Front sight is 2020!

It used to be that hind sight was 2020, but now when the clock strikes midnight we will be looking forward to 2020!  Well, some of us a little more than the rest of us.  I have made this leap 77 times and I find it is not luck, or whether I ate Black-eyed Peas or not, but more just a luck of the draw.  Before I found out I had to eat Black-eyed Peas in order to secure my good luck for the coming year, I had pretty good luck.  Then I started eating them and my luck stayed the same.  Could it be an old wives tale?

And speaking of old wives tales, the grandmothers were full of them.  I tend to think of them more as wise tales as opposed to the wives tales.  Here are a few for your consideration.

"Where spider web grows, no beau ever goes."
"Once bit, twice shy."
"Broken mirror brings 7 years of bad luck."
"Step on a crack; break your mothers back."
"Any thing that can go wrong, will go wrong."  (This is called Murphy's Law.)
"Spill salt you have to pick it up and throw it over your shoulder to ward off the bad luck"
"13 is an unlucky number."
"A black cat crossing your path is bad luck."
"Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning."
"Red sky at night, sailor's delight."

This list goes on and on, and I am pretty sure that I violated every one of them!  And yet here I am, alive and well and facing another year.  But, you know what?  Life is good.  Where there is life there is hope.  My momma told me that and I have lived by that my whole life.  My life has had it's ups and downs, but I would not change one single thing about it!

This is my take on life: Every man I married and every man I did not marry, was for a reason.  I learned something from everyone of them.  Some of the lessons were very hard and some still bring tears to my eyes and there are things I would know now that I should have known then that I can not change.  Every person I met along the way to today made an impact on who I am now.  Some of my lessons made me a better person; some of them taught me that life is reality.  But that is yesterday; and yesterday is gone.  I will not pass that way again.  There are no second chances at some things.

So Happy New Year!  We will toast a cup of kindness now to Auld Lang Syne; however you spell it and whatever it means!  Today is a new day and tomorrow will be a new year.  Every New Years Eve, I forgive myself, and every New Years Day, I try to do better.  Maybe someday I will get it right.

One more thing I know is that when I finally do get it right, the big guy upstairs is going to jerk the rug out from under me and holler "Hurry up and get in here while you are good to go!"

Peace to all and remember,

 "You can not sprinkle showers of happiness on other people without getting a few drops on yourself."

If I had known then what I know now!

My Mother was wise.  Very wise.  She taught me that no good deed goes unpunished.  She also taught me that you can not judge a book by it's cover.  All this was woven in with the 10 Commandments that are written in stone and I am sad to say that over the course of my life I have probably broken every one of them, some of them repeatedly.  Well, maybe not the murder one, but the covet for sure and in my drunken stupors of bygone day I was never real sure whose bed I might wake up in.  Neon lights were my favorite.  My life is a billboard for what an education can do for you and honey, I graduated Magna Cum Lade from the school of hard knocks.

I was moving a cabinet a little while ago and that entailed cleaning out drawers.  I happened upon poems I had written years ago and I would like to share one with you.  For some reason the working title of this was "Abuse".  I am not sure just what kind of abuse, but here it is:

Mother, may I please go out and play 
In the forest by the house today?

May I take my dolly with the broken arm
Deep in the forest so dark and warm?

You see the sun is shining bright,
But in the forest there is little light.

I promise that I will take care
While in the dark cool forest there.

Dolly needs to rest and mend her arm
And the forest holds a magic charm.

I'll make a bed of pine boughs sweet
And lay dear dolly at my feet.

I'll lay her gently; Her eyes will close,
And she will be in sweet repose.

The forest nymphs will gather round
As dolly rests upon the ground.

Then you will see her arm will be
As perfect as it used to be.

Then daddy can if he but will
Take you to the forest still.

He'll lay you down 'neath sky and tree
Then bring you safely home to me.

For I can see you growing weak,
I can barely hear you speak.

So Mother dear I can but plead
Rest in the forest is what we need.

