Sure am missing Nickerson, Kansas

 Merle Haggard says it best.  https://youtu.be/TuwhpVde6NY The roots of my raising sure do run deep.  Growing up in Nickerson, Kansas was definitely a challenge.  Like all small town there was a right side of town and a wrong side, but it this case it was the whole "outside of town."  We lived "outside of town" only 2 blocks from the high school when I was very small. That was the "wrong side of the tracks."  When I started second grade we moved clear across town out by the cemetery.  That was also the "wrong side of the tracks."  Either place was a place we could listen to that lonesome train whistle blow.

I learned early to love that sound.  It meant the train was going some where and I knew it was far away.  When the train whistle subsided in the distance, the coyotes howled.  Occasionally a wolf would howl.  Coyotes made more of a yipping sound, but wolves had a mournful howl.  It was like they were trying to call the moon from the sky above.  Either one scared hell out of us kids and we waited for the howling to subside before we could sleep.

But as poor as we were, we knew we were safe in our beds.  To my recollection, I never knew my dad to own a gun.  He was in the Army in World War 1.  He was what I thought was a big man, but in actuality he was only 5'8".  It was not an unusual height back in those days.  I do not know why, but I am assuming it had something to do with what they ate back then.  The emphasis in those days was not so much on vitamins and minerals as it was on survival.  A cow was easier to raise than a head of lettuce.  But all of that is irrelevant.

I remember the first time we got linoleum in our house.  My God!  You would have thought we had died and gone to heaven!  We could walk across the floor  barefooted and not get a "sliver".  Slivers were little pieces of the wood flooring and could only be removed by a pair of tweezers and a needle held in the hand of our dear mother.

Closing the house up at night entailed closing the front and back inside doors.  There were no locks.  There was usually a hook and eye on the screen door, but they were used to hold the door closed when the wind blew.  Bad people did not exist in Nickerson.  I recall once coming home from school and there was a dog walking on my street.  It scared me to death.  I actually climbed up on the icebox so the dog could not "eat me".  Nothing ever changed in Nickerson and that dog did not belong on my street.

Occasionally someone would pass away (We never referred to it as dying.) and the hearse would have to pass the end of our street on the way to the cemetery.  Nine chances out of 10, we knew the body that was being transported because Nickerson might have had a population of 1,000 people if everyone was gathered in one place.  Needless to say, we had to stand quietly with our hand over our heart until the hearse had passed.  This picture was taken from the cemetery side, thus the words are backwards.

For whatever reason I keep retreating to my childhood I know it was my safe place.  One would think that at this late stage in life I could accept who I am, but I don't.  I love to hard, trust too easily, and my biggest weakness is that I am ever the eternal optimist.  But I forget the most important thing momma told me:

"You never know anybody.  You only know OF them.  You know what they let you see."

Thanks, momma, now I remember.

The dash to the outhouse!

 I am up in the morning anywhere from 3:30 AM  to 5:00.  If I lay there any longer my aches and pains seem to kick in to remind me of my age.  This was all well and good back when I lived alone in my one bathroom house, but now I have a son who lives with me and he leaves for work at 5:30.  This means he sneaks very quietly up the stairs and into the bathroom and I do not hear him.  So when I open my bedroom door and see the light under the bathroom door, I know I missed my golden opportunity and I will now be doing the little dance that does no good what so ever, but seems necessary.

So this leads me to the moonlight trail to the outhouse back at 709 North Strong Street , Nickerson, Kansas,  seventy years ago.  While it was still light we all had to go visit the outhouse.  Hopefully that would be the last trip for the night.  Now, in the event we actually had to go in the middle of the night, we were allowed to make concessions.  One of these was if we only needed to go as far as the horse tank if we only had to do #1.  There was a "chamber pot" located behind the wood stove for the little kids to use and Dad.  I do not ever remember being an actual "little kid."  I am sure that after we left the Stroh place Jake, Josephine, myself were all big kids.  Dorothy was a tiny baby and Mary was 2 years old.  That would have meant Donna was 4.  Since they were little they went to Ora Ayres to be babysat while I was in school  She charged 50 cents  a week.    

I remember her kitchen well.  It had  very big wood cookstove that took up the whole kitchen.  I need to interject here that  when her and Jerry(?) were first married they were in a car wreck and Ora had suffered some brain damage.  She was still a functioning adult, but her reasoning skills were rather limited.  She could babysit and she could cook.  We grew up eating chocolate cakes that she baked every day and were used as a substitute for bread.  Now her cakes were a strange green color, but mother said it was because she skimped on the chocolate or used an inferior brand.  But that is neither here nor there and has no bearing whatso ever on anything and I do not know why it stuck in my mind. 

Jerry was an avid gardener and when he harvested his crops were kept in his bedroom.  His harvest seem to consist of mostly peanuts which were boiled and eaten that way.  Gross.  Never understood that, but it really was not any of my business.  The back yard had a grainery and that was where the chickens lived.  The "out house" was located in one corner of a row of ramshackle sheds strung together that surrounded the grainery.  It was a hole in the ground with a wash tub with a hole cut in it and turned upside down.  That was one place no one wanted to go and I never had nerve enough to perch on that with my pants down!  It was breeding grounds (in my mind) to a new breed of giant, poison spiders.

Some times mother sent us big kids to bring the little kids home.  That was always a treat because Ora would give us a piece of the green cake and we actually liked it as long as we did not know the difference.  Entertainment at her house consisted of blocks of wood which were used as cars to travel on the dirt roads we drew on the dirt yard.  

As I write this, I realize that this was our "normal".  If I gave one of my grandkids a piece of wood and told them to go pretend it was a car they would think I had lost my mind!  I can get Jiraiya to walk across a field with me to check on crawdads in the ditch, but a block of wood is just a block of wood to him.  He likes to fill the feeder for the geese, but then the computer games are his weapon of choice.

I miss my life on Strong Street and I can not imagine why I ever wanted to leave, but I did.  My idea of heaven is not a street paved in gold, but the sandy soil of Strong Street and the mud that dried in the puddles and waited for the sun to bake it so we could walk barefoot and feel it crunch beneath our feet.

  That and a piece of green cake will get me a seat at the throne of God any day!

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

With age comes wisdom, or so I hear.  Mother used to say that and I do believe there is some truth to it.  Maybe it isn't so much that we are wiser now, but that we have just come to think of all the crap we digest as inevitable.  

Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.  Now that one is sad but true!  I do know that with age comes wisdom.  I also know that is a crock if ever I heard one.  With age comes wrinkles!  With age comes a mind that is full of wisdom and no markers on how to retrieve any of that knowledge.  It is having friends and the constant struggle to remember who they are and how to get in touch with them.  It is slowing down on stairs and knowing I am always just one stair step away from the nursing home.  Old age sucks, it really does but I guess it is better then the alternative which is dying young.  Or so I hear.

