Silly me, I thought I was going to have some currants!

Way back on Strong Street we had a row of currant bushes.  As I recall they were green when they set on, then as they grew bigger, the turned red, then maroon and finally black.  When they were black they were "ready" and momma would make them into something.  I really don't remember what, but I do remember the ripening process.  Of course we always had to eat one that was just turning red so we would remember why we didn't eat the red ones.  Then we would eat a maroon one and while it was not sweet it at least did not choke us like the green and red ones did.  As I remember, the bushes had little stickers on them.  I may have forgotten way more than I remember about those damn currants!
See, a couple years back I found currant bushes growing in the wild area behind the house.  I was thrilled beyond words that the birds had planted them their for me, and I anxiously awaited the first black currant.  It did not happen that year.  I got one red one and by the time I quit spitting the birds had eaten the others.
So another year came and more bushes appeared and it became clear that if I wanted a currant I was going to need to sleep on top of the currant bush.  Not wanting to do that, I devised a plan this year that entailed netting, sticks, and and mouth ready for a juicy, black, sweet currant.  Sadly, I missed looking one or two days and when I next checked, it was too late for netting.
Now the plan is that NEXT year, I will be more vigilant.  I will check the bushes every day and I will be rewarded with sweet, black currants.  Wait!  I now recall that I went through this same crap when I remembered the black, juicy Mulberries that also grew on Strong Street!  Every time I got ready to harvest them, they were rotten.  The only thing they were good for was squishing up between my toes and getting me a paddling for tracking them in the house.
Maybe I am learning something about life in Nickerson.  I remember it as a Utopic place.  A place where I was always happy, but perhaps that was not the case.  Maybe the bitter currants and the messy mulberries were just that!  Maybe escaping to Nickerson was my way of escaping the reality of life.  It was all so easy when mom and dad were responsible for me, but now I am old and looking back mother really was on to something when she used to tell me "Hind sight is 20/20."
I guess I will think about that for a while and see where that leads me.

Ten years and holding....

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of my late husbands passing.  While acceptance is a given, it is still a date that is marked and called an "anniversary".  Suffice it to say I still miss him, but years have changed the sharp cutting pain to a dull ache of every day existence.  I am just thankful every day that I had the time with him and know that it was a special relationship that can never be duplicated, nor should I try.  I am the product of all my past experiences and I thank God for that!
That being said, I laid awake late last night thinking of things and it seemed that my mind wandered back to Nickerson, Kansas.  I think in my last post on Nickerson, we had just moved to 709 Strong Street which was the house my father bought on an acre of ground.  Might have been 2 acres or 3.  No way of knowing now.  It had a front and back porch and a root cellar.  Now that root cellar was some place I would not have gone for love nor money.   It was just a hole in the ground with steps chopped into the dirt and a wooden door.   It was accessible from the back porch and more dirt was piled on top of it so it appeared to be fairly stable.  Mother said if a tornado came we were to run down there and close the door behind us.  I am here to tell you that not a way in hell was that going to happen in my life time!
Ever seen one of those things?  There are spiders down there that have teeth and crawly things that could stop your heart just by looking at you.  When I exited the back door I always ran across the front of the opening in case some of those things had decided to march on us.  Tornado?  I laugh at danger, but not the creepy things.  To this day I can go into convulsions thinking about that root cellar.
Mother raised rabbits and other fowl, so chicken poop between our toes was a given rather than an exception.  We had the one pair of shoes when school started in the fall and by spring we were grown out of them and since we were not going any where we did not need shoes.  One day I spotted a chicken that had apparently swallowed something that had a string attached to it.  I suspect it was a button.  I tried to catch it and pull it out, but the chicken was having none of that! 
We had a sink in the kitchen that drained through a pipe that ran through the wall and emptied in the back yard.  Mother had Muscovy ducks and that was their favorite place to gather.  Now that was a nasty mess and had the health department (had there been one back in those times) ever ventured by I fully expect there would have been some prison sentences handed out to our parents for child abuse!
But what I was thinking about mostly last night was a big cactus that was in our front yard.  Lord that thing had needles on it over an inch long and sharp as a mother-in-law's tongue!  All we had to do was walk past that thing and somebody was going to have to dig the sticker out.  What we really liked to do that was the most fun, was try to throw each other into the heart of the cactus.  The simple act of trying got our little fannies warmed good.  Mother had no sense of humor at all on that.  And dad was never home because...who knows.
And we had a mulberry tree that was the really good kind that produced black mulberries.  Those were fun to walk barefooted on because in the summer they were cool.  Not very good to eat unless you picked them at the precise moment when they were at the peak of sweetness.  If you went 3 seconds past then they were rotten.
And the currant bushes!  There was another fruit that had to be eaten right as soon as it turned black.  A second before and they puckered you up and a second after and they were worthless.  Birds liked them.    Course the cats liked birds and the bushes were low so picking was easy for the cats.  And we learned the cycle of life up close and personal more than once.  That coupled with the fact that my dad still farmed with horses and they were getting very old and dying made us rather callous to death.  I remember when a horse would die, someone called the "dead animal wagon" so they could be taken to the glue factory.  A man showed up with a big wagon that had a winch on it.  This was pulled out and secured around the neck of the hapless horse and a motor rolled the cable in and the horse ended up unceremoniously on the top of the heap of dead animals.  Sometimes their feet ended up sticking out over the top and that was rather sad.  These were animals who had once been very vibrant and dad usually kept their tails braided and tied with a ribbon.  I think about that a lot as my road gets shorter, but only in a fleeting moment and never with any great sadness.
And so I bid Nickerson adieu for the day.  I will be back.  There are a lot of memories there of things that will never be again and can not ever be forgotten.  Until then I am recalling something that goes "May the road rise to meet you and may the wind always be at your back!"  God only knows where that came from.