I often find stuff I wrote years ago and wonder why I turned out like I did.  I guess life got in the way.  Sam sent me a picture of myself when I was a Freshman in Nickerson High School and I wonder where that slip of a girl went and more importantly, when did she leave?  I flash back to days gone by and try to put my finger on the day I lost all that naiveté and became calloused.  Or was it a series of days...and nights.  I would like to blame it on someone, but who?  The first husband?  When I became a mother?  Second husband?  When did I learn to be a waitress?  A cook?  An accountant?  A widow?  When did I learn to sew?  Weave?  When did I turn into an activist and a compassionate woman?

I used to tell my mother that I wished I could do it all over again and this time I would get it right.  There would be one husband.  2 kids and a puppy.  We would live in a nice house and have money in the bank.  We would go to church every Sunday and donate to charities.  If only.  And Mother always told me "Hind sight is 20/20....looking back.

So here I set a withered up old woman trying to tell the new generation how to do it and they laugh at me.  Tape player?  What is that?  Manual transmission?  $100 bill?  Phone stuck to the wall?  That is a pisser.  It makes me sad that the old days are gone.  If I had it to do over again I would most definitely take pictures of the old wringer washer with the Kodak box camera my brother sent me from Germany.  I would have a pair of dad's overalls tucked away some where.  And I sure as hell would not have thrown my first diamond wedding rings in the river up by Concordia.

Live and Learn.

Hand washing dishes may be an art!

I like to fill the sink with dirty dishes and then run it full of warm/hot water and put in a squirt of Ivory .  I can then plunge my hands into that and look out my back window at my domain while I wash the dishes, rinse them and put them in the drainer.  But my mind is never still and this morning it flashed back to Plevna and I heard Mrs. Crawford explaining the fine art of washing dishes correctly.

"Be sure that all the dishes are scraped and piled before you begin.  You will pile them in the order they are to be washed.  Glassware first, then silver, then plates, followed by the cooking utensils.  Each item will be rinsed in your tub of very hot water."

"Some times a bit of food will be stubborn and not come off when you whisk it with your dish cloth.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT attempt to remove it with your finger nail.  Your hands are in the water and the nail is soft and you do not want to do damage to the nail. There is a wire scratcher that comes in handy for removal of stubborn things that do not want to be removed.  You will want to keep your hands lovely and soft for your husband, so when you are finished with the dishes and the sink is clean and dry, apply a little lotion and rub in in well."

Do I need to interject here that I failed Home Economics under the able tuteledge of Mrs. Crawford?  Now when I say failed I do not mean C or D but a big Red F.

I can still see her in my minds eye standing in the home economics room in her skirt and jacket with every hair in place pointing to the sink and the dish drainer as if they were the most important items on earth.  I actually grew up believing that man was superior and I must do all I could to please one of these creatures if I ever was lucky enough to catch one.  I had a helluva lot to learn back in those days!

At the end of the semester my grandma passed away and I was returned to Nickerson and enrolled in Home Economics where Miss Irvin was my teacher.  Here I attempted to learn how to make a simple dress.  As I recall mother bought me the required pattern in the size I needed and cotton fabric that was white with small blue flowers.  And thus that exercise I futility began.  We measured each other to get the proper measurements.  And then it was time to cut the pattern and pin the darts for the chest area.  Well, until I was 16 years old, I never had a sign of a boob, so darts were pretty well wasted on me, but nonetheless, there would be darts because as sure as there was a God in heaven, I would develop before that dress wore out!  Not sure that happened though.

After 4 1/2 months of cutting, ripping, stitching, and crying, the dress was finished.  The darts in the chest were perfect, but there was nothing there to hold them out for the world to see.  My sewing career was finished and Miss Irvin gave me a final grade.  Seems I had been a very difficult student.  I had not listened and I was disrespectful with all that crying.  You guessed it.  A big RED F.

Now, after a full year of schooling on how to cook, clean and sew for my man, I walked away empty handed!  My life was over as far as my mother was concerned.  I would never catch a man.  Even grandma kept telling me things like "Where spider webs grow, no beau ever goes."  The way to a man's heart is through his stomach."  And more crap like that. 

