Some times my mind takes a turn.

 I remember when Duane and I lived in Glasco, Kansas.  At the time we only had Debbie and we lived in a large farm house on the outskirts of town.  At the time he was stealing walnut trees on the Solomon River just west of town.  Since he had a wench truck and chain saws it was a rather easy job.  Drop the tree, remove the limbs, wench the trunk and drag it home.  The buyer would come by the house and load it on his trailer.  Then he would hand Duane cold hard cash so it was pretty good money. 

It was winter at the time and the business of trimming trees was pretty slow, so it was pretty much catch as catch can as far as paying rent and buying groceries went.  He had wine fermenting in the root cellar and plenty of tobacco for “roll your own cigarettes.”  We did have a black and white television so we were not without entertainment.  Jeopardy was the game show of the day.  It was not hosted by Alex Trebec and I think the money amounts ranged from $10-50, but it was entertainment nonetheless.

Most of the entertainment consisted of trying to find something edible to eat.  Duane shot a lot of Doves that year.  Course it takes a lot of Doves to make a meal.  Fishing was also good on the Solomon river.  In central Kansas we caught a lot of catfish and Bass, but the Soloman had scary fish.  Pete pulled out a fish that looked like a snake which scared him and he beat it to death with a piece of wood.  We found out later it was a Gar.  Pete also killed a rattlesnake on the back porch late one night.  That scared hell out of me since I had just returned from getting the diapers out of the car.

There was a feed store in town and for 25 cents I could buy an old hen.  I had not cleaned a chicken in my life but I had seen my mother do it so I knew what had to happen.  First I had to put a big bucket of water on to heat.  Duane returned home it the old hen.  Her legs were tied together and I instructed him to chop of her head, which he did.  I dunked her in the scalding water just like I had seen momma and grandma do.  To my amazement the feathers pulled off very easily and very soon there were none left.  I lit a paper like I had seen them do and singed off the hairs that remained.  Then it was time to clean out the inside.

I was not very happy to slice through her abdomen and then reach inside and pull out all her innards, but I did it.  When she was as clean as she needed to be, I put her on to boil and then turned her to simmer.  My 25 cent chicken turned out to be a very good meal.  We bought a package of noodles in town for 15 cents  and ate for 2 days on that one chicken.  Course the coon dogs got the scraps and the bones.  Now the coon dogs and that business was a whole nother story. 

Duane and his brothers would go coon hunting with a man who lived a few miles away.  I never went, but he was quick to tell me how the dogs chased the coon, treed the coon and then ripped it apart when it fell to the ground and they killed it.  Now when he brought home a coon for me to clean and cook, it was a whole new ball game.  No way was I touching that to clean it, or cook it and I sure as hell was not going to eat it.  I would rather eat the barn cat and that was not happening either!

I do not know how long we lived in that farmhouse in Glasco, and I do not know where we went when we left there.  Surely some where better.  Funny how somethings just come into our minds.  Glasco was that way.  I know Duane made wine there.  I know Maudie put gas in the diesel truck.  I know that is where I enrolled in a writing class and Duane bought me my first typewriter.  I know I was pregnant with Patty when we left Glasco.  I know there was a championship boxing match that lasted only a few seconds.  I think it was Cassius Clay and somebody. Or maybe Sonny Liston, or lord only knows.

Sometimes when my memory fails me, it is a good thing.

Now I realize my mistake!

Fifty years later, I see my mistake!  Well, it is way to late in the game to correct it, but I can look back on it and laugh.  Trust me, there are not a lot of mistakes that are not funny, but this one is.

Let me set the scene.  I had divorced my first husband and my 5 kids and I were living in the 5th street house.  I was working at the Red Carpet Restaurant.  I was dating a long legged guitar picker who was in a band that played around the county.  He was not the brightest bulb in the box, but he was a warm body and while he still lived with his mother and father,  he was a step up from nobody.

Christmas came and of course gifts were exchanged.   He arrived with his arms full from himself, his mom and his sister.  By the time the unwrapping was over, all the tags were lost.  I do not remember what all was in the pile, but I did know the tags were lost.  So here I set with 3 pairs of sturdy cotton underwear, a pair of electric scissors, and a new Bible and a study guide and tags that said, mom, sister and boyfriend..

 No clues.  All three gifts could be referred to as they.  The scissors were pink, the underwear were white, and the Bible and Study guide were black.    I was sure his sister had given me the Bible.  Which left him giving me cotton underwear which made sense because I needed new underwear and had remarked that I would buy some just as soon as I got my Christmas bonus.  He did not remember who sent what, so when I called his mom to thank her for the gift I was vague.

"Oh, thank you so much.  How did you know exactly what I needed?"
"Well, I thought they would come in handy.  I hope they are the right color.  They had several choices."
"Of course!  That is always a safe choice."
"They looked pretty durable so I got those."

For some reason, by the time the conversation reached this point, I decided she had given me the electric scissors.  I would go with that.
 

Then she said, "Well, I hope you make good use of them."
"Yes, I think I will use them tonight!"
"Good idea!"

Looking back, I could have said, "Listen, your dipwad son lost the tags and I have no idea what you gave me, but I am sure it is nice whatever it is, because I know you bought all three and just put their names on the tags."  But I didn't say that, did I?  Hell, no.

I was always a little sad, that she never became my mother-in-law, because I think I could have grown to like her.  But it was not to be.  It was a few weeks later I saw his sister and she asked how the scissors cut.  Aha!  She sent me the scissors.  That meant his mom gave me the Bible.  Since I could not keep my finger off that phone I called her to tell her how much I was enjoying her gift and how confident I was since I was using them every day.  She seemed a little strange after that conversation for some reason.  I thought she would be pleased that I was studying the Bible.

And then I decided to actually wear a pair of my new underwear.  When I opened the box and took out the top pair a gift tag fell out.  It said simply "Delores"  (or what ever her name was).  And then I remembered our conversations.  They took on a whole new meaning.

Our friendship seemed a little strange after that.  Not long after that the guitar picker wandered off in search of some big boobed woman with no kids and who liked to set it the bar and listen to him twang away on his guitar.  I moved on, but that Christmas has always lived in the back of my mind.  It is nothing I talk about but it still pops up in memory every now and then.  I am sure his mom is no longer alive so I can write about it now.  He may still be around, but who knows?  The whole thing is just one of those things that transpired and then was gone.  It was important at the time, and in hindsight was really nothing at all.

Just goes to show you that sometimes what really wasn't stays in memory and becomes just that, a memory.

Grocery shopping has sure changed from 1950's.

Back when I was 12 years old Flemings grocery store  and Berridge IGA (?) had contests.  IGA was for a trip to St. Louis and when you bought something you had so many points to vote for the contestant of your choice.  That contest was won by Irene Reinke.  As a general rule, we did not shop at IGA because that was the store the "rich people" shopped at, so mother did not vote for Irene.

Flemings had a contest where you turned in labels from cans of a certain brand of food.  I stood outside the store and pushed for people to buy that brand, then save the label and I would go by their house and pick the labels up and put them in my stash.  Now, the city dump was different than dumps are today!  The powers that be would designate a place as the city dump and if you wanted to dispose of something you took it there and threw it on the pile.  People also went there to paw through the "stuff" and pick out good stuff.  My idea of good stuff was labels from cans, which I tore off and took home to my stash.  My stash grew bigger every day as I waited for the closing day when I would turn them in to be counted.

Now there were 2 prizes in my contest.  One was an English Racing bike which was for a boy which meant it had the bar across the frame.  Girls were open in that area.  The other was a radio.  I had my eye on that bike and nothing was going to deter me.  When the day arrived I took my labels in to be counted and I had almost 3 times as many labels as the boy who came in second place.  In all fairness, he was livid.  He had been beat by a girl and now that girl walked away pushing a boys bicycle while he stood there with a stupid radio.  Yes, I pushed that bike all the way home.  My sisters were so envious.  I pushed it around the block.  I pushed it into town and pushed it home.  I never had ridden a bike before and when I tried to stand with my feet on either side of the bike, it was not happening.  That damn bar was higher than my crotch.  But at no time did I think about trading it for the radio.  I just let that boy eat his heart out as I pushed it past his house.