This picture of my mother sets on the shelf right above my head.  She is always with me and sometimes I can hear her goading me.  She had a very wry and twisted sense of humor and I do believe I inherited that.  Now whether that is a good thing or not , I am not able to say.  I do know when I am sad she talks to me and when I am happy her little red cheeks show signs of a smile.  I am not sure I ever heard my mother laugh.  I like to think she did and her and I shared a lot of the same values, except for that Rush Limbaugh stuff.  I did subscribe to his newletter and paid for it to be delivered to her house, but that was about the length of that.  Below her picture is  a snippet of my sisters.  Sadly there are only two of us left, another of the hazards of growing old.  The good part though is that Donna is the only one that can dispute the memory of mama and she is 400 miles away.  Mama always loved me most!!!

This is the last picture I see when I go out my front door.  The lower left corner  is mama with her favorite child (ME).  The right corner is mama 50 years old.  And of course in the back is the mama I remember after I moved to Colorado. 

I like to think of my mama.  I loved her very much.  I am not sure she was ever proud of me.  If she was she never said it out loud to me.  I do know she liked my cooking.  When she came for a visit she carried a list in her pocket of what she wanted me to cook for her.  Tomato Soup made with fresh canned tomatoes from my garden...NOT Campbells.  Cream puffs.  Liver and onions.  Cinnamon rolls.  Fried potatoes.  She wanted to set in my rocker and watch the Hummingbirds.  She liked to stand at the island where my stove is and question every move I made in the meal preparation and was quick to tell me that was not the way she did it, but she was the first one to the table and the last one to leave.

Do we ever grow old enough that we do not miss our mommy?   I think not.  I guess I do have the satisfaction of knowing that someday my kids will remember me fondly.  Want to know how I know this?  I made the remark one time about a person who had disappointed me.  And she told me that one about not knowing someone. "You never really know anyone, you only know of them; the part they let you see."  The old Indians used to say, "Do not judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins."  I remember lots of things.  I remember the time my sister came home from a date with her dress on wrong side out.

October has started.  Today is October 6 and yesterday was my brothers birthday.  In 24 days it will be the anniversary of his death.  He was 28 when he was killed in a car wreck.  He left behind 2 sons.  I never knew them.  Mom did.  Or at least she knew the older one.  His name was David Payne Andersen (I think).  The other one was Edward Howell Hamby (I think).  The important thing here is that October is probably the hardest month of the year for me.  October is the birth month of 2 of my kids as well as the anniversary of the day I married their father.  

Just bear with me here, because this too shall pass.  The sun will come out tomorrow!  Tomorrow is another day.  At least we have that to look forward to.  Or do we?

Three legged pot and the best thing to come from corn.

 I was watching PBS yesterday and I forget the guys name, but he was back in Pennsylvania or some where in an Amish community about heritage or something.  (Try to remember that you are dealing with someone who checks the date 45 times a day to just be sure it is actually today!)  Any way, the center of the courtyard in this community was a 3 legged kettle.  I think I have written on that before, but just in case I will sum it up again.  

The 3 legged kettle is a big cast iron pot (for lack of a better word) that set in the back yard near the water source, which in our case was a hand pump.  Water for washing clothes was heated by building a fire around the bottom.  Course it took a while to heat, but back then the laundry was an all day job.  Wash the clothes, rinse the clothes, second rinse the clothes and then hang them on the clothes line to dry and hope the birds did not poop on them.  Our clothes line was in back of the house as was most peoples.  That led to the old adage, "Don't air your dirty laundry!"  The same kettle was used to "scald a hog " when it was butchering time.  

Dammit!  I digress!  This lesson was about making hominy.  Mother used to make hominy so I was familiar with the process, sort of anyway.  First the field corn had to be completely dry.  It was then "shucked" which in this instance is removing the dried kernels from the cob. Of course, the cobs were saved for use in the "outhouse" which is a whole 'nuther blog.  Just be aware that the cobs that were red were the softest in case you ever need to know!

The loose kernels were put in the pot of water with the fire burning underneath.  This was an all day job and as it cooked it needed to be stirred regularly.  A very long wooden paddle was used for this.  As it cooked it swelled.  Dry corn takes a long time to cook with a simmering fire outside.  As it simmered it released the hard core of the corn.  After due time mother added lye which raised the water temperature higher than any fire would raise it.  We continued to stir, but at this time we needed to skim off the hard stuff that was coming out of the corn.  The important thing to remember at this time was not to let any water touch our skin because it would burn us bad.  While the lye back then was made from the soft gray ash of hard wood, usually hickory, it was still caustic.  

Fresh water was added and we now used a sort of dipper with only tiny holes so when we scooped we got water along with debris.  When at long last the water was clear the corn, which was now soft and fat was dipped out and put in the center of a large piece of cheese cloth.  This was hung on the clothes line to hang in the sun until it was dry.  I am assuming that from there it went to the root cellar.  I do not remember.  I do think that a some point it was also dried and made into grits.  Grits are ground hominy.  I only like yellow grits.  (My friend Sherman only liked white grits, but that is another story.)

Looking back, it sure seemed like an awful lot of work for very little product, but that was the whole point of life back then.  We worked all summer to fill the root cellar with stuff to keep us alive through the winter.  Sweet potatoes were a staple because they kept better than white potatoes.  And Apples!  My God it seemed like everyone in the world blessed us with apples in the fall.  Apples kept well in the root cellar and we had them all winter!  Fresh apples, fried apples, baked apples, stuffed apples, apple pie, apple sauce! But the best apple of all was my mother!  She was the apple of my eye!  (Little humor there!)

So bid the farmstead fare thee well for now.  I think that is an old German saying.  Instead of saying goodbye, Grandma always said "fare thee well" which means " good wishes to you at parting." 

Peace and prosperity to you all and may you never have to cook your dried up corn again!

Cursive? What is that?

 I woke up this morning remembering the first grade at Nickerson Elementary School.  It was a big two story red brick building just one block down from where Main Street ended.  Why is it that 72 years later I can still remember the buildings in Nickerson, Kansas, but I can not remember what I needed from the grocery store? I think there were 3 or 4 sandstone steps that led up to the double doors that opened into the first floor.  The first floor held the first 4 grades as well as the kitchen where Mrs. Ritchie cooked the meat and potatoes that was the staple noon meal for the kids who could afford to pay for meals.  The little Bartholomew kids carried a sack lunch which was eaten at the other end of the long lunch table.  It was sort of like the lunch counters at Woolsworth where the "blacks" were not allowed to set at all back in the days of segregation.  Kind of funny how some things in life never really leave our psyche.  But I digress.

I was 5 years old when I walked into the hallowed halls of learning.  The first thing I learned was that my coat went on a hook on the wall and not just any hook.  We were assigned a hook in alphabetical order according to our last name.  Which brought us to our first lesson we would learn....the alphabet!  Across the front of the class room was a giant blackboard.  Above the blackboard was mounted the alphabet.  Directly below each letter was a picture that we should associate with that letter.  A a Apple apple.  Bb Boy boy.  Cc Cat cat.  You get the drift.