So I finished high school and began life in the real world.  My first marriage lasted 10 years and produced 5 kids.  After a string of husbands I finally found one that understood all I needed was stability.  I do not think my cleaning and cooking skills were ever on any of the divorce papers. 

What is the most amazing part of this whole thing is that I am now an excellent seamstress.  I have a sewing room to die for and am the proud owner of 5 sergers,  5 sewing machines, a machine quilter and a 6 needle embroidery machine, all of which make me money. 

I raised my kids on money I made as a short order cook, a dinner cook, a caterer, and personal orders as needed.  I baked and  decorated wedding cakes while I was at the Red Carpet.

Sorry, Mrs. Crawford and Miss Irvin!  I know you tried, but I am just one of those people that have to learn the hard way.

Isn't it amazing how I can get off track?  Guess I was not meant to be a writer.  Oh, wait a minute!  I am a writer!!

I hate the time change, but guess what I found!

I woke up this morning at 4:15 AM.  That is because I usually wake up around 5:00 AM or so.  I laid there for a while and had a little talk with God.  Then I planned my day.  I tried to sleep and may have dozed off for a bit after cussing the government for the stupid time change anyway.  I am sorry, I just do not get it.  I know they are trying to save daylight hours, but come on people, are you really buying that?  My days are 16 hours long and I am going to be in the dark on both ends of it.  I have been closing up the geese at 7:00 PM when it starts to get dusk and letting them out about 7:00 AM.  Now it will be 6:00 PM and 6:00 AM.  It will be the same degree of darkness and they do not know the time has changed.  Only I know now that the time schedule has been altered thus screwing up my whole schedule.  Like I did not have my mind in enough different places.  Hell, it was yesterday that I finally put my shorts away because I thought August was now over and I know we don't wear shorts after Labor Day.  I completely missed Columbus Day,  The State Fair, Beulah Art Sale, the turning of the Aspens,  3 of the kids birthdays and God only knows what else!
And now I set here with my muddled little mind wondering where in the hell Summer went!  Seems like only last week I was bent over tending the tender little plants and digging out the lawnmower to chop the weeds into submission.  I tried to do my "year in review" and thought it was 1997!  Ever hear that old saying, "When you are over the hill, you pick up speed?"  That is sure going on around here.  Point is I have a hard enough time with out Uncle Sam messing with my bedside clock when my internal clock has already thrown most of it's springs!
So, now I bet you are wondering what I found this morning, aren't you?  I found my shadow!  I have spent a lot of the past week flat on my back on a heating pad feeling very sorry for myself.  Must interject here that the little talk with God this morning clarified the fact that he had me down so I could think about some things that were a tad bit awry in my mind.  So after I told him I was pretty sure he was right about that, I got up and as one is wont to do first thing every morning, I headed for the bathroom.  The first switch I hit every morning is the one for the office lights.  That leaves the bathroom dark.  I opened the door and there was my shadow, waiting for me!  Funny how we forget the little things in life, isn't it?
I had probably seen that little fellow a million times over the years, but I had forgotten about it!  The poem we used to say years and years ago sprang into my mind.  It goes something like this:

My Shadow

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Source: The Golden Book of Poetry (1947),

Well, it goes exactly like that because I went to the Internet and stole it!  The thoughts that spring to my mind with this poem are always of Nickerson, Kansas.  I remember walking the dusty roads around the old home place in my bare feet.  My shadow was always with me and as my shadow grew longer it was closer to time to "go in".  Funny, we never called it going home, but always going in.  Always liked Friday and Saturday night because we could stay up late and play "Kick the can!".   Does anyone remember that?  We always had a can from some where and that was home base.  It was basically hide and go seek and when whoever was "it" found one of the hidden kids, they drug them back to jail.  Then when the "it" person went off searching for more kids someone could run to home base and kick the can, thus freeing the prisoners.  Ah, the good old days.  And for the record, I am sure mother always made us wash our feet when we came in from playing all day barefooted.  I know to this day, my feet are the one part of my body that is always clean.  Always without fail.
So here I set at the computer and I can not see my shadow.  I see my hands are making a shadow, but I must be setting on that little guy, cause he is now where to be seen.  And if I am a female, why is my shadow a "he"?

