Stupid or eternally optimistic?

My mother always told me that one sign of stupidity was doing the same thing over and over in the same way and expecting a different result.  I would like to go on record as saying she may have been right about that.  Now I do not like the word "stupidity", but I do not know a better word for that action.  Oh, I know!  I can call it "eternally optimistic!"  That sounds a whole lot better, now doesn't it?

My neighbors goats are eternally optimistic.  They are the ones  that will not stay home and like to come graze on my bushes.  Every morning they are in my yard, usually in the car port.  I hit the panic button on the car and all four of them go into a dead panic trying to run over each other getting away from the car.  They then stand in the drive way looking dumbfounded and wondering where that sound came from .  Seeing nothing, they then wander into another neighbors yard to graze on her grass.

Soon the eternally optimistic neighbors (now awakened by my car alarm blasting) wander out to herd the goats back into the pen.  They actually have 3 different pens, none of which will hold an animal prisoner.  And yet each time they close the gate, they think the goats are secured.  I have actually watched them stand in the middle of the pen and look around.  Were I so inclined I could go over and show them the gaping holes they walk through, but I am not.  It is easier for me to honk the horn, knowing that the goats will never figure it out.

I suppose that in my journey from puberty to old age I have done a few stupid things, but rest assured there was only one real stupid thing that I did over and over in the same way expecting different results.  That was my habit of marrying men who were addicted to alcohol and expecting them to work and take care of me.  It was not until I met Kenny that I realized I really had something to offer a man besides my paycheck.  And we lived happily ever after.

Now I realize I probably could go buy a roll of fencing, take it over next door and show them how to build a fence, but I am not going to do that.  If I still had the nice lawn I had years ago and the beautiful rose bushes I took such good care of, it might be different, but I don't.  So I will set here and hit the panic button and watch the eternally optimistic goats wonder what is going on and the eternally optimistic neighbors herd them back into the semblance of a pen.

Life sucks.

What kind of kids are we raising/

I was raised to respect my elders.  Did not matter how elder they were, what they were doing, or why. By the very virtue of my thinking they were older, they were to be respected.  If they were crossing the street, I was to offer my elbow.  If they did not take it, that was their business, but by God and all that is holy, I was to make it available.  And if I saw some one carrying something, I better off to take part of the load.  It did not matter if I knew them or not.  I was to offer and be respectful, and Lord knows I try.

I guess this is why I was so upset tonight when a lady friend of mine who lives in Colorado Springs called me to share a story that happened to her today.  Over the weekend, she and her daughter had cleaned the yard and had many bags of debris in big trash bags.  This woman is 84 or 85 years old.  A retired minister who has spent her life helping people.  She lives on San Miguel Street which is a quiet residential area.  She knew the trash man was coming tomorrow so she had to get the bags and the trash cart out to the street this evening.  She has a bad knee so she has trouble walking any way and moving bags of debris is not a light job.  She got the cart out alright and began dragging the bags.  They were heavy and cumbersome, but she persevered.  Halfway through her endeavor, several young men came out of the house across the street.  They stood on the curb visiting and looking her way occasionally.  Never once did any one of them offer to help.  One of them got in his truck and drove away.  The two remaining continued to talk and glance her way.  Then they parted company and the one who lived there went into the house and closed the door.

She called me to tell me about this.  I was amazed that anyone could watch an old woman struggle and not offer assistance.  The one man is a neighbor of hers!  Have we become so complacent that other peoples burdens mean nothing to us?  What has our world come to that this is happening?  I assured her that had I been there, I would have helped her.  I have raised 6 kids and not a one of them would ever not come to the aid of someone in need.

God teaches us to love our neighbor and it that context it means love everybody, but when you see an older person struggling and that person lives across the street from you, it really is your neighbor.  I think God wants us to help every body.  I just wonder who raised those men?  I wonder if their mother needed help if anyone would help her?

As you have done this to the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me.

Or not.

A cow named Bossy.