I can remember how my little mind hungered to learn all the letters.  All 26 of them.  At 5 years of age I somehow knew that if I could learn those letters and if I could learn to count, that the world would be my oyster!  It is funny how the young mind can grasp a concept when it wants to.  Learning was the most important thing I had to do at that age and I was going to do it right!  The fact that about as soon as I mastered those block letters, I would advance to second grade and on to third where the little block letters would fade into "cursive".  The letters I had worked so hard to learn were no longer in use and now I must learn "cursive."

Learning cursive also entailed practicing making loops and swirls until they were all even and my skill at printing now became "penmanship."  I was a natural!  Cursive was much faster than printing.  It looked better.  My mind was now free and unencumbered by the restraints of printing.  I loved to write and to me the greatest gift in the world was a blank tablet and a pencil.  I was enthralled and the love of writing never left me.  For many years it was buried under the guise of motherhood and the need to work to survive.  (Love of alcohol also interfered in that time period.)  But time marches on.

Penmanship became a thing of the past at some point.  I am not sure when that happened, but I was having coffee with my Republican friend in Kansas when he told me he would like me to come to Topeka and write thank you notes for him because I had beautiful handwriting!  While I was flattered at the compliment, I was stunned to learn that schools were no longer teaching "cursive".  I actually thought he was bullshitting me, but he wasn't.  

Since I was am longer in the loop of school age children I do not know what the status of cursive vs printing is.  Maybe someone out there can tell me.  We are in the day of computers and text messages and I think the only pen and paper stuff is the grocery list I make occasionally.  I have, however, become adept at asking the question, "Can you read cursive?" when asked for my address.  Usually I am met with a blank stare.  How sad is that!

I guess I will go google it!  I have a box of stuff from my mother in the closet.  Uncle Ray and mother corresponded regularly and it was always in cursive.  It is sad to think that I should actually throw that stuff on a fire, because no one will be able to read it.  

Bret just came up and I asked him if he can read cursive.  His answer was " I can, but it is confusing."  During our brief discourse  he made this statement:  "It is sad that cursive has been lost, because with the loss of cursive goes the loss of a language.  The Declaration of Independence and all the old documents are written in cursive, so they can not be read in the original form."  

So let me drink a cup of kindness now to the little red brick school house that no longer exists and to the teachers that taught me how to write my name and put my thoughts on paper.  They have faded into posterity, but never from my mind.

Mrs. Breece, Mrs. Wate, Miss Holmes, Mrs. Howe, Miss Swenson, Miss Lauver, Mr. Schrieber, and Mr. Bolinger.  You will live forever in the hallowed halls of my mind.

What good is a hog head without a hog?

I woke up with Kathy Matea and this song on my mind this morning, fixed Bret his "to go sandwich" and then turned on the computer.  Now how my little mind made the leap to an old dish called "scrapple" I do not know.  What I do know is I used to do quilting for an older lady and she had put together a cookbook of old recipes.  Now if there is one thing I like, it is food.  And I dearly love to try to replicate the old dishes the older folks used to make.  My mother could make as a four course meal out of a spider web, an apple and 3 pounds of imagination.  Times were sure rough back then, but like my husband told my mother one time, "You can never tell by looking at her today that she EVER missed a meal." 

I can recall back in my Nickerson days, that dad always had a pig or two in the pen.  When the time was right the old iron 3 legged pot would be filled with water and a fire built under it.  The pig would be caught, trussed and tied to the tripod which stood over the 3 legged pot and it's throat would be slit.  When it had "bled out" it would be lowered into to the boiling water and then taken back out and gutted.  It was then moved to a very big table and everyone had a job.  Sometimes us kids were "allowed" to scrape the outer skin to remove the hair. 

I think the meat was taken into town to the locker plant when it was wrapped.  We had only a small icebox back then so there was no storage at the house.  The skin, feet, and head remained behind.  The black kettle was cleaned and the fat cut into small pieces and thrown into the pot.  The fire was stoked back up and the fat was rendered giving us lard.  When the fat was rendered there were crisp skin pieces left that were called "cracklings".  To my way of thinking that was the very best part.  The best ones were the ones that bubbled from the heat.  Those were especially crispy.  Cracklings were used to flavor beans, cornbread, and of course for eating.  The ears and the tail were pickled as were the feet.  The jowls were salted and put in the cellar to age into bacon.

But the head!  The head was put back into the 3 legged kettle, which was now scoured clean.  It was covered with water and a fire built under it.  The lid was in place and it was left to simmer all night.
The next day it was allowed to cool until it could be removed from the kettle.  The skin was discarded (that means the dogs got it) and the eyeballs, brain, and everything else except the meat was fed to the dogs.  This left mother with the water it was cooked in and the few bits of meat that had escaped . 

With all the stock now clean she  now stoked up the fire and threw in sage, salt, onion, a bay leaf or 2 and corn meal equal to the stock.  This required a lot of stirring so it did not stick.   In due time it was pronounced "done" and the "scrapple" was now dipped into loaf pans and moved to the lower part of the root cellar and allowed to cool.  When it was cool it was wrapped and taken to the "ice box".  That stuff would keep forever.  Mother would slice it in one inch slices and brown it in very hot lard.  It was served with maple syrup and it was the best food in the whole world.

Mother went to the Salt City Business College in Hutchinson and got an office job in Hutchinson.  Of course, we moved to Hutchinson down on A Avenue.  When we left Nickerson, mother took one look at the 3-legged iron cook kettle and never looked back.  She now had running water, gas heat, indoor plumbing and electricity that was in every room of the house.  The old coal oil lamp was left on the table.  The door was closed, but not locked because we had years ago lost the skeleton key.  We were city folk now.


Today I miss my mother, but there is not a day goes by that I do not.

It used to be a more user friendly world.

Back in Nickerson in the late 1940's life was so simple.  We did not lock our doors.  Oh, we could lock them, we just did not.  We had a key called a skeleton key.  Our key fit every other lock on every other door in town.  The lock was not so much to keep anyone out as it was to keep the door from blowing open while we were gone.  Do not think we were gone very often, because we were not.  Nor was anyone else, so the "key to the front door" was more a symbol of status then actually meaning anything.  If, perchance , the key was misplaced one could simply go to the local hardware store and purchase another one for just a few cents.  I do not know at what point in time someone came up with the idea to have a lock with a special key, but it was some time after life on Strong Street.