Back to the good old days where I am safe!

I like it back here when I was still at home and mom and dad were the adults.  Mostly mom.  Dad hung out in the pool hall every day.  This was a place where the old men stopped in to play dominoes and shoot the breeze.  I think they might have sold beer there because us kids were not allowed to go in the place unless it was an emergency and there better be blood involved and it better be squirting. And there must have been a pool table or why else would it be called a "pool hall"?
He was paid a stipend by the man who owned it and he was also allowed to drink coffee or something.  Dad had given up drinking by the time we left the Ailmore place.  Something about alcohol poisoning, some body's husband and God only knew what else.  Oh, he still had the occasional "hot toddy"  which was made with corn liquor, sugar and hot water, but that was only for his cold which he had a lot of colds back then.
On one side of the "pool hall" was the city jail.  It was a small concrete structure about 10' x 10'.  I understand there was a cot in there and bars to keep the miscreant on that side of the room.  I am not sure anyone was every put in there, but I heard stories.  If you spit on the sidewalk, you would go to jail.  If you said a cuss word where a lady could hear you, you went to jail.  (Now I do not know just what yard stick was used to decide who was a lady and who wasn't, but I heard plenty of cuss words and no one was ever arrested on my behalf!)  If you were falling down drunk and making lots of noise, off to the hoosegow with you!  Mostly I just remember the "peace officer"  sitting on a chair in front of the jail some times.  Not very often and I do not remember his name, but he was skinny.
A side story here and then back to Main Street.  Up the street from us lived Jake Smith, who was a retired peace officer.  He showed us the badge and it said "Jake Smith, peace officer."  He also showed us a gun.  It was a pistol and had a very long barrel.  I could not sleep for many nights after that because it was very scary to think that a gun with real bullets was on the same street where I lived.  Jake Smith liked to sit in his front yard on a wooden chair which was leaned back against a tree.  He fell asleep most afternoons and Jake and one of his buddies took a rope and tied him to the tree while he was asleep.  He could be heard cussing away when he woke up to his dilemma!  He never figured out just who was responsible, but he had a pretty good idea.  Back to Main Street.
On the other side of the pool hall was Coringtons Dry Good.  Might have been Woringtons, I am no longer sure.  One wall was bolts of fabrics and things needed to sew.  There were dishes, pots and pans, linens, clothes, coats, tea towels, shoes, tools, nails,and on and on. Mrs. Corington ran the store and she was a buxom lady who never had a hair out of place.  She used to watch us with her arms folded across her chest and I always had the feeling that if I touched anything she would rap my knuckles with a steel rod that she had hidden some place on her person.  I remember how proud I was when I finally had $4.00 to buy a pair of boots that were in the window for years.  They had fur around the top.  These were real boots and not  galoshes.  Galoshes were black and had buckles.  These just slid on my feet over my shoes.
The library was on the corner.  There were many shelves of books and that was heaven for me.  Reading was my escape back then.  I remember how proud I was when I found a book titled Bartholomew Cubbins and the 100 Hats.  Or something along that line.  There were books with pictures albiet black and white mostly, but still pictures!  National Geographic had naked women in it sometimes, but we were not allowed to check those out.  As I recall, that is where I first found Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House on the Prairie series.  I read all the books she wrote and worshipped her, well right up until the series came on tv and for some reason I could not stand the innocent little wretch who played Laura in the series.  Forgot her name.
My Antonia by Willa Cather was another, but that was a tad bit racy for my young mind and I am not sure the librarian even let me check that out.  Back in those days the librarian was always an old maid and she stayed in the back with a curtain for a door.  Not sure she lived there, but if she did I am sure she lived alone.  They were also called "spinsters".  I did not want to be a spinster, I was sure of that!
On the corner going towards the school was the grocery store and drug store.  Drug store had a soda fountain and if we had a few extra cents we could get a cherry coke or a vanilla phosphate, whatever that was.  Ingalls candy store and school supplies as on the same side of the street, but a block up. They had a candy counter and a counter where you could get a cold drink or ice cream.  The cold drink was always in a bottle and ice cream was in a bowl.  Mother always took me there after a trip to the doctor.  I was very puny when I was a little girl.  Tonsils were my problem.
Well, I have to go to the Springs today, so I need to get around.  Much as I hate to leave Main Street, I must.  Rest assured I will be back!