And then the tires went flat because there are a lot of goat heads on Strong Street.  Mother could see no reason to have the tires fixed because it was apparent by this time that I would never ride that bike.  No one ever rode it until I gave it to a boy named Johnny Isabel who lived in Hutch and I do not remember how I knew him or why, but I  made a deal to sell it for $5.00 which he never paid me, but there you go!

Back to the grocery store, we always shopped at Flemings.  They had a locker plant inside the store where one could rent a small freezer to store extra food that was not canned or dried.  Things, like meat.  Not that we ever had meat, but if we did we could have rented a small cubicle, which we never did because meat was a rarity at our house.  Well, Jake would get a rabbit now and then, but not worth renting freezer space for the short period of time it took to go from dressed meat to the table to digested and forgotten.

There was a barrel for dried beans, onions, potatoes and such item.  You put what you wanted in a brown paper sack and took it up and had it weighed.  We were always careful with the brown paper bags because they were reused over and over.  Milk bottles were refilled.  Pop bottles were returned for a deposit that had been paid when the pop was purchased.  Lots of times we walked the ditch along the highway to find bottles that were discarded by people who were too lazy to return them to the store.  Seems like the deposit was only one or 2 cents, but it was free money and we could buy candy at Engle's store.  The display case there was filled with boxes with tops removed.  We pointed to which ones we wanted and the items were placed in a small brown paper bags.  A nickel was usually over half a bag.  As kids we never worried about "spoiling our appetite"  because evening meals were few and far behind at our house.

Don't get me wrong, poverty sucks.  No food sucks.  Wearing "hand me downs" sucked.  Walking every where was a pain. Easter was the only time we could ever hope to have anything extra and that was Easter Eggs.  We had chickens that were laying hens so eggs were fairly easy to come by.  Sadly eggs were either sold or cooked into something that could be shared among the 8 of us, but at Easter we got a whole egg and sometimes, if times were good, a chocolate something that resembled a rabbit.  I will go on record as saying my mother tried harder than anyone else in the world.  She went to clean houses every day and never asked for anything in return, except that us kids were fed.  She paid the lady up the street 50 cents a week to babysit the little kids.  Dad hung out at the pool hall, but as long as he was there playing dominoes, he was not home screaming at us to shut up.  No television back then, so creeks and haylofts and the cemetery  were our playgrounds.

Damn, I miss that life. .When I can not sleep at night, I run up and down Strong Street.  I spy on Hank Windiate(sp) and Jake Smith.  I listen to Rudolph Reinke singing in German as he did his chores.  I see the chickens scratching in the dirt for some hidden scrap.  I watch Joe Hedrick roping calves over on the corner.  But mostly I just watch for my momma to come home.  I have quit waiting for her and now anticipate the trip I can make to see her again.  I want to see her hazel eyes and hold her thin, long fingers.  But mostly I just want to see her smile when she comes to meet me.  And yes, momma, I am bringing the tomato soup made the way you like it with home canned tomatoes and milk.

Even the mud puddles are different here in Coloradol

It rained the other night and I have to confess, it scared hell out of me.  Seems like when I was a tot back in Kansas, rain was more frequent and softer.  In Colorado, it seems to be either feast or famine, so to speak.  We lived about a mile from Bull Creek and it always had water in it, but when we got a good rain the little Bull Creek became a raging torrent and overflowed it's banks and came up the highway clear past the sand pit and almost to our corner.  I remember wading up the highway and the crawdads scooting away from me.  The scoot backwards, you know.

Strong Street was dirt.  Well, all the streets were dirt in that area.  Mostly the dirt was soft, but when it rained it would have puddles standing on it.  (Having a little problem here with proper English.  Do the puddles stand IN the road or ON the road?  Since they were on the road that sounds right, but since the actually were a part of the road they could be in the road.)  You choose.

Any way, after a rain the puddles were there and the sun shone brightly on them.  Now I am sure some of the water seeped into the earth, but it took a while and I remember seeing pollywog's swimming in the water, but it could have been mosquito larvae.  Who knows.  There is something so primal about wading in a mud puddle, that it defies description.  To feel the cool mud ooze between my toes was second only to walking on dried mud.

I do know that eventually the water was gone and the sun beating down on the puddle would cause the silty dirt to dry and crack.  The cracks would the curl on the edges and separate.  If I could be really patient, the sun would continue drying and then I was left with a big dried out patch of curled up mud.  The happiest memories are in the remembering, and I can still close my eyes and recall walking very slowly across the dried up mud in my bare feet.  The fragile mud curls made only a tiny crackle and I would walk slowly back and forth to be sure I mashed them all.  I have not had an experience like that since I left Nickerson.

Mud in Nickerson was also good for making mud pies.  The mud held together because parts of the road had clay.  My best friend, Barbara had a brother who nicknamed me "Mud Pie" and that name stuck until we went to high school.  Just happened to remember that.

The reason I am thinking of this is after our rains, there is a place in my driveway that water stands in for a short time.  I was looking at that yesterday, and the quality of the mud is not the same as Nickerson.  And for some reason, I do not see it making the curls like Nickerson mud made.  I suppose there is more gravel in my driveway.  Nickerson was sandy, hence the Sand Hill Plum Jelly that the Amish make and sell.

So as I start my day today, I will put on my shoes and socks and not even look at that puddle over there.  Some things can only continue in our memories and the days of sand and shovels and mud pies are over and are best left in the far recesses of my mind where I can use them as my safe place when life becomes too tedious and I need to escape.

I have a theory about memories.

Many years back I read a series called "Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean Auel.  The gist of the story, for those who did not read it, was that there existed a tribe of people who were apparently Neanderthals and they had found a young girl who was more advanced  (cro magnum) than they were. ( I may have those 2 backwards, but so be it.)   Apparently her tribe was wiped out in an earthquake and she was the only survivor.  She was found and taken in by the head medicine woman of the Cave Bear Clan.  To make a long story short (since there were 4 or 5 books written ) Ayla, became the protégé of the medicine woman.  I forget her name, but she was capable of calling into memory all her ancestors before her and when a question needed an answer she would seclude herself and with the help of some "herbs" go back in time and find the answer.  Lots of other stuff  happened, but this memory thing is the one I am addressing today.

As most of you know, I have a total of 6 kids.  I never really taught them to cook and yet they are all very good cooks and cook in much the same way I do. ( Little aside here.  The youngest may or may not know the fine art of cooking, but he is certainly an experienced eater, so I guess that qualifies him.)  When I lived with grandma Haas the only time we really ate a big meal was on Sunday.  Sunday mom and dad always came from Nickerson and Aunt Lola and Uncle Alvin would come in after church.  At precisely 1:00 dinner would be put on the table.  Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and cream gravy, green beans, fresh rolls, pickled beets, sweet pickles,  relish, butter, jelly.   And it seems Aunt Lola always brought some sort of chiffon cake, or bread pudding, or something like that.  When dinner was over and the table cleared and the dishes all back in the cupboard, it was time to doze.  A nap was always in order before the long drive (20 miles) back to Nickerson.  Us kids were allowed to run out in the yard as long as we stayed out of the street, which was also the highway, which was actually a county road.  We would walk up to the main business area which was one block away and consisted of Hinshaw's General Store, the bank and a filling station with one gas pump.  Oh, and the school.   Grade school was down stairs and high school was upstairs.

Sometimes if it was really hot, Aunt Lena would run water in her horse tank and we could jump in it and splash around.  (Aunt Lena was the old maid Aunt that is in every family, or was back then.)  We wore our clothes and let them dry in place when we got out.  Right beside Grandma's house and across the street on the way to town, was Great Grandma Hatfields old house.  She had lived right next door to grandma and had planned on marrying some guy and moving him in there when, sadly he dropped dead.  Since she was 75 or 80 years old at that time. she just closed up the house and moved across the street since by that time grandma Haas had her stroke and needed taken care of .  As her mother Great Grandma felt it her duty.  So there they lived until Grandma passed and Aunt Mable moved Great Grandma Hatfield (who was 99 years old at the time) to Coldwater where she lived until her death at age 104.

