60 years ago on the front page of the Hutchinson News Hearld

 Not sure it was 60 years, but there are 2 incidents that are clear in my mind.  One entailed a rape and murder of a 17 year old girl.  It happened on the Arkansas River just off  highway 96.  There were 2 boys involved.  There was no question as to whether they were guilty or not, just what the punishment should be.  You see, they were young and their life was just beginning. 

They were the victims here also.  The girl had gotten in the car with them willingly.  They were drinking and she knew that.  She should have known better.  They had sex with her and then she said she was going to "tell on them".  They were both slated to go off to college in a few weeks and one or both had scholarships which meant they were respectable and the girl should have known better than to get in a car with two young men who had obviously been drinking!  What did she think would happen?  She must accept her share of the responsibility here!  These were boys from very respected families and she was from the "other side of the tracks."

So they used her and then "somehow" she died and they panicked.  They tossed her body on the ground under some trees and threw some dirt and leaves over her.  They went home and went to bed.  When the cold hard light of day dawned on the deed and the boys were confronted, they immediately blamed it on the girl.  I do not recall exactly what kind of punishment was meted out, but it just reinforced my belief that "money talks and bullshit walks."  And it was a further lesson about remaining chaste and not getting in a car with boys.

There was also about that time a teenager whose last name was Steele.  He  lived in the South end of Hutchinson.  Now you need to know that at that time North and South were divided by Sherman Street.  South of Sherman were letter streets and North were number streets.  The further south you went the lower the value of the homes.  The further north of Sherman, the higher the value of the property.  

Now the teenager in this story lived on Bigger which was past F Street, which was "ghetto".  It seems his stepfather was a heavy drinker and his mother was blind.  As I recall his stepfather was beating his mother again and this time he grabbed the shotgun and shot him.  Of course he was immediately arrested and since they had no money he was left in jail to await trial.  

The newspaper ran a story about both of these "incidents".  The first favored the boys since the girl was not there to defend herself and she may or may not have been drinking, but the boys agreed it was her fault.  As I recall they were given very light sentences so they could go on to become fine upstanding citizens.

I recall the one about the Steel boy showed him in his jail cell awaiting trial.  He did not have money for bail, so he would remain there until his trial.  Although this was his first offence and was protecting his mother he could not get out on personal recognizance.  He was after all, a juvenile and his step father was just beating his wife.  As an adult male that was his right.  

Maybe some one back in Kansas remembers these two stories and can refresh my memory since that was years ago and back then I did not worry about anything someone else did.  I am a different person now and injustice is not in my vocabulary and it does not matter how much money you do or do not have: right is right and wrong is wrong.  I have spent my life fighting for the underdog and making sure our rights are equal and not influenced by money or skin color or your sex or sexual orientation.  I have a big umbrella and I can fit a lot of people under it.

We have come a long way, but I still seem little "Jim Crow" acts that almost make it under the radar.  I now see women punishing men for things they did.  I do favor a statute of limitations  for things that happened 50 years ago.  I worked side by side with men who received twice and three times as much in hourly wage as I did.  After all, I was a woman; a lesser being.  But you know what?

I am who I am today because of who I was back then.  And I pretty much like the person I am today!

Peace!

 

 

A trip to a dark place in my past.

 It has been over 65 years since I thought of Jimmie.  He holds no significance in my life except that he was there for a brief period.  I was 17 years  old and ready for my life to begin.  I was ready for love and love seemed to be everywhere.  The years of the 16 and 17 year old Louella were all about exploration, and mostly dancing and finding someone to call my own.  Some one who would love me forever.  The boys were plentiful back then and they were just as innocent and just as eager as the girls.  Sex had not yet reared it's head on our horizon.  Oh there was the occasional stolen kiss and the fumbled attempts at "copping a feel", but that was as far as it went.  Most of the dates were "double dates", because very few of the boys had access to a car back then.