Another thing that was in every yard was a pump for water.  Ours was a "pitcher pump" which held its prime which meant we did not have to pour water in it to get it started.  There were 2 things that were always located on the nearest fence post and those were a can of water just in case the pump did lose it's prime and  a tin cup.  The tin cup was for drinking the water that came from the pump.  If we were playing and got thirsty, we simply went to the nearest pump and got a drink from the pump.  It was the neighborly thing to do and back in the day the house that did not let you drink from their pump was avoided at any cost.  Water was free and everyone was a neighbor.  Oh, there were a few houses that had dogs and sometimes the dogs were not so friendly, but usually the lady of the house would holler at the dog and then you could get a drink and be on your way.  I do know that the water that was pumped up from deep in the earth was so sweet and cool that it must have been the elixir of the Gods. 

I did not know about hoboes growing up, but I had heard of such things from my brother, Jake.  He was friends with a man who lived down on the Arkansas River when we were on the Stroh place.  Seems his name was Blackie Joe or something like that.  He worked with silver and turquoise and sold his wares around town.  Mother did not like Jake hanging out with anyone who lived on the river, but Jake was always one to sneak off and not tell her where he went.  I saw Blackie on the bridge once and he was scary.  His clothes were black and his face was very weathered.  I did not get close!  He was not on the river in the winter and Jake said he "went south" and that he had family down south.

When I started high school I had to walk down main street to school and then back up main street to go home.  The railroad tracks ran right through the middle of town and sometimes the trains would block the way.  This was back in the early 1950's and the box car doors were open and we could see  the men "riding the rails."  Mother always cautioned  us about these men and I was scared to death of them, but secretly I sometimes thought how much fun that might be to just go where ever the train took me.

Another thing that mother was always adamant about was the eating business.  We had a big round oak table.  Of course I think that is all that anyone had back then.  If we were eating, we were eating at the table.  Homework was done at the table.  Sometimes she would make us hot chocolate and that was drunk at the table.  On Sundays we sometimes went to Plevna to Great Grandma's house and had fried chicken dinner at her big round table.  She lived with my grandma Haas who had a stroke and could not walk without a walker.  I lived with them my freshman year of high school until grandma died and great grandma moved to Coldwater.  That was the best year of my whole life.

Well, I am rambling.  The cat is rolling a marble around my feet.  It is 4:00 AM and the rest of the world is asleep.  And yet here I set, thinking of how my mother would come to my house and set at my big round oak table and reminisce of the time all decisions were made at the table and how the table symbolizes the center of the home.  She was right. 

Course, my momma was always right!  RIP my sweet mother. 

The sound of silence is killing me.

https://youtu.be/bGLHadex0B0

I wake up most nights just after midnight.  It is then that I do my best thinking.  Last night was no different.  I have nothing in particular to worry about, so I just lay there and think and inevitably end up back in Nickerson and I can hear a lonesome train whistle coming from the track that ran about 3 blocks from the house.  Mostly what I hear is silence, but the silence is broken occasionally by a coyote.  Rarely it is a wolf, but rarer still is a panther, or mountain lion drifting up from the river.  I love the river and I especially love walking the banks of a river or creek.

There is so much to see, or at least there was back when I was a pubescent girl with a vivid imagination.  Maybe it was just that back then the river and the cemetery were the 2 places I could go to escape the tedium of every day life.  Mom let me go to the cemetery with no qualms, but she worried when I walked along the creek.  Now granted Cow Creek ran past Nickerson on one side and Bull Creek on the other.  Access was restricted when those 2 flooded which they did every Spring.  The fact that the third and final escape was the Arkansas and it was always running high.  I went back to Nickerson a few years back and was surprised that nothing had been done about flood control, so they were pretty much busy building little dirt dams here and there to keep the water out of their houses.

There is just something about a quiet stream far from the city.  Little spiders skate across the surface where the water is still.  Tiny minnows gather in still places.  Baby frogs find their first water legs in pondlike places.  The abundance of flowers and mosses gives hope to a world that is still living away from the crowded city.  I am terrified of snakes, but in the wilderness they do not bother me at all.  I just back up and go a different way.  I am in their territory and that makes a world of difference.  When I find one in the goose house, it becomes my duty as superior human to kill it.  In the wilderness, I am the intruder.

Do you know what a crawdad house looks like?  If you come upon a small hole with balls of mud piled around it, that is a crawdad house.  I used to think a crawdad was a tiny lobster, but late in life I learned they were the cockroach of the creek.  I still like them.  When they are in the water they mostly travel backwards.  When Bret was 4 years old I took him fishing at the park and he caught a crawdad.  Actually the crawdad caught him because it had a grip on his hook and when he let go, he fell to the ground.  Bret was terrified of the "crab".  Jiraiya and I found one by the ditch a week or so age.  He and his daddy went back and found it and it was nearly dead, so Bret put it in the duck water.  The next morning we found its lifeless body near the duck water.  We had a funeral complete with rivers of tears for the poor little crab.

If I live to be 100 years old, I will never forget my life in Nickerson, Kansas.  I go back there sometimes.  I do not know any of the people there, but I haunt the places I used to walk.  Bull Creek was a dry creek bed last time I was there, but I still recall how it could fill the banks and overflow across the fields when the Spring rains came.  I  remember my brother catching a bull frog and putting it in my skirt with instuctions to take it to the house and find something to put it in.  I was mortified that it would bite me.  As luck had it, I opened my skirt to show it to Josephine and it leapt into the house.  She almost beat me to death before I recaptured it.  I think I told you she was mean.

I want to go back home next Spring.  I will drive 96  Highway and the State Patrol will have a man at every bridge, because the creeks all flood in the Spring.  It is just something that we can count on.  Since Kansas is flat it floods easily.  I love Colorado, and my life is here, but I think when I die, my soul will live in Kansas.

At least I hope so!

All I see is a pink ball...

It is Christmas all over the world, and contrary to popular belief it is Christmas at my house.  I do not have a tree and all the trappings.  There is no Christmas music wafting from the stereo.  And last night I missed the service at church for the first time in many, many years.  But it is still Christmas morning here.

Yesterday I went to a friends house for lunch.  I dined with Ross Barnhart and his brothers and most of their wives.  His cousin was also there.  It was lovely and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Today I am staying home.  I have some things I want to do today, but right now I am thinking back to Strong Street.

I know we lived there for several years, but I am not sure how long.  My favorite Christmas is the year I received a pink ball for Christmas from Santa Clause.  Santa always left our gifts on our chairs at the table.  That year I received a coloring book, a box of 8 Crayola's, 2 chocolate candies an orange and a pink ball.  It was about the size of the orange and it was the most wonderful ball in the world!  When I dropped the ball it bounced very high.  I threw it against the house and it bounced back.  It was so wonderful, but of course , that did not last.  It was just a matter of time before the wonderful pink ball picked up a sticker and no longer bounced.  The last time I recall seeing it was deflated and living in a mud hole.  Soon the coloring book was all colored, the Crayon's broken and missing from the box.