Laundry time at the new place.

Always before doing the laundry had consisted of scrubbing clothes on the scrub board, wringing them out by twisting them and then dropping them into a tub of rinse water where they were swished around by hand, wrung out again and dropped into another tub of water.  A final wringing and then they were placed on a wire "clothes line" to dry.  It was an all day job!  But when we moved in here we were surprised to find that it came with a washing machine.  As I recall it had a gas motor and sat in the kitchen.  The tank on the motor was probably coal oil.  Maybe kerosene.  Maybe gas. The motor caused the agitator to go back and forth, thus beating the clothes clean and eliminating the need for the scrub board.  Mother did, however, pre scrub the collars of the shirts on the scrub board.  We must have been very dirty little kids, especially our necks.
This new washer was great!  It even had a "wringer" which was two rollers and you turned a crank and placed and item of clothes between the rollers and the water ran back into the washer.  This was wonderful and made Mother's work so easy!  But alas!  It had been left there for a reason.  The second time the laundry was done the motor gave out and could not be repaired.  The rollers did not do a good job of wringing.

So, Mr. Reuben Floyd Bartholomew, land owner went into town and opened a charge account and purchased a brand new, never used, white  washing machine for his wife.  That was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen.  And it was electric!  It plugged into the one plug in that was in the kitchen.  (More about the wonders of electricity later!)  The best part was the stop lever on the wringer.  If you got your fingers in there by accident, you could smack the lever with your free hand and the wringers would stop and open allowing you to retrieve your appendage.  The alternative was to be pulled through the wringer and spit out in the rinse tub!  So wash day now became a joy!

Water would be heated in the 3 legged kettle out back with a wood fire and carried in by buckets to fill the washing machine.  Cold water was carried for the rinse tubs.  The final rinse always had a dab of "bluing" added so the white clothes had a hint of blue instead of the drab gray of the women who did not use bluing.  The first load of clothes washed was always "the whites". The whites were placed on the clothes line to dry and life continued.

 Oh, forgot to tell you the very first thing that happened was the bar of lye soap was grated into the water and agitated until it dissolved.  I must elaborate on how the lye soap came to be.
 When the lye soap supply started getting low, the first step was to clean the ash bin of the stove out and build a fire with a certain kind of wood.  The wood was important as it affected the color, smell, and texture of the soap.  This ash was saved for "soap making day".  On soap making day the 5 gallon bucket of grease we had been saving for this occasion was carefully heated and strained into another clean can.  Only the top was used as the bottom contained water and lord only knows what else.  This was placed on the back of the stove to be kept warm. Mother would place the ashes in a colander lined with several layers of cheese cloth. She then carefully dropped water into the ashes which ran through and was caught in a vessel of some sort underneath the sieve.  When she thought it looked "right" she would place a raw egg still in its shell in the mixture.  As I recall when all was right the egg would do something "proving" the lye.  When that happened there was a flurry in that kitchen like you would not believe!

The kettle of warm grease was set on the floor, someone poured the lye into the grease can while mother stirred frantically with a hammer handle reserved for this purpose only.  Depending on the strength of the lye, the heat of the grease and the humidity of the air the grease would start to "trace" means to  show marks of the hammer handle.  When the trace marks showed the concoction was poured into a wooden box that was lined with cloth.  If any part of the procedure was not perfect two things would happen.  If the mixture did not trace, then lye was off and the whole thing a waste and had to be thrown out.  If it traced to quickly it would set up on the way to the mold.  Usually the hammer handle would be trapped in the soap and could not be retrieved until the soap was all grated.  But if everything was perfect and the grease extra clean we would end up with white soap that actually lathered.  Back then a woman's worth was often connected to that bar of soap she produced, and to her credit, my mother rarely failed!