And then came Jimmie.  Jimmie was older.  Jimmie had been in the Army.  Jimmie had a car.  He was the cool boy who stood on the sidelines with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.  It was rumored that he had a wife and son back in England.  That just added to the mystic of Jimmie.  Sadly it very soon became common knowledge that Jimmie was the love 'em and leave 'em kind.  Pretty little teenagers following him with their red eyes soon became a common sight at the record hop.  And then he looked my way!  

He took me to his house to meet his mom and sister.  He showed me a picture of his wife and son.  Looking back in retrospect, I am not sure it was anything but a picture from a magazine, but it added to the legend that was Jimmie.  He did not appear old enough to have spent a lot of time in the Army, but he said it so that made it so.  I, of course, was holding my sexual favors back in hopes of a wedding ring.  I sure did not want to be one of the sad little creatures watching him from afar.  He soon tired of me.  And as time would tell, God above smiled on me the day he broke my heart.  I had given him a picture to put on the dash of his car and he threw it out the window explaining to me that I was too immature for him.

Jimmie quit coming to the dances.  No one seen him, but we heard through the grapevine that he was working out of town and he gradually faded from our memories we all moved on.

When I married and moved out of town and began my own family, mother kept me up on all the gossip.  She sent newspaper clippings  of happenings that involved the circle of friends that she knew I hung out with.  One day there was a clipping about a nurse who lived in a trailer outside of town with her husband and two small children.  Someone had come to her trailer while her husband was at work and killed her two children and thrown them into the field.  He then raped her.  He did not kill her.  They had a lead as to his identity.  It was Jimmie.

I am sure people back home remember the headlines.  I do not remember all the details of the trial, but he was definitely the same Jimmie I knew and he was definitely guilty.  I could google it and find out, but I do not care.  I only know how lucky my friends and I were that we had all dated him and we were all alright.  This just goes to show that mother was right about another thing.  She always said "You never know anyone, you only know OF  them.  You know what they let you see."

That happened 65 years ago and I read about it at some point in time, but God in his wisdom left me untouched.  Not just me, but many of my friends.  This is something I have not thought about for many, many years, but today I thank God for bringing me through a lot of valleys to this wonderful life I now live in Pueblo. Colorado!

Brings me to this song which pretty much says it all.  Unanswered Prayers

Can't we all just get along?

Does anyone remember Rodney King?  So much has happened in my world since the days of Rodney King that I can not right at the moment even remember what that was all about, but I do recall that it was in California and the year was 1992.  King was beaten by police officers and when he sued the verdict came back that the 4 police officers were innocent.  I did check and there were 63 people killed in the riots,  2,383 injured, and 12,000 people arrested.  Rodney King himself stood up and begged people to stop.  I remember seeing him on a black and white grainy television and saying,
"Can't we all just get along?"  That was almost 30 years ago and yet, here we are today.  Different state, but same scenario.

I can not watch the news.  I can not watch that video again and again.  To watch that police officer, kneeling on George Floyd's neck as three other officers watch not only brings tears to my eyes, but raises my righteous indignation at everyone involved in that brutal act of murder.  And it was murder; deliberate cold blooded disregard of a human life.  "I can not breathe!"

How many breaths do you take in a day?  I am sure I could google it and I would then know, but does it matter?  We take them for granted.  They come easily inhaled and just as easily exhaled.  A cold, COPD, and other health issues will make us stop and think about the breaths we take, but mostly we just take the first one and then the next one and go right on through the night breathing while we sleep. 

I grew up in a small town.  We had a small place up on Main Street that had bars on the windows and that was where  the "ne'er do wells" or drunks or other miscreants could be locked away.  The "peace officer"  (whose job it was to oversee whoever was locked up) had a chair to set in by the front door in case the person who was locked up needed something.  To the best of my knowledge no one was ever locked inside.  The only excitement that the jail ever saw was when Ory Ayers and her daughter rode their stick horses into town and circled the jail and rode back home.  Life was pretty simple back then.