The last Christmas I recall was the last one I want to remember.  Jake told me Santa was not real and he knew that for a fact because Momma was going to let him play Santa and give out the presents that year.  I did not believe him, so I asked him what I was going to get and he told me.

"It is a tin doll house with a mother, father, brother, sister and a dog. A black dog." And that was what I got.  Jake had assembled it by pushing the metal tabs through the slots and folding them down to hold them in place.  And sure enough, there was a pink mother and father, a boy and a girl, and a little dog.  It had a couch and chair, a table and 4 chairs, and a tub and stool and sink in the bathroom.  The kitchen had a sink, refrigerator and a stove.  Jake told me he would get me more stuff someday.  But it never happened.

Some how the wonderfulness of the doll house was over shadowed by the sadness the Santa was not real.  All those years, it had been my momma cleaning other peoples houses and saving money a little at a time to surprise me.  It made me sad to think of her doing without so I could have something I really wanted.  I came to hate that gift more every day.  Momma never knew, but I did.

I hated the poverty that was our life.  I hated that my father did not ever touch me or carry me like he did Mary, Donna and Dorothy.  I told myself that he probably did, when I was little, but I do not remember that.  He spent a lot of time drinking when I was growing up and I attribute it to that.  Sure doesn't help these many years later.

So today, I am staying home, alone.  I am alone because I want to be, not because I have no one.  I have 6 children who have mates and children and some of those children have children which means I am a great grandmother.  I have nieces and nephews.  I have very good friends.  I just want to be alone, so I will.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and pray that you all enjoy life to the fullest.  I know I am going to do just that!

Peace!

Jake Smith and his grinding wheel.

Now this is a grinding wheel!  It is not the one in Jake Smith's back yard, but it is pretty close.  His had a bicycle seat on the end where the pedals are located.  He used to set there and pedal which caused the stone to rotate.  He would hold an axe blade against the side.  When the first side was sharp, he would turn it over and sharpen the other side. He would finish by dripping water on the blade and the spinning stone.  When he was finished he had a blade that was so sharp it could be used to shave and he tested it by removing a patch of hair from his arm.

Granted he could not make a living by sharpening axe blades, but it did help supplement the income he and his wife received.  She cleaned houses for some ladies in town to help make ends meet.  He was a retired police officer, or so I heard.  He would occasionally "strap his  service weapon" on his belt and scare us kids.  He was quick to tell us how fast we would be dispatched to the other side if we did not get out of his yard.  And to emphasis that he meant business, he would twirl the pistol on one finger.  Then he would set down in the chair that was located by a tree, lean back against the tree and have his afternoon nap.  

One afternoon, Jake and one of his cronies waited until he was sound asleep and then they crept up and carefully encased the old guy in ropes so when he woke up and started to tip his chair back down, it did not tip.  He pulled the ropes over his head, tipped the chair down.  Sadly when he stood up to walk, he found his feet were tied and catapulted to the ground.  He did not find this nearly as funny as us kids hiding over in the weeds behind the shed did!  Damn lucky he did not shoot us that time.  He knew who did it, but of course we all lied and said, "No!  Jake went bike riding and he is not back yet."

Life was so simple back then.  Sorry to say I have not seen one of those wheels in years and the one I saw was in an antique shop and priced far out of my range. Nor do I own an axe.  I do possess a 10 pound sledge hammer and a hatchet.  The hatchet was a pricey little purchase, but there are times when that little guy comes in very handy.  I used it a couple times to separate a chicken head from the body, but I do not do that any more.    My favorite way to butcher chickens was to grasp their feet, step on the head and jerk upward.  It was quick and painless, but barbaric.  Kenny's mom used to tie thier feet together and hang them from the clothes line.  She then streeeeeeeeeeeeetched out their head and proceeded to cut their head from their neck with a butcher knife.  Now THAT was barbaric!  I could scald and de-feather a chicken faster than anyone in the county, but that is history and I now buy my chicken breasts at the local frozen food section.

I just remembered why I started this blog!  I came across my hatchet the other day and noticed that there was a nick on the blade and that the blade was dull.  I have an electric grinding wheel in the garage with coarse and fine wheels.  I used to use it to sharpen my hoe, but since the snakes have taken over the garden, I do not plant any more and that area goes to weeds for the geese.  I am sure at some point in time I am going to have to do something, but for now, I am just going to have my humble breakfast of grits and cheese  and think about something else.

May Jake Smith rest in peace setting in his chair, propped against the tree, dreaming of his bygone life as a peace officer retired and sharpening axes and knives on North Strong Street, in Nickerson, Kansas.

Box Car Willie

I love youtube and usually have it playing in my background.  The other day I lucked onto the life story of Box Car Willie.  I do not remember dates, but he was one of the old singers and very successful in that endeavor.  He grew up in a shack with his mom and dad just a few feet from the railroad track where his dad worked.  The man could make the train whistle sound and it was so authentic that it was like the train was right in front of you.  And guess where that man took me?  Right back to Nickerson.

The railroad ran right across Main Street from East to West.  It came from somewhere and went to Hutchinson.  Kind of ran parallel to Highway 50 as I recall.  I have found in later years that it runs to La Junta, Colorado and turns south there and goes some where.  I used to ride from Garden City, Kansas to Hutchinson with my kids when I lived in Western Kansas.  But back to Nickerson.

In grade school I had a friend named Eveline.  She had very black hair and eyes.  Mother always said she was an Indian.  I did not know.  She had one sister and her name was Georgia.  They lived in a boxcar that set where the water tank for the train was located.  In Kansas, and I suppose all the places the train ran, there was a water tank every 7 miles.  The first trains had to take on water as they were steam engines.  Water had to be kept ready for whatever time the train came through.  That is why all the towns are 7 miles apart.  Some of them survived; some did not. Nickerson was one that did.

A lot has changed.  I know many years ago there had to be a man who shoveled the coal and kept the engine running.  I am sure now that if there are coal fired engines they are fed through some sort of mechanical means.  Now how I got off on this tangent is more that I can figure out!  What I want to tell you is how I would lay in bed at night and sometimes here the train whistle far off in the distance.  It was always the loneliest sound in the world.  The whistle would also bring on the howls of the wolves.  Train whistles and wolves have been ingrained in my mind as long as I can remember.  There is not a train track near my house now, but sometimes on a clear summer night with my windows open I can hear a faint whistle and it takes me back.

I recall when I started high school that I had to cross the tracks to get back to the road that led to my house.  That road was actually a county road that ran North to Sterling.  I lived one block off the highway.  Sometimes the train would be lumbering through and I could stand and watch it pass.  There were times that I could see men through the open door of the box car.  One time there was a man setting in the open door and he waved at me.  He wore overalls and he looked very sad.  After that I talked to Jake Smith who lived on Strong Street and he told me about how the hobos and tramps "rode the rails."  He said sometimes the "bulls" would pull them off the train and beat them to death.  Not sure if that was true or not, but in my impressionable little mind, anything was possible.