Grandma Haas is on the left and Great Grandma Hatfield is in the back.  If you notice Great Grandma has sandals on and Grandma has more sturdy shoes.  Great Grandma was a fashion plate right up until the day she died.  The plant in the pot is an Oleandar.  It is deadly poison.  Grandma had 2 of them .  One was white and one was pink.  They smell much like a sweet almond.  I have one that someone gave me 20 years ago.  This picture was taken outside Grandma's house about the time of her first stroke.  She was using a walker, but they wanted to look independent. The window is in front of the setting room.  That was where I slept.   Bless their souls.  I would give an arm and a leg to see them today.  They taught me to crochet.  We read the Bible every night.  Every night.   We never missed a night and we read it out loud.  We did not discuss it.  It was not up for discussion.  We read it and we memorized the important parts and I still know them today.

So where was I before I wandered off?  Oh, yeah.  Memories and the clan of the cave bear.  So there are times when I start to do something and it is like I did this before.  Never even thought of it before, but now I know how to do it because I have done it before.  Baking bread and rolling noodles comes as natural to me as walking, but no one ever showed me how to do it.  I can pluck a chicken and not miss a feather faster than anyone I know. (Of course I really do not know anyone else who cleans a chicken from the point of beheading it, to letting it bleed out, to scalding it and separating the feathers from the chicken and then gutting it.)  Actually, that sounds pretty barbaric, but there you go.  When we lived in Glasco, Kansas, I could buy 2 old hens at the feed store for 50 cents.  That fed us for a week.

Well, Good Lord!  I have no idea what I had in mind when I started this, but I need to wind it up somehow.  I guess you will just have to take my word for it that when I got up at 4:30 this morning I had my head full of wisdom that is far beyond my years and I wanted to share it with you.  I guess it is your loss!  That is what you get for thinking I actually know something! I guess I wish I could remember the things I am doing today as well as the things I never did that I remember so well.  Does that make sense to you?  Oh, shit!  If it does, we may both be in trouble!

Still water is not always running deep!

When I started datiing I drug home some of the damnedest things you ever saw.  Back in those days "cool" boys wore jeans with no belt and the waist band rode about 5" below the waist.  The legs were hemmed so they did not drag the ground.  Of course, back then kids had mothers that sewed and knew how to hem pants.  A sewing machine was a staple in any home.  Steve Dorrel was the first in our class to comb his hair into a "duck tail" and it was held in place with "greasy kid stuff."  He always wore a white shirt and the collar was turned up.  Every boy in school was measured by the Steve code and they all were found wanting.  Luckily, we had no idea what sex even was back in the 8th grade or everyone of us girls would have been in big trouble.

But grade school passed and high school was a new game.  No more Steve.  High school was pretty much a blur the first 3 years in Nickerson.  I was friends with a girl whose dad made home brew and that was fun.  My senior year I started in Hutchinson High School, ran away from home, came back and got a job in a "Toot and Tellum" which did not work out well at all.  It was at this juncture that mother suggested I might want to catch a man and get married, because I did not have a very bright future in store.

Now mother had always dispensed her wisdom on every subject known to man and people seemed to be her specialty.  "Still waters run deep."  This meant if a man was quiet, he was thinking, and if he was thinking that meant he was a good man.  Well, momma missed the  mark on that one!  I met my first husband because my brother brought him home to me.  He was quiet.  He opened doors for me.  So he had a beer now and then, but dad kept corn whiskey in the refrigerator so that meant nothing.  So in a matter of a few weeks I became Mrs. Tall Dark and Handsome.  He was actually a blue eyed blonde, and he wanted to get married and have babies and there I was!  Sadly, my first baby did not arrive for almost 2 years.  Mr. Still Waters became a regular little babbling brook and it was all aimed at my inability to conceive.  Hell, I was doing all I could and it seemed maybe he was at fault.  Yep.  Got scars on that one!  When my fertility kicked in, it was not to kick out for 7 years and 5 kids later.

But back to this still water running deep crappola mother was so fond of telling me.  My baby daddy was just the first water I encountered and let me assure you, I have learned a lot over the years, but it has taken me 75 years to get that one out of my head.  So let me fill you in.

(Now I am using the masculine noun here, because I am giving you my perspective as a woman.  Nothing personal)

If a man is not talking, it may be because he actually has nothing to say!  

Or he has something to say and he knows he is going to get an ass  eating if he says it.
Or he may be thinking about the hot little number he has lined up to see as soon as he gets rid of me.
Or he is waiting for me to excuse myself so he can pull his bottle out of his boot.
Or he may have actually forgotten I am there.

So there is a lot to be said on the subject of still waters.  Sometimes the still water is over the cesspool.  As I struggle through this life I meet a lot of people.  Most of them are just people and to be taken at face value.  But ever so often I latch on to one and hang on for dear life.  It never turns out well.  I have been a widow for 15 years and I have dated 2 men in that time.  I never really knew either one of them. 

I had a real connection with the first one, but he passed away.  He loved me and had we met at another time it would have been different, or so I think.  I even wrote a story about he and I.

The second one was a lot like a feather in the wind.  I never knew him at all, although I invested 5 years in what should have been a relationship, but was pretty much a superficial  sort of  a one sided friendship.  The boy was a lot like a bubble riding down a babbling brook.  Not all of us have to deal with reality.

I do not regret the time I invested in them, but I am pretty sure I am done with that dating business.  I tend my own flock, mow my own weeds, wash my own dishes and drive myself where ever I choose to go. I am starting to get out and do things that I did not have confidence in myself to do.  I went to Lakin last week and got my hair cut.  In April I am going to crawl on an airplane and fly to Dallas.  

Lord only knows what heights I can achieve if I just soar on my own wings for once in my life.  Bottoms up, momma, your little girl may be a woman yet! 

Some things will always be the same.

I lay in bed awhile this morning thinking of something from long ago.  The road in front of the Strong Street house was dirt.  Actually all the roads in Nickerson except Highway 96 and 56th Street (the back road to Hutchinson) were all dirt.  Well, the county road to Sterling and 3 blocks that made up Main Street were paved.  I think they were originally brick, but who knows.  Back to Strong Street.

It was the silty stuff and I can still feel it on my bare feet.  In the summer it was very warm, but the sidewalk was hot, so the sandy dirt was much preferred.  I should explain that the sidewalk of which I speak was a block away over beside the highway.  It was a 2 block long sidewalk that ran from the Fein house, along an empty field and then the block in front of Mr. Kings house, a rental house and then in front of the house where some crazy lady lived that we never saw and she may or may not have actually lived there.  The side walk on that block was pretty cracked and had chunks missing.  So if we were lucky enough to snag a pair of skates we could only skate on the first block.

Three things come to  my mind from the above paragraph.  First, Mr. King (and that may or may not be his actual name, but it works for me this morning.) is the one who slept face down in his garden one day all day long until a black hearse took him away.  Second is the matter of snagging skates.  My friend Barbara had skates and sometimes she would let me borrow a pair to skate home from her house which was in town and where I visited sometimes.  There was always the stipulation that I not skate in the dirt and I not lose the "key".

For those of you who do not know about old time skates, I will update you.  They were made of 2 steel platforms with two steel wheels in front and two wheels in back.  The body was held together with a nut which required a "key" to tighten and loosen.  Loosen the nut and slide the platforms either apart to make them bigger or together to make them smaller.  The front had clamps which were loosened and then adjusted for the tight fit needed to hold the front of the skate on your shoe.  The back had a strap for you ankle.  If everything was not tightly fitted your skate could come off and down you went with your tender flesh skidding along the rough side walk.  Ah, but when everything was perfect the feel of the wind on your face and arms as you sped along at 3 MPH was worth all the risks!  The best way to stop was to steer off into the dirt and that worked every time.

click here to see a pair

The last thing that comes to my mind from that paragraph is that the corner of the sidewalk that was by the Fein house had several steps that brought you up from the highway to the sidewalk.  It was on those steps that my brother brought the news to me that Hank Williams had died in the back seat of his limousine on his way to do a show in Nashville.  He was so young and we could not believe it.  People did not die for no reason, but there it was.  How very sad we were that day.  WSM had announced it.  WSM was the Grand Old Opry station.  I wonder if it still is?  I may turn the radio on some Saturday night and see.  That is if I can find the radio and if I know which button it is.