There were no blacks in our town.  There were only white people.  I know my mother's family came over from Germany and settled in Nickerson or nearby.  There were 3 churches; Methodist, Christian, and Baptist.  I guess growing up in such a place made me tolerant and accepting of other races.  We never fought over anything.  Our environment was just pretty much mundane.  Occasionally families would have disagreements with the neighbors, but it never went farther than that.  The gypsys sometimes camped on the edge of town, but we never seen them.

So here I find myself in a world I do not understand full of people I do not understand and I find myself screaming at the television in complete frustration. Oh, trust me, I have done my share of marching and changing the world, but never was I violent.  We carried signs.  We made speeches.  We helped little old ladies across the street.  And now, sadly, I find myself in need of being helped across that same  street, and up the steps, and on to the other side.

I can not help the Rodney Kings or George Floyds of the world.  I can only set here and watch as it unfolds and pray that some where, some how, someone will pick up the banner and fight for the rights of all the mistreated in our world, but it doesn't seem to be happening.  There is so much unrest in this world today that by the time I figure out which cause to support, the whole thing has changed. 
And so the world goes on.  My words change nothing.  I live in fear that if the world spins any faster we may all lose our gravity and spin out of control.

I been thinking about dating.

It gets a little lonely here in this big house all alone.  To counteract that, I was thinking about dating.  You know, some guy picks me up, takes me out to eat (and I do love to eat!) and then go some where like a movie, or a play or drive around and look at "stuff".  We could even take a walk along the River Walk downtown.  There are all kinds of things to do.  Then he could bring me home and walk me up to the door.  We could look at the moon and say goodnight.

With this in mind, I have begun to look at the crop of men out there.  As most of you know, I am well past the age of consent.  This having been said, so are any of the men I would consider dating.  Moving along, I am pretty sure that were I decide to actually date one of the creatures, I need to update my wardrobe.  I do not recall the last time I actually purchased an item of clothing other then underwear (full cut cotton white) or socks (cotton ankle high white).  I wear mostly tee shirts which are slowly becoming threadbare and grease spotted.  I own 2 button up blouses.  I have worn the checkered one twice and looked at the other one once.  Mostly I wear jeans, but I do have several pairs of slacks for church.  So a ward robe update is necessary if I want to impress anyone.  Seems like a lot of work just to be socially acceptable.

So, to get to the crux of the matter, I flipped on the television the other day and happened onto a channel that I did not even know existed.  Perhaps God poked my remote, but I was treated to several episodes of "Forensic Files".  First one was an affluent family, husband a dentist, wife beaten to death in her bed.  Spoiler alert, the husband did it because he was trying to save on child support and had 2 mistresses who needed attention.  Another man killed his girlfriend, dismembered her, cut her bones in half and scattered them in a forest.  Her head he tossed in the lake.  But DNA did them both in at the end of the investigation.  One of them was so stupid that setting up the crime scene, he had the ladder to the upstairs bedroom window backwards! I do not know just how many of you have tried to climb a ladder backwards to an upstairs window, but I am pretty sure it can not be done!

Any way, that afternoon of binge watching people killing other people, made me rethink this whole dating thing.  Other than serial killers who would kill me just for the fun of it, most of the murders are committed by some one who loves you!  These people have kissed and held their victims in a scenario where intimacy is involved.  Several of them had children! Did you read about the guy here in town who killed his mother, cut her up, put part of her in a suit case and threw it in the dumpster?  Or the guy in the Springs who beat his fiancée to death with a ball bat?  So, back to this dating thing...

It is kind of nice to set here with my comfortable wardrobe, in my little house that needs a good cleaning and not have to worry about going out in the dark with someone who just might be the last trip out I take.  It would be nice to have some one actually care enough to call and say goodnight, but it is really not necessary.  I have kids that check on me.  I have friends  who drop by occasionally.  I have a cat and a dog.

I used to walk around Runyon Lake, but then I noticed there were a lot of druggies hanging out there and I stopped that.  Now I just walk around out here.  No one knows when I leave and no one knows when I come back, but I am pretty sure if something happens to me, it will be a random act and not some guy that I decided to "date".  

Yep.  It is going to be another long day!