That scenario is what went through my mind when Chuck Vail gave me a gift certificate to Vitamin Cottage and I saw a book on soap making.  I figured if my mother could do it under the primitive conditions she did it under that I could surely turn out a bar to be proud of and that is what I have done.  Sadly nobody ever asks me what my soap looks like, but I think I will show you anyway.  The best part is what this does for my skin. See, this stuff is made with all natural ingredients so rather than plugging up my pores with petroleum distillates, it opens them and keeps my skin young.  I have a lot of repeat customers for this soap and my lotions.  Just goes to show, that no matter how things change, the more they remain the same.  When I first started making soap I could buy lye at the grocery store, but then the druggies learned how to use it and embalming fluid to make drugs and it is no longer available.  I have to order it online and I am limited how much I can buy and I have to certify that I am not a drug lord.

So while my mother made her own lye and used grease and it was a crap shoot what she would end up with, I have controlled conditions and it always comes out the same.  I use pretty molds and package it for eye appeal.  I keep thinking maybe one of my kids will take up the banner when I can no longer do this, but none of them are showing any interest.  Guess it is what is known as a dying art.  Much as my life has become!  When I take flight for the big homestead in the sky there will be a bunch of kids standing around shaking thier heads and wondering what to do with all the kettles, thermometers, molds, bags, fragrances, oils.  Ah!  An estate auction to die for!!

Good old days!

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Remembering  Mom's Clothesline
  There is  one thing that's left out.
We had a long  wooden pole (clothes pole) that was used to push  the clotheslines up
so that longer items  (sheets/pants/etc.) didn't brush the ground and  get dirty.
I can hear my mother  now...
  THE BASIC  RULES FOR CLOTHESLINES:
 
(If  you don't even know what clotheslines are,  better skip this.)
  1.  You had to hang the socks by the toes... NOT the  top.

2.  You hung pants by the BOTTOM/cuffs... NOT the  waistbands.

3.  You had to WASH the clothesline(s) before  hanging any clothes -
walk the entire length  of each line with a damp cloth around the  lines.

4.  You had to hang the clothes in a certain order,  and always hang "whites" with "whites,"
and  hang them first.

5.  You NEVER hung a shirt by the shoulders - always  by the tail!
What would the neighbors  think?

6.  Wash day on a Monday! NEVER hang clothes on the  weekend,
or on Sunday, for Heaven's  sake!
 
7.  Hang the sheets and towels on the OUTSIDE lines  so you could
hide your "unmentionables" in  the middle (perverts & busybodies,  y'know!)
 
8.  It didn't matter if it was sub-zero weather...  clothes would "freeze-dry."
 
9.  ALWAYS gather the clothes pins when taking down  dry clothes!
Pins left on the lines were  "tacky"!
 
10.  If you were efficient, you would line the  clothes up so that each item
did not need  two clothes pins, but shared one of the clothes  pins with the next washed  item.

11.  Clothes off of the line before dinner time,  neatly folded in the clothes basket,
and  ready to be ironed.

12.  IRONED??!! Well, that's a whole OTHER  subject!

Today is October 28.

