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Trafford rev. 09/25/2015

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Contents

Chapter 1 The Beginning

Chapter 2 Back at the Orphanage

Chapter 3 Anna’s Adventure

Chapter 4 The Savior Man and the Truth Comes Out

Chapter 5 Back at the Orphanage (Again)

Chapter 6 What Is This Turkey Thing?

Chapter 7 Back Home Again

Chapter 8 Sprinkles on Whose Gruel?

Chapter 9 Sprinkles on Everyone’s Gruel?

Chapter 10 Learning the Lesson of the Sprinkles

Chapter 11 Christmas Eve Celebration

Chapter 12 A Whole New World

Chapter 13 Afterword

Author’s Comment

CHAPTER 1

The Beginning

L ife can be good, and life can be bad; life can be happy, and life can be sad, but the thing we all know for sure is that life will never stay the same.

Life was not easy for Anna living in an orphanage deep inside the borders of Russia. The food was bad, the sanitation was terrible, and the sleeping conditions with the bugs and the lumpy things they called a mattress were just about impossible to endure. As she lay in bed with just a thin cover for a blanket, the cool seemed both refreshing and lonely at the same time. She slept in her dress, of course, with her stockings pulled up as high as she could, but still the evening air was chilly. Living in an orphanage was about the worst thing her eight-year-old mind could comprehend.

The 6:00 a.m. alarm had gone off, and it was time to rise and shine, as the matron Polina would so gleefully put it each morning. It was time to put on her dingy things they called shoes and get ready for another day of fixing meals, washing dishes, scrubbing floors, and dumping out the toilet bucket. This was the job she hated the most. The bucket smelled really bad, and the handle was just a piece of thick wire that cut into her small hand. The place where she dumped the disgusting bucket smelled even worse. And there was no end in sight as far as she could see. Not only did the dark tunnel of life in which she lived not have a light at the end of it but it seemed only to get darker and darker.

She passed her fingers through her hair a few times. Combing it was almost impossible. She had not bathed for over a month, and her hair stuck together like it was glued. She had asked for a comb strong enough to pull through the snarls, but the answer was always the same. Don’t be silly, sweetie, we hardly have money enough for food.

Speaking of food, there was none; only a bowl of what the children called gruel was placed before them at 10:00 a.m. and at 2:00 p.m. What was in the gruel was, of course, a mystery, some kind of mush she expected, but who really knew; it could be cats’ ears and ponies’ tails for all she knew. Yuck, she hoped it didn’t contain ponies’ tails. There was, however, a slightly hairy taste to it now that she thought about it. How could she continue to