But what I really started out to tell you this morning, is how clearly I can feel the sandy dirt on my feet from all those years ago.  I used to like to wiggle my toes into a pile of it where it had blown up along side the road.  It felt silky and warm and made me happy.  But when it would rain and there would be puddles, that was fun too.  If the puddles stayed several days there would be little things in the water that looked like tiny dots with a tail.  I soon learned that those were pollywogs, which would turn into toads or frogs in just a couple days if the mud puddle did not try up and we did not step on them.  They were pretty damn fast, so stepping on them was really not an option.

Ah, but the best part was when the puddle dried up if we did not disturb it, there would be a whole new thrill.  If left alone the sun would dry the mud and the top layer would curl up.  When that happened I could step barefooted on the dry mud and feel it crackle under my feet.  That was a whole new feeling and if Jake got to the puddle first he did it and that used to piss me off so bad!  Sometimes he would save it for me and that made my whole childhood worth while.  I do not know the last time I actually stepped on dry mud.

Funny the things we think about in the middle of the night when the world is asleep and we are all alone.  Guess that is why God gave us a memory.  It keeps me grounded.

Rubber Hoses are replaced by time outs!

I have my biggest inspirations at 3:30 AM and if I don't go with them, they are just lost.  So this morning I woke up with a boy named Dwight Kite on my mind.  He was an 8th grader at Nickerson Grade School and I must have been in 4th or 5th grade.

* I must put a disclaimer here to say that while the names are pretty close to accurate from my childhood days, the memories that accompany them are solely my perceptions recalled 65 years later and may or may not be completely accurate.  But the events usually have some merit for some reason.  That having been said, I will continue.

As I recall Dwight was a big boy.  He was referred to around town as "now quite right in the head."  There were several of those in my growing up days and were times different they would have been referred to as "special ed" and later "special needs" and today I think they are just kids.  We have certainly come a long way in how we treat our children, but remember the time frame I am talking here.  Dwight was big.  Dwight was slow.  Dwight was easily led astray.

The incident that is in my mind today was one of those times.  There were also big boys who thought it fun to "rile Dwight up."  I have no idea what had gone on and it is entirely irrelevant.  I do know Dwight was "called into the office."

Mr. Houston was our principal.  As I recall he was tall and skinny, but when you are 3 feet tall everyone looks tall.  He wore suits and his shoes were always polished.  His hair was parted on the side and combed in the manner hair was combed in those days.  Several times a day he would walk slowly down the hall and peer into the class rooms to make sure we were studying.  He could stop a heart with a look so we always kept our heads down.

Dwight was in the office with amazing regularity and we heard things were going to "come to a head" soon.  Now you need to know, that back then a teacher could administer "discipline" in the classroom.  Miss Howe in 4th grade was fond of coming up behind the dawdler with a wooden ruler and cracking it down with the straight edge on top of your head.  Oh, trust me!  You do not know what pain is until suddenly that ruler hits your bony head and the stars fly.  Dawdling days were over then!

But if the teacher could not control someone, they were sent to the Principal for a "talking to" and usually that was all it took.  I never got a "talking to" and I was very sure I did not want one.  Dwight on the other hand received several of them.  Mr. Houston kept a rubber hose in his office and we always thought it was just to scare us straight, but Dwight learned different.  We all watched as he came out of the office with tears streaming down his face and red marks on his arms.  Mr. Houston had won.  We all were sad and of course went home at night to report the action to our parents.

Well, that is called "corporal punishment" and Dwight had been bad and no one seemed to know just what he had done that was so bad, but it must have been bad or Mr. Houston would not have whipped him with the hose.  Dwight was never quite the same after that.  He came to school and was just a big, hulking boy who didn't have much to say.  And then he was gone.  He still lived in the house across the street with his mother and father, but he was rarely seen.  I never saw him, but the other kids said they did.  I don't know.

That was a long time ago, but it still sticks in my mind.  I marvel at how our world has changed, but no matter how much it changes, it still stays the same.  Oh, the days of the rubber hose are gone, pretty much and replaced by more modern methods like "time out" or Lord only knows what.  But there is still the standard there that kids have to measure up  or be labeled different. 

I wonder what Dwight Kite's home was like.  I wonder if our society been back then what it is today what Dwight would have become.  I do not know when they quit beating kids into submission, but I am thinking maybe some of them could still benefit from a little of that.  Just not from the principal of the place you go to learn.

It was a different world back then.  It is sad that all these years later, I still think of Dwight Kite.  Our family went to church with Mr. Houston and his wife and son, and I was as afraid of him in church as I was in school.  Later Miss Barkiss, the music teacher, married the son, David.  That is all I know.  That may be all I want to know.

Merry Christmas from Liberal, Kansas!

I do not remember the year, but it must have been about 1966.  Sam was barely walking and he was born in 1965.  We had been living in Garden City, but Duane (I some times refer to him as Earl, but he was always Duane to me.  Earl Duane if I was pissed.) and his brother decided they were expanding the tree trimming business so we were in Liberal.  Duane had found a farm house outside of town that was abandoned.  He made a deal with the owner to fix it up and make it livable and we would not need to pay rent until it was done.  We would buy all the cleaning supplies, wall paper and paint.

I have always been handy with soap, water, wall paper and paint, so that became my job, along with raising the kids, so the deal was struck.  I am sure none of you are going to know what I am talking about when I tell you how we got water to the house.  Ever see a windmill?  That is a pump with a shaft that goes up a tower to a giant blade.  When you want water, you loosen the brake and the blades begin to turn causing the apparatus that goes down into the well to go up and down, thus pumping water up the pipe and into the big holding tank above (and for the life of me I can not remember what that tank is called.).  There was no top on this tank so I am sure it was good clean water.  Water then flows from the tank into the pipes in the house by the gravity concept.  It was important that the tank stay full so there was water pressure.  All that is irrelevant to anything except that is the way we got water.

At that time we had the 4 oldest kids, Debbie 4, Patty 3, Dona  2 and Sam 1. The first item of business was to move into the house and set up sleeping quarters in the front room for the kids.  The furnace was also gravity operating on the concept that heat always rises.  The furnace was located in the basement and I do not recall ever going down there.  I think it was propane.  The vent was in the middle of the front room and the kids all learned very young to not walk on the furnace vent and if you look at the bottom of their feet you will probably find little squares where each one learned their lesson the hard way.

I vaguely recall that we moved in during the summer so by the time Christmas was upon us we were fairly settled into our new home.  I had finished our bedroom, the kids room, the front room and was starting the kitchen when Christmas time came.  Duane went to the "shelter belt" and cut down an evergreen tree, which ticked off the farmer, but oh well.  Decorations consisted of popcorn on a string, some red and green colored papers cut and glued and linked together and tinsel.  I do not know what Santa brought that year, but I do know he brought Sam a blue elephant on wheels and it was designed for him to set on it and move with his feet.  Would have been nice had it worked that way, but he was scared shitless of it.  Every time he seen it he went into screaming and crying fits like it was going to eat him.  We mostly kept it hidden and the only time it came out was when the girls wanted to torment him, which was often.

As I recall, winter was mild in Liberal since it was down in the southwest corner of Kansas.  I do not recall where they came from, but we had chickens which stayed in one of the out buildings.  I also recall we had a little black dog who brought me one of the chickens and laid it at the back door.  I do not recall ever seeing that dog again.