I am not sure her name was Bossy, but I think it was and that is what counts.  She was brown, but back in those days most of the milk cows were.  I want to say she was a Guernsey, but you are not going to catch me lying at this stage of the game.  She was brown.  A soft brown.  We had several cows when we left the Ailmore place, along with the horses dad used for plowing. We also had Star, the Shetland from hell that no one could ride.  You would have thought he was a sweetheart if you just looked at him, but try to get on his back and that was not happening.  He is the one that left the scar on my brothers face.  But back to the cow.

 The reason I am telling you about Bossy is because that cow knew how to give milk.  But the best part of the milk was the cream.  We had a separator which separated the milk from the cream (hence the name separator).  We would toast a piece of bread and then put cream on it and sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar and put it under the broiler for just a few seconds.  That was heaven!  The cream was so thick it stayed standing on the toast.  I go to the store now and buy "heavy whipping cream" and it pours out of the carton.  I have not even seen cream like we used to eat.

The same cream was churned into butter.  The butter was bright yellow when it was rinsed and put in the refrigerator.  It was also very delicious.  After Bossy died in cowbirth, (the baby also died) we were without a cow and thus without butter.  The neighbor girls lived with their father right next door.  Their mother had passed many years before and he raised the girls  alone.  They also had a cow and made butter.  With no cow we had to resort to eating margarine.  Now in those days margarine was white.  I think it was actually lard, but it came with a little yellow dye button that you could work into the white mass so it looked like butter.  We used to trade margarine for butter because the neighbor girls did not like butter. 

Another thing was they made doughnuts every Saturday morning.  Their father was diabetic, but he sure liked those doughnuts and he thought if he only ate them once a week he would be alright.  Another daughter came from Plevna to visit them every Sunday so they managed to eat all the doughnuts.  None for me!

One time mother had fried up a bunch of small carp that she had seined and Dorothy got a bone caught in her throat.  Mother had picked the meat off, but apparently missed a small bone.  As she was choking one of us ran next door and told Mr. Reinke.  He had experience at such things, you know.  He grabbed a piece of bread from the cupboard (in case we didn't have any and of course we didn't).  He made Dorothy eat the bread, which dislodged the bone and sent it into her stomach where the acids would dissolve it.  He was a hero!

Mostly Mr. Reinke just did handy man work around town and then did his chores when he came home.  We could here him singing songs in German while he did his chores.  Since he sang in German, my dad was sure he was a Nazi, but we never knew that for sure.  I just thought he was a very nice man to save my sisters life. 

I was always envious of their "outhouse" because it had a concrete floor and a lid on the potty part.  Ours had a floor that was pretty well shot and a bench with 2 holes.  I never understood that part, because we never went in there with anyone.  I just could not picture that!  Thiers also had a door and a latch from the inside for privacy.  Ours had a door at one time, but not by the time we inherited it.

The point of this entry when I started it was about cream.  The point I wanted to make was, back in those days we ate thick cream.  We used real butter.  We ate potatoes, and bacon, and gravy and we were all skinny.  When I married my first husband I stood 5'1" and weighed 92 pounds.  I am convinced that all the additives in our food are still in our bodies.  I have given up trying to read the ingredient list on anything I pull off the shelf or out of the freezer.

And I am sure I will never live long enough to ever be able to toast a piece of bread and pile cream on it with cinnamon and sugar.  Sure would like to see old Bossy again, but those days are long gone.  I would not eat a Carp now if I was starving.  I am beginning to look forward to the day when I can once more run barefooted down Strong Street see all my family and friends.  Seems like that list gets
shorter every day.

(After thought) I do need to tell you, that when the separator quit working at one point and mother strained the milk it was not the same.  She would leave it set and the cream would raise to the top.  I could not stand the bits of cream that were floating in the milk  to touch my lips.  I would try to pick them all out with my finger, but it was an exercise in futility.  I could eat straight cream, but not swallow a fleck.  I was so happy when we had to buy milk from town because it was homogenized.

A sad little horse.