And this is my brother Jake when he was in about the eighth grade.  See that scar on his cheek?  Do you know how he got that?  I remember.  We were living on the Stroh place on the edge of town.  Lot of memories there.  Donna stuck her finger in a turtles mouth and it was the general consensus that they could cut the head off, but the turtle would not release her finger until the sun went down.  Seemed nothing ever stopped until the sun went down.  Kill a snake and it would wiggle until the sun went down.  And then when the sun did finally go down, the boogie man would come out and get us if we were not very, very good!
I was going to write about Jake, but memories of that period are very fresh today, so I am just going to remember them.
The year must have been 1947.  Sister Dorothy was born while we lived on the Stroh place.  Mom laid in bed for 10 days and missed harvest.  Dad was not happy about that, but 10 days was how long one laid in bed after giving birth.  At that time Josphine was in charge of us while mother helped with the farming.   That would have made her 12 years old at the time.  About right.
Mother always went to "Club" once a month.  I do not know what "Club" was, but she drug us along and we all had to set in a row up against a wall with all the other little kids until club was over.  And we had to stay clean.  That was not hard to do unless there was a mud hole on the way to club, where ever it was.  I know it was close because we walked.
The chicken house was where all the action was.  Something was always getting in and stealing a chicken.  Once dad thought it was a fox, but laid a trap and found out it was a weasel.  No way to keep a weasel out of the hen house. 
Once while we were setting in the back yard, the old yellow tom cat came up with a baby chicken in his mouth.  Mother immediately sent Jake and the tom cat into the forest.  Jake carried a hatchet and was under the strict orders that the tom cat must never be seen again.  Shortly after that mother could not find her potato peeler. It seemed I recalled Jake taking that to the forest and told mother so.  She said I was a trouble maker.
The best part of the whole day was when we brought the cow up.  See, we had a milk cow and the grass was very green along the road that ran in front of the house.  So each morning Jake would take her out and stake her along the road.  He went several times and moved her, but when it was milking time, I went with him to bring her up to the barn to be milked.  She was very slow, but if we grabbed her tail she would run.  Sometimes we did that.  More fun than you can imagine, but sure made milking her hard because she was upset and would not release her load!
Dad had three sons before he married mother.  They had been placed in an orphange when his first wife died, as I recall.  I remember when Gene Barthololmew, the oldest got out of the Army and came for a visit.  I do not remember Richard or Earl coming during that period, but they had been adopted and had thier own family.  I did meet them in later years.  Richard Nichols and Earl Siefert.
One memory that is so vivid it hurts of that period is our hair care.  When we needed a hair cut, mother would set us on a box on a chair, place a bowl over our head and cut our hair to that length.  Then she trimmed our bangs.  Wish I could find one of those pictures! But the worst part was the washing of the hair.  We did not have running water, hence no hot water.  What we did have was a pitcher pump that pumped water by raising and lowering the handle.  When hair needed washed mother would grab the kid that was next in line which in this case was me and tuck me under her arm.  Josephine would pump the handle up and down and water would pour forth and mother would jam my head under the water, the apply soap which I am sure was lye soap and work it into my poor scalp.  Then back under the pump I went and my God that water was cold!    Since I was only 6 years old at the time my memory of a lot of things is not real clear, but on that one thing I am sure.  Bath time was once a week and it occured in a galvanized tub.  Littlest kid got the first bath and the reasoning behind that was that the younger they were, the cleaner they were.  Josephine always got the last one and by that time there was a soap scum floating on the top and bath had a whole new meaning.  To this day I stand under the shower with the water as hot as I can stand it.
I remember the old cow dying and we had to move her body to the pasture because there was some sort of disease and the only way to get rid of it was to burn and bury the carcass.  Must have been anthrax, since I think that occured about that time.  Not sure she had it, but we did it anyway.
That was also the first time I was ever allowed to go to the store.  I felt so big walking that mile to Flemings grocery with my hanky in my hand and the money for the loaf of bread tied safely in the corner.  I remember Mr. Fleming gave me a piece of candy because I did such a good job.  I recall that it was very scary being alone out in the big world when I was 6 years old.  But I look back on that simple life and it breaks my heart that our kids today will never know the simple joy of a mud puddle, a dying turtle, or a trip down the dirt road to bring the cow up!

Nickerson, Kansas, or the good old days.