Then my brother, Jake, took me around to show me some of the signs that hobos left on peoples fences or trash cans to either denote a friendly person, a mean dog, or a hot meal for the asking.  They would make a mark to communicate and the other hobos knew to ask or pass that house by.  I do not know  if there are still hobos or not and I do not know how to find out.  I do know in later years the railroad owners hired people to keep the hobo's off the trains.

Life is so sad, isn't it?  Who knows what stories these men (there may have been women too) could tell.  I wish I could go back in time and talk to one of them.  I am pretty sure had I tried my mother would have beat me to death, but what a rich history that time was, and I was not smart enough to know it!  But back to Box Car Willie.  He brought the railroad to life.  He brought poverty to our door and he took the history of the box car  to England.  He was a scruffy little man, but he could pack a house.  They do not make them like that any more.

That era is gone and soon there will not be anyone to remember.  Sometimes my heart is very sad that I do not have knowledge of what I was living at the time.  My grand kids will never know what the outhouse was or that water had to be pumped from a well in the ground, or that the homeless people of today are the ancestors of the men who rode the rails.

Peace! and prosperity to all.

This about says it for me.

I have spent my whole life searching for something.  Always looking for the outfit that would make me beautiful, the meal that would satisfy me, the car I would love to drive, and clear down to searching for the man that would make me complete.  Some of those things I actually found, but no longer have them.  I do the looking back and regretting a lot, but it does not seem to do any good.  Then I found this picture on facebook and it pretty well sums it up.

I have the big house.  I have the car.  I have more clothes then I will ever wear, eat what I want when I want.  I had the man who made me feel complete for 20 years.  Now I am alone and I have the perfect opportunity to find myself.  It is time to deal with that little girl on Strong Street, the battered wife, the neglectful mother, the absent sister, and the wayward daughter.

Many years ago I put all my emotions in a closet and now I find that I would like to take them out, examine them, forgive myself and move on.  I suppose life itself is built on a learning curve and I am just grateful to have stayed on this spinning ball long enough to understand this.

I can not save the world.  I can not even save one person, but I can save myself.  Maybe some day there will be room in my life for another man, but it is not now.  I am going to look at myself in the mirror and not see wrinkles and scars.  I am going to see a kind, loving woman who wants to save the world, but I am going to start with myself.  This pretty much sums it up! (click blue)

Wish me luck!

Vincent's sand pit down the back road.

Back in my growing up days in Nickerson, it was hot!  Damned hot as a matter of fact.  And the humidity was high, which did not help at all.  Colorado is dry.  In Colorado I can shower and hang my towel on the hook and it will be dry in just a couple hours.  Not so in Kansas.  Not only was the towel still damp the next day, but it was starting to have a sour smell.  By day 3 it was mildewed.  Nasty stuff.

To survive the heat, we wore a minimum of clothes and tried to stay in the shade of a tree.  Being in the house was not much better, because air conditioning was pretty much non-existent.  Nickerson had no swimming pool as I recall and if they did we would not have been able to afford it.  So we were left with the Arkansas River, Cow Creek, Bull Creek and Vincent's Sand Pit.  Mummy's had a sand pit on the other end of town, but we were not allowed in there.  It was a functioning business and Vincent's was not.  And Vincent's was within walking distance.  Hey!  I just remembered, there was a sand pit about 3 blocks from the house.  I do not recall whether it was a working pit or not, but it seems way back in my little mind that the owners child had fallen in and drowned, so it was not open any more.  (This may or may not be true because my 70 years prior memories tend to become rather distorted.)

Back to Vincent's Sand Pit.  I have been deathly afraid of water my entire life.  I do not know why, only that I was and still am.  (I did go many years back to the YWCA heated pool and took swimming lessons so if I were to fall in I would know to roll over and relax and float until some friendly passerby could rescue me.  Hopefully!)  Consequently, I did not swim in the sand pit and to my clearest memory, I only visited it once.  It seems it was about a mile or so from the house and beyond the cemetery.  I recall running barefoot down the road which was very sandy and the sand was very hot!  Jake rode his bike and I ran behind.

Vincent's Sand Pit was also a favorite fishing spot.  It must be a lot like Beemer Lake in Lakin, Kansas.  Usually the fishermen came later in the day or very early in the morning.  Fish rarely bite in the heat of the day.  We had a pint jar half full with water and a pop bottle suspended upside down so the opening just touched the water.  When the water was sucked up it the neck of the bottle, it meant the fish were biting.  If it was not raised, you might as well stay home.  When I married Kenneth we fished a lot, so I set one of those on the window sill in the kitchen.  When he asked me what that was for, I told him.  It was then I learned that it was actually a crude barometer and I could save myself a lot of watchin if I just walked over and looked at the barometer on the wall!  Duh!

As we set here, gripped in a heat wave, I flash back to the early days in Nickerson and thank the good Lord for central air.  Nickerson was home for all my formative years, but as much as I yearn for those carefree days, I do certainly enjoy the convenience of running water, electricity, inside plumbing, and central air.

So I live vicariously in my childhood memories.  I set in my 72 degree house while the sun beats down outside on the thermometer now reading 101.  I miss the days of sand pits and sand hill plums, and I thank the man upstairs for giving me a childhood that can make me empathetic to the people I serve today.  There is not a night that I do not lay in my bed and count my blessings, and growing up in Nickerson, Kansas has made me the woman I am today and for that  I thank God!  

Strong Street and the Cemetary

This is the Hoffman house which was right before our corner on North Strong Street.  Mr. Hoffman was quite the gardener and he first built a basement house and then built the house on top of it, but they lived in the basement for about a year.

 And here is the N. Strong Street sign.  We were so proud when they put it up because it made us think we were really important.

When we lived here we had a bare board one story house with a cracked cement front slab porch.  There were 2 big catalpa trees in front one of which we could climb and survey our kingdom.  This is the same place under the Catalpa trees that Jake and I used to listen to the Grand Ole' Opry.

There was also a walking stick cactus on the property line between us and the Reinke family.  We used to push each other into it.  Ask me if those things are sharp!

 This is all that seems to be left of the Catalpa trees. Just brush.  I never see a Catalpa that I am not transported back in time.

 I do not remember where this house was located, only that it has replaced one of the houses on Strong Street, because they are all gone now.

Next stop is the cemetery.  This is the tombstone for my sister Josephine's little son that was born dead.  I was there when that happened, but I think I told you about that.  Jack Lamb brought the tiny casket to the house in his car.  We had the service in the front room of her house.  I remember the tiny little face and the tiny little hand holding his blue blanket closed over his little body.  He looked like he was sleeping.  That was so sad. 