By the time spring arrived the house was in pretty good shape.  Every room had been gone through and cleaned, the wood work painted, walls newly wall papered  and the floors sealed.  I only had the bathroom left and was finishing pasting the trim around the top of the kitchen sealing when the landlord paid a call to see how the work was coming.  He was very impressed!  He walked slowly through each room noting the clean windows, the wall paper, the paint and praised my work.  The next day we got out eviction notice.  Seems his son was taking a wife and this would be the perfect place for them to live.  Talk about luck!

Back in those days we traveled light.  It was easier and cheaper to just leave the furniture and scrounge up new, then it was to load it and spend the gas money moving back and forth.  By the end of the next week we were living on the edge of town in a 3 room house with a huge back lot where I could grow a garden and a garage where I could keep my chickens.  For some reason the owner had painted every room black.  That was weird so the first order of the day was to drag out the paint brushes and spruce up the place.  The first swipe across the door post proved to be a rude awakening.  The place was almost devoured by termites!  It soon became apparent that what we saw was what we got in that house.  But I was always an optimist so I settled in.

I bought 100 straight run chickens and kept them in the garage.  In 2 months they were butchering size and I rented a locker in town.  75 fryers went in the locker.  The garden produced and I finished filling the locker with corn on the cob cut off the cob.  I was ready for winter!  The locker burned down and the man had no insurance.  All that work was wasted.  Then there was a windstorm and anything else we had was gone.  At some point the chickens that were in the garage  all ended up dead.  I called the sheriff and low and behold two boys in the neighborhood were found to have killed the chickens just for fun !

Debbie had started kindergarten some where along that time.  We decided we had enough of Liberal and we moved on.  Not sure where to, but if I think about it, I am sure I will remember.  That may have been when we moved back to Garden City. Or maybe that was when I moved to Hutchinson.  I need to think about this.

For now, I think I will get another cup of coffee and maybe run through the shower.  I am sure of one thing, the sun is up and the geese want out of their house.  Tomorrow is my anniversary.  I think I will bake me a cake.

If I could turn back time....that's a song, you know.

That is a song and if I wasn't so lazy I would go to youtube and then paste the link here, but basically I am pretty lazy in that department.  Pretty lazy in most departments actually.  But I can let my mind drift back in time and I am thinking my life would have been so different if I had do overs.  Course I would have been screwed in the beginning because I picked the wrong family!  Sadly back in the picking days, I did not even know I had a choice, so I just got born into the one fate set me down into that day.  So for the first 15 or 16 years I was happy.  You know the old saying, "Bloom where you are planted."  I bloomed where I was planted and then I found out there were other gardens that actually got watered on a regular basis.  Even got a little fertilizer from time to time.  Those were the kids that turned into jocks, cheerleaders, musicians, brainiacs, and such.

Sadly I wandered through high school without ever actually participating.  I knew my future would be to wed some hardworking man and raise kids.  I flunked cooking and I flunked sewing, so the hard working men were out.  They wanted a woman who could actually do something.  You know, a helpmate of sorts.  I guess the saying "Poor people have poor ways" comes in to play here.  I am not sure my dad ever went to school at all so an education was not very important to him.  Mother had graduated at the top of her class, but it didn't help much on the farm so she married dad who was a farmhand for my grandmother.

My dad's occupation was listed on the census rolls as "farm worker" and mother was "house wife."  And that was a good thing, but sadly father liked to drink.  He also fought the mechanical advancement in the agricultural movement.  He was one of the last to give up is horses and only then because they died.  His productive years were pretty well over at that time.  We became just simple folk and mother cleaned houses for a living.  It was a good honest wage.

A side note here is that I do not ever remember a firearm in our home.  Jake hunted rabbits with a sling shot.  There just never was a gun, nor was there ever a discussion about a gun.  There was corn liquor of some sort in the fridge and dad made hot toddy's when he had a cold.  I think he had a cold for all of his life.  If he was in a good mood he would let us sip a taste of the hot toddy from a teaspoon . I have often thought I would like to have  a hot toddy again just to see if it was as good as I thought it was back then.  Seems like it was a shot of liquor, boiling water and I am sure some sugar.

I digressed there, didn't I?  So if I had it to do all over again, I would.  But this time I would study very hard.  I would not even look at boys and I sure as hell would not have drunk that home-brew LaVeta Bankey gave me in my sophomore year.  I would not have dated that guy named Gene who brought me a satin pillow case home from Germany.  I would not have dropped out of school and ran away to Louisiana with a couple friends in my senior year.  I would have been so good.  So very, very good.  And I would have went to church every Sunday and memorized all my bible verses.  I would have been a missionary like I wanted to be when I was 15.   Hell, I might have changed my name to Teresa and been a Catholic and fed the hungry in Calcutta slums.  But I didn't.

Instead I set here like butter wouldn't melt in my mouth and dispense my wisdom not telling anyone that experience is your best teacher.   As you sow, so shall you reap is a favorite passage of mine from somewhere in the Bible.  Nothing wakes you up like a good dose of "sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.."

Now back to the subject, if I could turn back time.  I can't.  Try getting that toothpaste back in the tube.  Water under the bridge.  Things like that come to mind.  I have had some very good talks with God and while he does not answer loud enough for me to hear, he does answer.  And he has me believing that I really am not such a bad person and I will have another chance.  What did not kill me has made me strong and I hope I can help someone else along the way at some point.  Guess we will see.

I was married to an ostrich and never knew it.

The light of dawn, or in this case, the light of way before dawn is very enlightening.  I woke up at
4 AM this morning to begin the tedious task of sorting through my mind.  It is normally a scary process and today was no different.  Like many times before, I thought about my brother and how he died.  But this morning I also thought of my first husband and how he handled Jake's death.

It had been a few weeks since Jake's passing and I mentioned something about the event to Earl Duane, my first husband.  His response was simple.  "I don't think about it.  I pretend he has gone to another town and I will see him when he comes back or we go there."  Such a simple premise.  I often envied him of the ability to just ignore reality.  I wished often that I had taken lessons from him.  It has been 52 years and it is just as fresh in my mind today as it was back then.  I see him in the hospital bed in McPherson, Kansas, with his head propped up and his sandy hair falling across his forehead.  The scar on his right cheek was vivid.  He had no bandages because he was too injured to bandage.  He passed on October 31, 1965.  My dad had passed in February of the same year. 

I am not good at dates and can not tell you what day most of my family died, but Jake was like an extension of myself.  I do not know why I woke up with this on my mind, I just know it was not the first time and will probably not be the last time.  I do not remember any of my marriage dates except for Kenny.  Let me tell you, when I had to come up with all those dates for the social security I was one busy little girl!  I was on the phone with the Bureau of Vital Statistics for probably an hour while the man researched  the various marriages and divorces and separations and such. 

When it was all over , I thanked him profusely for his time as he had been a lot of help.  He knew more about me then most people and his last question to me was "I just want to know, what happened with old Earl."  For some reason that struck me as funny and we both had a good laugh.  But sadly enough, I have often wondered the same thing.  I did envy him his ability to completely disregard any thing that was not what he wanted it to be.  I am sure he did the same thing with our divorce.  He certainly was adroit at ignoring that little sentence about the child support.

Normally I do not talk about him as he is the father of my children and I respect him for that, but he had a different relationship with them from the one he had with me.  As long as we can all separate the man into two parts, we are good to go.  We did talk on occasion and he remembered me as the skinny little thing he married and nothing I did after that mattered.  In his mind I never left.  I was just gone into town to pick up some groceries.

So in closing, I want to say, my life is good.  My home is good, but way to big and way to much work for me.  I want to do something although I am not sure what.  I do know there are big changes coming in the next year.  It is going to start with a giant rummage sale in the Spring and then I will just see where the future takes me.  I have lived over half my life in Colorado.  For the first half it was Kansas.  Do I think about going back?  Sometimes.

For now, I am going to run through the shower and start a new day.  That is the best part of life to me, knowing that each day brings a fresh page and yesterdays are just that.

An epiphany by any other name, is still an epiphany.