Imagine for a moment....

Imagine for a moment that you are on your way to the grocery store.  You are listening to the radio which is just background music at the moment.  You are thinking about supper and anticipating the kids coming by.  A barbeque, if you will.  Steaks, salad, iced lemonade and the Tres Lechen cake awaiting the fresh fruit.  It is going to be perfect!  The kids are a delight and very responsible.  The grand kids are always a treat!  You are not planning on leaving the house, just watching a movie and enjoying the kids.

Your phone flashes a bulletin incoming, so you pull over to the side of the road.  You have an uneasy feeling, but you always do, because you know it is not going to be good and you volunteer at the crisis center.  That is where trauma victims are sent.  You are the lady at the desk who tries to make some sort of normalcy out of complete chaos.  You are one of several.  There is usually not much going on in a town this size, but it is best to be prepared.

"Active shooter at the City Park swimming pool.  All law enforcement are active.  It appears to be a lone gunman with a high velocity rapid fire gun of some sort.  Stay tuned."

And you do stay tuned, but you have altered your route and you are heading for the center.  As you pull into the parking lot you see more people arriving.  You hurry inside thinking that you must call the kids.  Soon.  Now you have other things to do.  The place is filling up and you have a job to do.

Now stop and think.  Scenes like this are becoming an every day occurrence.  Maybe not in your town, but all across our land.  One man (and I am sorry, but I have not read of a woman perpetuating one of these crimes.)  Some where someone has decided that it is in the best interest of himself and God only knows who else, to pick up a high powered rifle or a rapid fire gun and go shoot people.  Aside from the people who are killed or injured and their families and friends, lets take this even further.

You are now directly affected.  You will know the victims and/or their family members.  The news will pre-empt your regular evening news.  The barbeque is now on hold.  And of course, in the back of your mind you are replaying the last conversation with your daughter-in-law.  Were the kids going to the pool?  You do not remember.

You are now more directly affected.  Your plans have been changed, not by anything you changed, but by a stranger who changed your world, but only for a day or 2.  But let's take this even further.

Your daughter in law had taken your grandson to the pool before heading over to your house for supper.  You are now directly affected even more.  Was he there?  Had he come and gone?  Were they both safe?  Or were they both dead?  You are numb.  You can not function.  The only thing that will give you back a sense of anything is to hold your loved ones in your arms.  Until that moment happens you can do nothing, but pray.

It is on the news now.  It is over.  8 children were killed by a man with a gun.  Many more were injured.  The gunman was captured and disarmed.  Small consolation.  Where is your family?  Where is your grandson?  Where is your son?

The only thing that could be worse then your family members being killed is if your family member did the killing.  We are living in a fast paced world where the news unfolds before our eyes and within a matter of hours the authorities have answers.  What started out as a trip to the store has now ended up in total chaos.  What happened to the order of life?  Grow up. Get married.  Have kids to grow up and get married.  Do we plan on chaos?  No, we do not, but our society today makes chaos a reality and an expectation.

We are not allowed to change things to prevent this either, are we?  We can not pass a law about gun control or background checks, or any thing that might infringe on some body's right to the second amendment.  What about this scenario even hints at the second amendment?  A well regulated militia is a far cry from what we have now.  Oh, we have a well regulated militia, but it is not these nuts with guns that are contributing to that scenario.  These men who take it upon themselves to kill innocent people are not operating in a vacuum.  They deal daily with people and they need to be accountable.  If you encounter a mad dog on the street, you call the animal control.  If you encounter a raging man with a gun, you should be able to call someone.

I guess what I am trying to say is this.  When you think someone is a loose cannon, tell some one.  When your brother in law is ranting and raving about killing the scum and draining the swamp, tell some one.  The worst that can happen is you are wrong.  The best is you may prevent a mass shooting.  We have got to police our environment, because no one else is doing it for us.  I see no end in sight for this debacle.  Congress is owned by the NRA and the NRA says there is no problem.  How many years did it take with the Koch brothers poisoning our environment before we finally got a label on their products?