In the corner of the cemetery to the left of the entrance in the front was a bunch of brush and in it was these tiny tombstones.  They are hard to read.  I used to walk over there on hot days and go to that corner because it was under a big tree and it was cool there.  I would sing to these little kids and in my photo album I have a picture of the corner as it appeared than.  I took a picture when my brother came back from Germany and brought me a Kodak camera.  Sixty years later and they finally cleaned out that corner and laid these few pieces of tombstones together in an effort to preserve it as it was then.

This is the only grave that actually survived the years.

And so I leave.

 Wildmead Cemetery will always be in my mind and the little friends I had that were my company when I needed them most will remain behind.  I always felt so safe in that place under that tree.

I doubt that I will return to that cemetery again in this lifetime, but it will always be a part of my heritage and while I did not know the kids in the corner I was accepted by them and I am sure some where in another place and time, we will meet again.

Only God knows what goes through my mind, but I am trying to piece it together and find peace. 

Nickerson on the Ailmore place.

Here we go down memory lane.  This first picture is Roy Keating's house just up the road from us.  Roy raised pigs, and I mean really big pigs.  I have rarely seen pigs that big.  They were black and white.  He also had a chicken house.  I gathered eggs while dad took care of the pigs.  Mother had told him what would happen to him if I got eaten by one of those damned pigs.

Going on past and then taking a left turn would bring you to Bull Creek.  Normally it was dry, but this spring it was almost out of it's banks.  This is the same Bull Creek of that bull frog episode that occurred with sister Josephine.  Made me want to get out of the car and wade like I did all those years ago.

 Right past the creek was the Rumble house.  I was surprised that it was still standing, but houses were built to last back then.  Mr. Rumble told me one time that if I learned the words to the song "Buttons and Bows" he would give me a shiny dime.  That was a fortune back then for a snot nosed kid, but so was the song playing on the radio.  I have since learned most of the words, but sadly no one wants to hear me sing!

 I think this is the Barthold house where I used to spy on the sisters drinking tea in their back yard.  Damn!  I know now what an obnoxious kid is, and I sure think I qualified!

This is all for today.  The computer is not wanting me to do this.  

Tomorrow I will journey down Strong Street and go to the cemetery.  I want to thank you for joining me down memory lane as I confront and exorcise my demons.  This is something I have wanted to do for years and knowing you are with me makes me stronger.

I love you all!

Off to a roaring start!

Well, I spent Saturday night in Lakin with Dona and Joey.   Woke Saturday morning and after breakfast we did errands and in due time were on the road to Hutchinson.  All this was well and good until we passed Macksville and Stafford.  Gets pretty few and far between for rest stops at that point.  Of course as soon as that happens the old bladder kicks it and demands attention.

To make a long story short, we solved that problem.  And then I had a brilliant idea!  On 50 highway just a ways past Sylvia is the house my grandma Haas lived in before she moved into Plevna.  Over the years I had watched it set empty and seen it deteriorate.  I had taken pictures of it from the shoulder of the road , but never gotten brave enough to walk up to it alone.  Today I had a partner who was going to help me!  So I pulled off the road and parked.

The prairie grass was waist high, but we forged onward.  I took pictures through the broken windows of the ceiling laying on the floor.  Time had taken it's toll of the old house and it was hard to imagine my little granny ever having been a wife and mother in that place.  

We walked on back to where the chicken house was.  It was in way better shape then the house, but not by much.  With all my curiosity sated it was now time to wade back through the grass to the car.

We arrived in Hutch just in time to wait for a freight  train to very slowly wend it's way through the crossing on Monroe street.  I thought I felt something tickle my neck so I reached my hand up and felt something that was not a hair.  I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger and looked down at a fat little tick!  Visions of a slow painful death from Lyme disease clouded my vision.  As soon as the train passed we drove quickly to Evelyn's house. (As quickly as one can drive when they do not remember where she lives.) In short order we were at Evelyn's and in the shower.

Next stop was sister Donna's house.  Donna and Karen have a new dog,  I forget what kind it is, but it is a tiny one that barks all the time and it is a very high pitched bark.  It is Pomp(somemoreletters) and it is the dog that guards the Queen of England.  It is black and white.

Now it is the next day and I have already eaten two times and am scheduled for another feeding at 5:30,  I went to Nickerson today and have a lot of pictures of the old places I used to know, but I can not download them to this laptop so you will have to see them later.  For now I am going to go do something even if it is wrong.

Have a good one.  More from the road tomorrow or the next day.

This would be my oldest brother, Richard Nichols.  He was my father's oldest son, by his first wife.

 This is William E. Bartholomew who was my fathers second son by his first wife.  Both of them were in World War II and both of them were shell shocked, Richard more so than Gene.  This picture is from an obituary that Sam found on Ancestry.com.  He apparently lived in Seattle, Washington when he died in1973.

I never really knew my step brothers because they were grown and gone when I was old enough to know I had them.  Since Gene was the only one that was not adopted from the orphanage, he tended to check in with dad occasionally.  I do know he had lived for a while with a family named Banks.  It seemed that they were either from Nebraska or close to that area.    An obituary that my son found on Ancestry shows he died in 1973.  So there was a span of about 20 years that he had a life in Washington.  If anyone has any knowledge of him during that time, I would sure like to know.  I hope he had a family that loved him.  Life is strange.

So I guess I will put that brother to bed since I at least know he has been dead for 46 years.  Rest in peace, Gene.

Alive and well and wishing otherwise.

I remember back when I was young and starting my life as an adult.  I was filled with hope and joy at the future ahead of me.  I had a wonderful husband who loved me and our life would be complete if we had a child.  Of course it must be a son.  Nothing else would work.  So after a year or so, I finally got pregnant.  And then I had the baby.  It was a girl, heaven forbid so we had to try again right away.  My husband was adamant that the next one be a son.  Whoops!  foiled again.  The third one was also a girl and by this time my loving husband was fed up with me and my failure to give him an heir.  After much begging and pleading, he gave me one last chance.  I was filled with gratitude at this magnanimous man and the kindness he showed me after 3 complete failures.  This time I did it right!  I gave him his son.

Of course that marriage went South like a fart in a whirlwind!  Not even the birth of his son could save it.  But then there was the divorce and then the brief reconciliation.  And then the second divorce which was delayed a bit because I was busy giving birth to my 4th daughter.   All of this is history and is not relevant to much of anything, except facts.  And you do know that the facts as I remember them and how he remembers them are not necessarily the same.  I was 3 years younger than him when we married, but he was 3 years younger then me in his latter years.  Mother always said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the same goes with truth.  One man's truth is another man's fantasy,  much like one man's pleasure is another man's pain.  But I digress.

One thing I have always held dear was life!  I was invincible in my younger years and my zest for life was what kept my head above water when I was sinking in emotional pain.  And I survived.  And here I am today wondering just what in the hell all of that was about.  My kids are grown and gone away and have kids and grandkids of their own.  Mother, father, sisters, brother, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends be damned.  They are all gone.  I try to look up the family tree and see someone above me and it just ain't happening.   And it isn't just the people, every thing is different.  I go to Nickerson and the house is gone.  All the houses on Strong Street have been replaced.  It is still pretty much a ghetto, but it was my ghetto.  I go to Hutchinson, where I spent most of the time with the kids and that house is gone also along with the house next door.