I was laying in my be the other night and I was thinking back to when I was a teenager.  When I was in the 7th grade mother had her hysterectomy.  I must have been about 12 or 13 at the time.  Mary and Dorothy had gone to stay with Flo Roberts and the rest of us stayed home with Dad.  We were on Strong Street at the time.  It seemed like she was in the hospital a week and then came home.  As small cot had been put in the front room by the window so she could see out.  That is all I remember of that time period.  Out of this experience came a need to attend church.  Mother said so, so as soon as she was able, we went off to church. 
There were only 3 churches in town.  The Baptist church was closest, but they hollered and raised there arms and waved them around when they sang and that scared us.  The Methodist was closer to Main Street, but it was for the rich people.  Everyone knew that.  The First Christian was on Main Street right beside the school, so we went there. 
It was a beautiful red brick building with stained glass windows all around.  Miss Barkiss, the school music teacher played the piano and directed the choir.  I forget who played the organ.  Miss Matters sat in the seat at the end of the last row on the right side.  No one ever even looked like they wanted to sit there.  She was, or at least appeared to be, very mean.  The school principal attended with his family.  So did the sheriff.  A spirea bush grew near the stairway that led to the basement.  The basement was where we had ice cream socials, cake walks and Sunday School for the younger kids.  It was also where the bank for birthday money sat on the table.  I remember putting my pennies in and everyone counting when it was my birthday.
The minister was Rush J Barnett and his wife was named Genevive.  They were wonderful people and loved children.  Very soon I had found my life calling.  I memorized many Bible verses.  Mrs. Barnett was always working with us kids.  I decided early on that I would be a missionary.  Africa sounded so good to me.  I would go save the souls of all the little black natives.  Pastor Barnett gave me lots of books to read and I devoured every word. 
As with any church, there were workings going on that us kids knew nothing about, and the time came that Pastor Barnett was replaced by Pastor Johnson.  In churches, when one pastor leaves the new one comes in and brings his or her own way of management.  The old pastor is not heard from again.  I was devastated that I had lost my mentor.  Reverend Johnson had a wife who did not want to lead the youth group and a teen age son who was , for want of a better word, a jackass.  We should follow him and that was not happening.  He was a jerk to the max, so slowly we just quit going to church.  It was no longer a safe place or a place we even wanted to be.  On to my epiphany.
I soon became clear that I would never be a missionary and I would never make it to Africa to save the wretched natives.  There was no one to lead me and when you are a young girl in search of a future, dreams die easily and quietly and are replaced by reality.  And Strong Street in Nickerson, Kansas gave way to Avenue A in Hutchinson.
Fast forward to the present.  The kids are raised and living fruitful lives in other places.  I am all alone on my back acre and I stay very busy.  I work tirelessly for anyone who wants something.  I feed the homeless, work with the migrant center, volunteer  and sit with people who are ready to cross the bar.  I give rides to those who need them and am busy every day with one thing or another.  So last night it dawned on me, that the girl named Louella is a frustrated missionary.  It is 60 years later and I am once more trying to save the world!  I have no leader and stumble around blind, but my heart is in the right place. 
So, all you therapists and psychoanalysts out there need to come to my rescue.  How do I stop this insane behavior?  How do I get off this merry go round called life?  Do I just have to keep beating my head against a brick wall till the good Lord calls me?  I know I can not feed all the hungry people and I can not save all the wretched souls.  I can not set on all the committees and there are not enough dollars in my bank account to keep everyone warm and fed.  Will that 15 year old girl on Strong Street ever go away and leave me in peace?
I guess my life has become rather like that story I heard about the man who was throwing the star fish back into the ocean and someone asked why he did that because they just kept washing up and he could not save them all;  he could not make a difference.  He threw another one back and replied, "It made a difference to that one."

And the legal drinking age was?

By the time I was in high school I was old enough to drink liquor.  Well, maybe not according to the State of Kansas, or my mother, but I had a friend who had a father who made and bottled home brew.  He also left every weekend and left the stock unlocked.  I soon became known in Nickerson High School as "Home Brew girl."  That is a title I am not quite as proud of today as I was back then.  But the truth of the matter is it set the stage for later days when we moved to Hutchinson.

About the time we moved I was a senior in high school and tired of going there every day especially in a big city like Hutch where I knew no one.  So I got me a job in a burger place out on 4th and worked 2 weeks.  That was pretty boring.  It was one of those places where a speaker was on the tables and the customer ordered and I carried the food out .  Whoopee shit!  Big future there. 

I found the beer joints up on Main about the same time.  The interesting part here was when they checked ID it was in the form of a question.  "Are you old enough to drink?"
"Well, I been doing it for quite a while now so I guess I am."  Duh!

Now the best way to get free beer is to work in the place that sells it.  Within a one block area on Main Street were 3 bars that were known as the "3 Queens".  The first was the Manhattan Club, then the Brown Derby, and lastly was the Brass Rail.  I had heard of these places from way back when we lived in Nickerson and dad used to go drinking in Hutch.  Years later I read about them in the old family history when one of my great grandfathers had kept a journal.  One entry concerned his sons who worked for other farmers for cash money.  They had gotten paid and had " gone into Hutch and blowed up $20."  He was very upset about that little trip and mentioned it several times.  $20.00 was a lot of money back then and "blowing it up"  was a cardinal sin.

Also when I was young my fathers son (my half brother, Gene) had came home from the Army and was regaling us with tales of the 3 Queens and a lady of the night named "Sea Biscuit" who could out drink any man.  Her favorite drink was White Horse Scotch and milk.  I was "lucky" enough to meet her on one of my forays into the night life of the 3 Queens.  Sadly, she was not at all what I had pictured.  She was old, skinny and could cuss like a sailor.  She still drank White Horse Scotch and milk.  She had given up the "lady of the night" business and was married to a very tall man who was very quiet.  I think of them  when I hear the song, Country Bumpkin (click to listen.)  Her real name was Delores.  No last name, just Delores.  She did not remember my brother Gene.  She advised me to make something out of my life and not spend my time down on South Main.  My brother, Jake, concured with her and so my life in the bright lights of the 3 Queens was very short lived.

Then I found a place way out on 4th Street called the Tiny Tear.  The Tiny Tear was a cafe that was friendly to teenagers.  Sometimes I cooked there which also entailed waitressing.  I do not remember how I got from point A to point B since I did not have a car, but I managed.  The Tiny Tear was more my speed.   The kids that hung out at the Tiny Tear were very possessive of the place and we did not like strangers coming on our "turf."  During one of our "rumbles"  I met a guy who would be the love of my life.  His name was Jimmie and he called me "bright eyes."  Had the fates smiled on us we would no doubt still be together and I would still be in Hutchinson, but sadly, they did not.  He had just broken up with his girlfriend and 2 months into our torrid love affair she announced that he would be a father.  Back in those days that was an automatic marriage guarantee.  Thus ended our future.  I do not know what ever became of him, but I do know they had a couple more kids and I think he still lives back there, but I am not sure.  I still think of him fondly, but I also miss my little black calf named Dennis that died when he was 3 days old.  Water under the bridge.

I have good memories of my younger days.  While I may not be real proud of some of my shenanigans they did lead me to who and where I am today.  I do not have a prison record, for which I am thankful, but I do have a lot of life lessons that I could share with the kids now, but they would not believe me, so I won't.  My memories are just that, my memories.  And while I am sure Jimmie will never read this, if he does, I hope he remembers me just a little.

Was it Ed or John?

Trying to remember way back to the Stroh place when I was 5 years old is a stretch.  I do remember that one of dad's friends was a carpenter.  Back in those days a carpenter could carry all the tools of his trade in his pockets and in a leather pouch.  All you really needed was a saw, a hammer, a level and some sand paper.  Oh, nails.  You needed nails.  I think his name was John and he carried his nails in a pouch, but when he was hammering he held them in his mouth so they were "easy to get at."  As years went by that little habit had some dire conseqences.  He developed cancer of the mouth.  He had to have part of his bottom jaw removed and after that it was just not much fun being a carpenter so he just died.  Funny how life goes sometimes.