Research your candidates.  Don't just rely on a television advertisement.  When you recommend a person to make laws to protect us, make sure that is what they stand for and while they are in office, hold their feet to the fire.  Make sure you point out to them what you want and what you will not stand for while they are in office.

Peace.

I will not live in fear is complete bullshit!

I am scared.  I will be the first to admit it.  I do not want to get shot at Walmart, or in my church, or at the school, or any where else.  I see the marchers that say they will not live in fear, but think about that.  When something like Texas, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, and etc. etc. etc. happens I am afraid.  My government is doing nothing to allay my fears.  The NRA has a death grip on our congress.  Feed them money.  Money talks.  I have always heard that you can send an honest person to Washington, but you can not get that honest person back!

When one of these incidents (for want of a better word) occurs they begin to dig into the shooters past and lo! and behold! there were mistakes made in letting that idiot buy 15 AK 47's and 40,000 rounds of ammunition not to mention the arsenal in his bedroom that makes the local police look under armed.  I have a 22 pistol.  I keep it in my underwear drawer.  Does that make me feel safe?  No.  It would have to be a damn patient killer to wait for me to dig it out and find the safety and the clip and everything I need to shoot an intruder.

A wise man once told me " You never know anyone, you only know of them."  When we have an "incident" like this last one, then we dig into their past.  We first try to tie him (and so far they are him) to ISIS.  Rarely have any real ties to ISIS, but might leave a note saying it so no one will think he as just a lunatic.  Until then we did not give a shit who he was or what he thought.  Ah, but hindsight is so much better than foresight, isn't it?  The why's and the where's are all behind us.  Nothing can bring those people back.  Nothing can change the past.  Now is not the time to talk about it our pain is too fresh.  We must honor the dead.  We must hold a vigil.  Is that really what we want?  Not me.

I want to march to Washington D.C. and grab the congress by the throat and demand that they do something.  They work for ME!  Not the IRA!  When their second amendment right (and if you actually read that, they are off base on that.) infringes on MY right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness there has got to be a change. 

Australia has it right.  Get rid of the guns.  That sure cuts the mass murder rates down.  The NRA nuts,  (and I use that word to describe those Second amendment idiots that are demanding they have their "protection") are controlling my world.  What in the hell is our police force for?  At the Walmart shooting so many citizens pulled out their guns and waved them around that the investigation was stalled because they had no idea which gun waver was the shooter.  Did not stop the shooting; just screwed up the scene.

I am smart enough to know that my one small voice will get jack shit.  I am not, however, going to jump up and say "I will not live in fear," because, Buddy I am.  I get in my car and leave the safety of my home and God only knows if I will make it back.   I hesitate before I walk into a place where I know there are a lot of people because who knows what nut is right outside the door, or what I will find inside.

The following is taken from a report on the Internet.  Just a short read FYI.

American civilians are buying as many AK47s from Russia's top armory as the Russian military and police. 

The surge in sales of Russian assault rifles and shotguns are fuelled by firearms enthusiasts who are paranoid about the weapons being banned in the United States. 

The semiautomatic weapons, fitted with high-capacity magazines, are manufactured at Izhevsk Machinebuilding Plant, Russia's primary small arms factory.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2188727/Americans-buy-AK47s-Russian-military-assault-rifle-surges-popularity.html#ixzz4xqP0z0q2 
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When I read that the American people buy more of these guns then the Russian military and police, I get really scared.  That is just the AK 47.  Not all the other guns, just one model.  If that doesn't alarm you, I do not know what will.  So you guys/gals hold tight to those guns.  Do not let them take your gun because you never know when you are going to need to save your ass.  Mine, not so much.

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From the back cover

Chapter One...Loose Ends
Lou Mercer

Meg Parker led a simple life.  She was a widow of three years and lived on a chicken farm at the foot of the mighty Rockie Mountains.  Life was good and her little store on eBay made her extra spending money.  But snow and wildlife were not the only things lurking in the forest above her house.  Nor did it stay in the forest for long.

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