And now I am in Pueblo, Colorado for the last 40 years.  My in-laws are all gone except for one brother in law that I never see.  My husband is gone and has been for almost 20 years.  Where does this all end?  All the pictures on my desk are pictures of the past.  Two old grandma's, a mother and father on their wedding day, a brother as he was frozen in time in the 7th grade.  What do people do when they get too old to be useful any more?  Do they just wither away?  I did the volunteering thing. Now what?  Make cookies?  Water the plants?  How long does that take?

So I lay in my bed at night and go over what I have done and it looks like a pretty pathetic showing in the grand scheme of things.  I remember a dark haired girl and the dreams she had of being a missionary. And I escape to that world.   But then I wake up and I look down at my sleeve and I see, coming out of the sleeve, my mothers hand. 

We all have our baggage.

And my Father was no different.  When he married my mother he already had a shattered family behind him.  He had been married and had 5 kids.  One son and one daughter had died at a very young age.  His wife was deceased and he had been left with 3 sons.  The boys had all ended up in an orphanage.  Earl had been adopted as had Richard.  Sadly, Gene had not found a forever family.  Earl seemed to be the most normal as he married and sired 2 boys and 1 girl.  We were in contact with them although it never was a close relationship.  Richard had a lot of mental health issues stemming from his years in the Army.  Ah, but dear Gene was a study unto itself!

I did not see Richard or Earl until my teenage years, but Gene turned up early.  We were living on the Stroh place.  I must have been 5 or 6 years old, possibly 7.  I recall him turning up in the middle of the night, or so it seemed.  He came with somebody named Banks and that is about all I recall about that meeting.  When you are little you pick up scraps of conversation and piece together your own reality.  That is what I have done with Gene Bartholomew.  Over the years I learned that he had a wife and son back east some where.  Seems brother Gene had a bad habit and that was writing checks on someone else's bank account.  The state also had a bad habit of arresting him and putting him in prison.

In a box in my closet are letters from Gene that he had written to our father.  Parts of those letters are seared in my mind.  I do not read them anymore.  "Dear Daddy, When are you going to come and get me?  We are going to get a new pair of overalls in a couple weeks.  I miss you, daddy"

Some time in my grade school years I recall carrying on a correspondence with him while he was in Lansing Prison.  I recall that he was an artist at calligraphy.  Mother always said that was his downfall because he was in prison for forgery.  He did have beautiful handwriting.  I do not know what we wrote about, only that we did.  I do recall once when he was released he came by the house and somebody with a car drove him out to the Arkansas River and dropped him off so he could "be alone to clear his mind."  The next day she picked him up at the specified time and he once more disappeared.

He turned up again when I was in high school.  This time he stayed with my sister and her husband, but that only lasted a few weeks and then he was gone again.  The last anyone heard of him, to my knowledge was that he had been arrested in Nebraska and rather then prosecute him for whatever he had done, they took him to the county line and dropped him off.  He was never seen nor heard of again.

I have often thought of his son.  He would have to be about my age.  His name was William (Billy) Bartholomew.  Of course I am too late, I am sure.  But wouldn't that be nice if he had heirs and one of them read this?  I am not holding out any hope at all.  Just a silly old woman waking up in the middle of the night with something on her mind.

The nastiest duck in the yard.

As you will recall I, at one time, had a  flock of 37 ducks and 15 geese here on South Road.  I can only thank God Kenny did not live to see that fiasco.  In that flock there were 4 Muscovy ducks.  All the others were just plain ducks.  By that I mean they were plain little Polander which is a domesticated Mallard that can not fly, or a mix of breeds that were like the United Nations of Duckdom.  I did have one that walked upright.  That one was white.  There was also one that was a cross which walked about half upright.  When Mr. Fox finished visiting, I had 2 ducks left, a Polander and the white upright.  A friend took them to the pond in Pueblo West and to the best of my knowledge they are still living happily ever after.  Below is a picture of the flock about half way through the fox episode.

The point of this entry is to discuss the nastiness of the 4 Muscovy ducks.  To the best of my knowledge, the Muscovy is the  only ones that can fly, and fly they did very well.  Let me go back a little further to the house on Strong Street in Nickerson, Kansas.  You recall it was built in the shotgun design which meant you entered the front and if an intruder was in the back you could  fire a shell in your 10 gauge and the shot would travel through the house and hit the bad man without touching anything else.  On the back wall was the sink and pump with a drain pipe from the sink that went through a hole in the back wall and water from the dish washing process or whatever else could be disposed of that way without having to carry a bucket outside.  It sure made life easier for us lazy little kids.

So now you are probably wondering where the water went after it got outside, aren't you?  Well, the end of the pipe was about 15 feet from the house and that is where the water went.  Also in the back yard was where the ducks lived.  I do not remember how many we had, but I do know they were nasty.  They took their little beaks and dug into the standing water looking for God only knows what to eat.  Of course anything that went in that beak was going to come out the other end.  Needless to say we were not allowed to play in that standing water.  Pretty sure that was one rule that we did abide by!

Now, I have got to explain how a Muscovy duck is different than other ducks.  Domesticated ducks do not fly.  The Muscovy is a whole different story.  The neck on the males is very thick.  The males are also very aggressive.  They did not quack, but rather whispered.  And they flew.  The would leave the pond and fly into my small back yard and roost on my air conditioner.  Now I did not like that.  When I tried to shoo them out back the males would ruffle their feathers and scare hell out of me.  The females were very docile and about half the size of the drakes.  One morning I went to the fowl house and found a dead goose.  It's neck had been broken.  Since the fowl house was attached to a wire enclosure whatever killed the goose had to be inside that place.  I watch my geese fight all through breeding season and never have I seen that kind of violence.  It had to be one of the Muscovy drakes.  So I called the guy over on County Farm Road and he came and was in agreement with my findings.  He then loaded all 4 Muscovy's into his truck and off the to the sale they went.  I never tried Muscovy's again.

Above is what I have left of my flock.  Actually I have all 4 of the African Grays, which are the dark ones. One of them is a hen.   I lost 2 of the white ones, leaving me with 2 male Emidens and 1 male and 1 female Chinese.  The two hens lay in the Spring and I practice birth control via noodle making.  Snakes are rampant in the goose house since they like eggs so as long as I keep the eggs picked up, the snakes are forced to find me some other way.  I am going to get someone out here to go in the neighbors yard and move that pile of tires because I think the snakes live in there. 

Or under my deck!

Well, that is it for today.  Spring is here.  The ducks are all gone and the weeds are coming up in the fence line so I better get on the stick.

Time and tide wait for no man...or woman!