That was back in the day when cancer was just beginning to rear it's ugly head, or at least the medical community was seeing this strange disease that could eat you alive.  Ever so often we would hear of someone who just took sick, wasted away and died.  We heard the whispered word "cancer" more often back then.  It just seems like when cancer was given a name it spread like wildfire.

So it was no wonder that when momma went into the hospital when I was in 7th grade that I was worried.  Yes, it was cancer.  They hoped they got it all.  Doctor was sure he had and we trusted him.  After all, my mother cleaned his house once a week so it was in his own best interest that he keep her healthy.  And he did.  Her recovery was slow, but she did recover.

Living in a small town and having my mother as a "cleaning lady" opened a lot of doors for our family.  She cleaned and I babysat for the people she  cleaned for.  One of the families was the family who owned the mortuary.  I must remember to tell you about that little episode.  Oh no time like the present.

That was back when television was first coming into being.  The Lamb family lived over the mortuary.   They had 5 little red headed kids.  They had to go out for the evening so I was called to babysit.  There was a body in repose in the viewing room but the man who worked for them would stay until they came home.

I got the kiddies settled in bed and thought I would just watch me a little television.  Do you remember when I think it was Orson Wells wrote a play about the war of the worlds or something to that effect?  The first words the television spit out were " We have been invaded by aliens!  They have come to kill us and we are all in danger!"  Of course I snapped that television off because if I was going to be killed I sure as hell did not want to know about it.  There is a lot to be said for the element of surprise.  I can still to this day feel the terror I knew that night when I heard that.  It was so realistic and I had never dealt with television before so I knew it was true.  But the night was just beginning.

The phone rang and I picked up just in time to hear the man down stairs say to his wife, "Of course, I will be right home.  I am sure it will be alright.  Let me just lock up and I will be there in a few minutes."  Click!  Oh, shit.  Now I not only had the worry of the aliens landings, I now had the reality of a dead body only feet away and no one guarding it.  I knew I was not going to turn that tv back on for sure.  I had only one course of action.

I went into the kids bedroom and woke them up and read to them.  I am sure they thought I was nuts, but I was 15 years old and scared to death.  The kids finally could not stay awake and I heard sounds downstairs so I knew the man had come back, or at least I hoped to holy hell he had!  Just for giggles check out that period in history.  The papers were full of stories about people who had heard the beginning of that movie and thought we were being invaded.  Hind sight tells me that I handled the situation better than a whole lot of people.

It was John.  John was the carpenter.  I remember. Amazing how these facts come back if I just talk to myself for a little while.  I am not sure if the facts that come back are the way it actually happened, but that is the best part of being me.  That is how it happened and John was the one with cancer.  If mother were here, my facts may not stand a chance, but she isn't is she?  So I will enjoy telling my stories and you will enjoy hearing them, because this is just how it is!

Stick horse, comic books and baseball cards.

I have been away from 709 Strong Street long enough that I am pretty sure most of my memories will go unnoticed and the people who helped create them are long since dead and buried.  As long as I do not name people, no one will know who I am talking about.  It is nice to know I have out lived a lot of people so I can tell the stories as I remember them and no one can say "Nope!  That is not how it happened."
One of the girls in our neighborhood liked to ride a stick horse.  So did her mother.  Sadly, this was also the woman who babysat for Mary and Dorothy when mom worked.  Her father was a farmer of sorts.  He raised peanuts and pumpkins mostly.  Also pigs and a goat or two.  Her mom had a bit of brain damage, but managed to still cook and clean.  They had a wood cook stove, but so did we.  Hers was fancier and had enamel on it.  There was also a water pump and a sink right in the corner, so they did not have to go outside for water.  I  was envious of that.
She would make a chocolate cake every day and the daughter always tried to get me to eat it, but I just could not bring myself to do that.  For some reason it had a greenish tint to it.  I think it was probably the cocoa she used, but I was never sure.  She was always frying something, or boiling something.  Seems like parsnips were cooked more than potatoes.  I just figured out the other day that parsnips are actually very good.  Lagree's had some on the mark down shelves and I bought them and brought them home.  I peeled them, boiled them and then sauteed them in butter.  Yep!  Parsnips are now on my eating list.  They have a sort of sweet, nutty taste and I really like the browned parts.
There were 5 in the family.  Mother, Father, son, son and daughter.  The oldest son was already grown and gone when I met the daughter.  The father just farmed.  He planted things and harvested things and fed his pigs and butchered his pigs.  I never knew him to ever have a friend.  I heard rumors that they had been in a car wreck right after they were married and the mother had brain damage and the father felt guilty.
The daughter only wore jeans and flannel shirts.  Her shirt pocket was always bulging with baseball cards she collected.  Same with the pockets on her jeans.  I never saw her in anything else.  When the mother needed to go to town, she and the daughter would mount their stick horses and ride the 6 or 7 blocks into the grocery store.  I never knew either of them to ever ride in the pickup the father used for hauling his produce to market.
The house was sturdy and very well built.  I expect it is probably still standing.  I forgot to look last time I was home.  It had no indoor plumbing and that was not unusual.  All the houses on Strong Street had the out house going on.  Theirs was the worst though.  It consisted of a shed in the corner where two rows of chicken houses met.  A big hole had been dug and a metal wash tub with a hole cut in the center had been turned upside down over said hole.  The proverbial Sear and Roebuck Catalog was at the ready.  Man, I have been in some scary places in my life, but that one was the scariest thing I had every seen.  There was no way in the world that I could ever bring myself to even go inside that let alone pull my britches down and crawl on that tub.  No way in hell!  Never had to pee that bad!
The grandma lived in town in a big house with a bathroom and running water and all that good stuff.  The  brother went to live with grandma leaving just the 3 of them on Strong Street.  When I was 17 we moved away and I never heard of them again.  Years later I heard that the daughter had married and had a couple kids.  The mother died and then the father.  The daughter died when she was 50.  I often wondered how their life went.  They were just such isolated folks back then, but looking back no ones life really touched anyone elses.
We all lived on Strong Street until we left.  I sometimes wonder if mine was the only life that is changed by that little dirt road.  I never heard my sisters ever talk about it.  Was it because they were too young, or in Josephines case, too old?  Did that life shape me for who I am today, or did I escape?  Who knows.  I do know I take solace in the girl I was back then and I think she is buried some where beneath my callous exterior.  When I drive down that street now, I can not recognize the places, but when I close my eyes at night I can see the stars, hear the cougar down on the river, and I can feel the hot, humid air on my bare arms.

I am home!

Racoons are for petting, or eating depending upon your need at the time!

Well, Raccoons are not really for petting, but I just thought I would say that!  Those suckers have some very sharp teeth and can pretty much take care of themselves.  I am remembering back to 1962 when Earl and I were living in Glasco, Kansas in a farm house on the edge of town.  Debbie was a very tiny baby and Patty was conceived but not hatched yet.
 
We were itinerant tree trimmers which meant we moved into an area and trimmed trees until the work ran out and then we moved to the next town.  That was easier than actually building a business and establishing a home.  Most tree trimmers at that time were known as "fly by night", but not us.  The fly by night guys would come into a town for a few days and do a couple high dollar jobs and then move on to the next likely looking place.  We actually had an address and lived in the community.  Well, for 30 days or whenever the rent came due anyway.  But back to the story.

Glasco is straight up US 81 out of Hutchinson, close to Concordia and about 60 miles from Nebraska.  I looked that up on the Atlas, so I know that is right.  I do not know how long we lived there, but some of my memories are pretty vivid.  One of our workers killed a rattlesnake on the back porch right by the door.  It was night and had I opened the door he would have been inside.  Never knew snakes traveled at night, but very glad it was Pete that found him and not me!

The compound consisted of Earl, Debbie and me.  Earl's brother Larry, his wife and daughter.  Two more brother's, Delvin and Virgil.  And lastly Pete somebody and his wife whose name I forget and a couple of thier kids.  I have no idea where we all slept, but as I recall there were a couple mobile homes or campers involved.  And dogs!  Actually they were " 'Coon dogs".  The guys had struck up a friendship with a couple in another town who raised and hunted with them.  Ah!  The thrill of the hunt!