Well, another day and another class trying to learn something.  It is amazing to me that when I was young and learning stuff was free and easy, I was not interested in the whole concept.  And now, here I am 70 years old with my mind so full of stuff that I can not pick out one vital piece of information and I now want to cram some more stuff in there to clutter it up even  worse.  But I shall clutter, none the less.
Let me see, what else have I been up to?  Well, I have been trying to figure out how to write about my childhood in Nickerson, Kansas and I am getting confused.  If I just start at the beginning that is a pretty boring story.  So I have arrived at the concept of just giving you snippets of my younger days.  Like now, the story playing out in my head is the one where I got my first bicycle. 
The local grocery had a contest and whoever came in with the most labels won  their choice of either a 3 speed bicycle or a radio.  At the same time the IGA was having a contest, but their prize was a trip to St. Louis.  I knocked on doors, scavenged through trash barrels, begged in front of the store, and otherwise just made a nuisance of myself.
Well, when the contest ended and all the labels were counted, I had like 7,000 and the next kid had 300+.  He was very upset because he wanted that bike.  His dad owned the local newspaper and I was pretty sure that his dad had way more money then my mother who cleaned their house. 
Ah, that bike was a beauty!  It was a boys bike because I did not want to wait for them to order in a girls' bike.  It was maroon and some chrome and I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. And it had the little skinny tires and it was called an "English Racing Bike".  I very proudly pushed it all the way home.  I pushed it up on to the front porch and there it stayed.  Having never had a bicycle, I did not know how to ride.  The neighbor girls had bikes.  Little bicycles that I could actually step over the bar and set on the seat.  Irene agreed to give me "bike riding lessons".  Told me it was "easy as pie"!  Ever make a pie?  It is not that easy. 
So this is how this would happen;  I would get on the bike and she would hold on to the back fender and keep me in an upright postition.  Hell, that sounded like a genius idea to me.  The first short little bursts worked well.  Now she would let me go when she was sure I had my balance.  Brilliant!  Off we went and I quickly achieved "lift off", and down the road I went.  Course any fool knows what happened next.  Dead end road so it was either stop or turn the corner.  Unfortuneately we had discussed neither of thos option in advance.  I suddenly remembered something about pedaling backwards and so I reversed my direction.  Now I do not know if you have ever ridden a bike with that kind of brake, but I am here to tell you, when you suddenly reverse the foot pedals, you stop.  That is where that old saying "It can stop on a dime!" came from.  Of course when the bike stops so does the balance thing you had going on.  This was my first wreck.  Irene was very proud that I had gone almost half a block.  I was not real sure the other half of that block was left in me.
Of course in due time I learned to do it right.  And then my new bike was waiting for me.  It was taller then me and I needed to park by the step to climb on and take off.  Now I find my whole life has been lived this way.  I know how to start and I know how to get on, I just don't know how to end the ride!  I quickly learned to ride close to a hill, squeeze the brake and then lean toward the hill with my leg extended.  That was all in the first day!  Sadly though, the first day was about all there was to that.  Remember those little skinny tires I was so proud of the first day?  They do not stand up well against the dreaded Goat Head, which is a very sharp sticker.  I would pump the tires up and ride until they went flat.  The rides got shorter and I moved on to other things, like playing "Annie Over" Irene's house.
I think that was the name of the game.  She was on one side of the house and I was on the other.  Whoever had the ball would holler "Annie Over" and throw it over the house.  You got three tries to get it over and then we had to change sides.  If she missed, she got three chances.  The most amazing part of the whole thing was that there was a lot of honesty went on without us even knowing.  If we missed the ball, we called "miss" and if it did not go over the house we called "do over!"  I guess at that place in our lives we had not yet learned how to cheat and lie.  Of course we all picked that habit up as we got out in the real world, but something else I have noticed is that as I get older, I am reverting to my honesty days.  I do not find it necessary to embellish the truth any more.  I think part of that happened when I realized I better tell the truth because I was having a hard time remembering the lies.  Or maybe I am just returning to what is known as my "second childhood." 
Either way I am enjoying this part of life and as the prize gets closer I remember the good old days with a clarity I never had when I was there.
Wonder what I will think about tomorrow!

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