For those of you who have never been exposed to that element of life, you are in for a surprise!  Any extra money we came across was spent to buy the best dogs that Bill and Dorothy had to offer.  There were a couple Black and Tans,  a couple Blue ticks, a  Redbone and a Blood hound.  It was Virgil's job to care for the dogs and it was a full time job.  Ah, but night was hunting time.

Once they brought home enough honey to sink a battle ship.  Every deal with raw honey?  Now there is a blog unto itself.  It had to be heated very slowly and then strained into containers of which we had none and then given away because one human can only hold so much honey!  Fortuneately there were grapes on the river about that time so of course making wine was also on the agenda.  That was set in the cellar which was located in the yard in the vicinity of the back door.  We were not allowed to go down there, but being the free spirit's we were, I gathered up the sisters in law and we ventured into the forbidden territory.  We tasted the fruits of the boys labor and pronounced them "horrible."

That night we could not find my little dog.  We searched every where and had given up the doggie as lost when Earl decided to check on the wine process.  Lo and behold!  The little doggie was in the cellar.  I am not sure I ever convinced that man that my dog had actually managed to get himself into the cellar, but you must remember my first husband drank a lot and as such had a kind of flawed reasoning.  (That was back in the days when I was not above lying to save my ass!)

Back to the eating of the Racoon.  As with all "hunter-gatherers" since the beginning of time, a racoon was finally captured and brought back to the "cave".  As head woman it was my job to prepare the feast.  Oh, my God!  The sight of the Racoon with no fur and no head, feet and a gaping abdomen was more than I could bear!  I put it in a pan on it's back with it's feet pointing upward, poured is some water, added salt and pepper and shoved it in the oven.  Earl checked it several times and finally pronounced it "ready."  There was no way I could have eaten a bite of that if my life depended on it and at that time it did.   I can still close my eyes and picture that.  I know in parts of the world and this country Racoon is eaten, but not the way I fixed it, I am sure.  I equate all wild animals the same as my kitty cat.

I do, however have good memories of Glasco.  It was a little town and I bought 2 chickens at the feed store and butchered them.  They cost a whole dollar for 2 of them.  Old hens, so they were turned into noodles.

The guys went down on the river and cut down a big Walnut tree and sold it to a buyer for $98 which was a whole lot of money at that time.  We were going to do that for a living, but that was stealing and we were afraid we would get caught.  Fear stopped a lot of our ideas.

Pete caught a fish that was very long, had a snout, and he had never seen one before like it so he beat it to death.  Later we learned it was a Gar.  Live and learn.

In my little mind, I was happy in Glasco.  In my little mind I have been happy most of my life.  Sadly the happiness did not always coincide with the time I was living through it, but that is alright.  My mother always had sayings for me.

"Hind sight is 20/20 looking back."

 "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  

And my favorite "Time is the greatest healer."

My life is good.  God Bless!

There was a barn and horses.

I woke up this morning remembering the barn.  The horse tank was out the back door of the house and off to the right.  For years it had a "pitcher pump" and we all took turns pumping to keep water for the animals.  Ever now and then we had to fish a chicken out because chickens can not swim.  That was not very often, because chickens are fairly smart that way.  We had Muscovy ducks and they occasionally took a spin around the tank, but they were very leery of those big horse teeth and mostly stayed around the back of the house where the kitchen sink drained out on the ground.  That was back before there were laws about that.
There was a red milk cow.  Her name was "Bossy".  She shared the barn with the other animals.  She eventually gave birth to a black calf that I immediately named Dennis.  She then took sick with milk fever (?).   My dad and the neighbor man tried to save her.  They even cut her tail open and put salt and pepper in it and bound it up.  That was sure to cure her.  Unfortunately, it did not.  Dennis took sick soon after and I think that was because he had no mother to feed him.  He also died, which broke my heart.
There was a brown horse named "Danny" that was my sister Josephine's.  It was her's because that was the meanest damned horse in the world and she was the only one who could ride him.  The rest of us kids were relegated to a Shetland pony whose name was "Star".  Dad would put one of us up on his back and then lead him around the corral.  I never did like either Star or the rides so I mostly hid out when that was going on.  The little kids got a kick out of it though.
My Dad had a big scar on his upper arm (think that is called a bicep).  (For this reason I have always been afraid of horses thinking that one might bite me.)  It dated back to when he was in the Army (World War 1).  He was in the Cavalry.  His job was to tend the horses and one bit him.  I knew my father to be a very mean man sometimes.  He never mistreated us kids physically, but he did tend to mistreat animals.  One of the things used to control horses was a stick with a loop of rope on the end.  The rope was put around the upper lip of a horse and twisted.  The horse was then pretty much at the mercy of whoever held the stick.  I do not remember what that thing was called.  Of course there was a black snake whip that hung in the barn for when the horses were really out of control.
Dad had a fondness (more like an obsession) for show horses.  They were not just show horses, they were work horses that were beautiful.  My dad was one of the last people to give up the horse and plow.  He would never buy one horse.  He always bought a matched pair.  The last matched pair he had was the only pair I even remember.  They were Strawberry Roans.  They were big and a light pinkish color.  They had blonde tails and my father would stand for hours brushing them.  When he went into town their tails were braided and he was a sight to behold.  My father.  (pause while a flood of memories leaves me in tears.)
The upper part of the barn was called the "hay loft."  It was called that because that is where the hay was stored.  That was also where the old cats went to have their kittens.  When the cow was alive and we milked her, there was a bowl by her stall that was always filled with fresh milk at milking time.  The one legged stool hung on a peg above it. 
When the hayloft was filled with fresh hay, we had to check it periodically through the day.  If some of the hay that went in the loft was not quite dry enough, it would heat up and if not turned to get air to cool it, burst into flame.  First it started to smolder and usually we picked that up right away.  We took the pitch fork and pulled that part of the hay stack out and threw it out the opening onto the ground where we spread it to cool, or burn if it was that hot.  Lots of barns burned to the ground because of that little problem.
My dad was pretty much a share cropper and us kids were put into use real regular. Sometimes we went to wheat fields and pulled out the Rye that sprung up magically.  If the elevator man found Rye in the load of wheat being sold, he would "dock" dad on the pay.  Sometimes we harvested field corn.  We picked the dry ears and stripped them in the field and then tossed them on the corn wagon.  The corn wagon was just a horse drawn wagon with board added on the back side so the corn bounced off and landed back in the wagon with the rest of the corn.  We picked rocks out of fields.  We pulled weeds in the garden.  Especially fun was cleaning the manure out of the barn and hauling it to the pile in the corner of the corral.  We gathered eggs.  Brought in fire wood.  Carried out the trash.  Made the beds. Washed the dishes.  In the winter we tried to stay warm and in the summer we tried to stay cool.
One of my clearest memories is laying on my stomach by the chicken house with my brother and watching the "dead animal wagon" back up to the fence in front of the barn.  The man pulled the wench chain out and over to the barn where he wrapped it around Star's neck.  He hit the button and Star was unceremoniously drug up over the sill, across the pen, under the barbed wire fence and up into the back of the truck.  My last memory of Star was seeing the truck pull onto the road and drive off with Star's  legs sticking straight up into the air.  Jake and I were very quiet the rest of the day and night.  Then life resumed, just like there had never been a Shetland Pony named Star in our life.
And now I sit here with my memories.  I see the house just as clearly today as I did then, only now I appreciate it more for it's simplicity.  I see my brother in his overalls.  The scar on his face was put there by Star many years before. 
There are only 2 of us left now.   I feel closer to the past then I do the future.  I long for those days when I could feel the breeze on my arms and face.  Back then I could not wait to grow up and get away.  I wanted my own home.  My own family.  Well, I got it and here I set.  If there is one thing I would tell the people I know it is this:  Hold on to today, because today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.  Yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes.  I think they wrote a song about that.