The neighbors have a horse.  It is in a field in front of their house.  It has a shed to stand in and that is about it.  Oh, it gets food and water.  The neighbors on the other side also have a horse.  It has the same life.  The two horses are separated by an offset fence so they do not have any contact.  They just stand there close to their respective fences.  What a life.  Neither one ever gets ridden or taken out of their pen.  I do not know why either neighbor has a horse.  I guess so they have some where to spend any money they happen to have left over.
I taught Ito to say please.  I go out with carrots and he holds up his left front foot.  I give him a carrot and he eats it slowly.  Then he raises his foot again and I give him the other carrot.  It is a game we play, but alas, the game is over.  The neighbors are moving to Castle Rock.  They are actually mostly moved.  Ito is all alone over there.  It is very sad to me to think of him all by himself.  I am sure they will come and do something with him.  I know he will be glad to see them, but ai am sure he will miss his other horse freind and who will give him carrots?  He can't ask for them.  Maybe his new owners will know that horses like carrots.  I sure hope so cause he is really a nice horse.
So I am off to bed, but just wanted to let you know, that my heart is very heavy tonight.
Sleep tight.

Life continues here on South Road.

The goose is history and life goes on around here.  I must confess that I was awakened by a strange sound in the night a couple times.  I wasn't afraid because the alarm system, the dogs, the moat around the outside and the solid core doors and deadbolts would slow an intruder down enough to give me time to jack a shell into the barrel of my 12 guage.  It was just something I had not heard before and I finally decided it was just a cougar and rolled over and went to sleep.  No sense poking a stick at something that can eat you, if you know what I mean.
So this morning I let the geese out and then packed my goodies and carried them out to the car to take to Hospice.  It was then I noticed a big horse standing in my yard.  I thought it was Ito who lives next door and eats all my carrots.  I started back to the house to get a carrot, thinking to lure him back to his pasture.  Whoops!  Ito was in his pen already.  I checked to see if his pen was secure and noticed the fence bent down in a couple places and the gate post bent.  Rascal was trying to lure Ito away!
So I drove down 2 doors since I already had the car running and would need it to get to town.  See out here 2 doors is not 2 doors.  It is more like an eighth of a mile by the time you figure my driveway, South Road and then their driveway.  Some kid answered the door and I told him his horse was over at my place and went back to my car and as I started for town I seen him picking his way across his driveway barefooted and I knew he was going to have  a long day if he didn't get his shoes on his feet.  Hell, we have goat heads out here bigger then McDonalds Big Mac.  Stickers are not our friends.
So, to the crux of the story, when I got home, the horse was once more behind his fence.  This made me remember the time when we first lived here and I planted Tulips out front.  I came home one afternoon to find a neighbors cow munching my Tulips.  It would have been their first year and as I stood looking down into the bitten off Tulip, I saw the colors they would have been had they not died an early death.  Red, Yellow, Orange and damn that cow.
Now this brings me to our lesson for the day which is "Good fences make good neighbors."  When Bill and Shirley lived next door, Bill had a bunch of banty chickens.  One rooster he prized very highly.  I had small part poodle, part something else named Sysnyck.  Sysnyck went over and brought the rooster to our yard to play with it.  Things got a little out of hand and Kenneth ended up beating the dog with the dead rooster to which Bill said, "The dog did not kill my rooster, you did!"  Things were tense, but if Bill had built a better fence my dog would not have been able to drag his rooster over here.  Right.
Clifford and Jacque moved in after they left and they had lots of dogs.  Cliff let his dogs run out back and one of my ducks managed to fly over the fence and right into the mouth of one of the dogs.  He should have built a higher fence.  Right?
The ducks were crawling through a hole in the fence and going up and playing in the ditch and upsetting Mr. Keys, so I had to re fence the whole place just to keep peace in the neighborhood.  That was right after Kenny passed away and the last thing I wanted to deal with at the time., but I know the rule about good fences and good neighbors.

The tomatoes are canned and cooling on the counter.  I visited 3 clients today and hopefully brightened their day. I took a walk earlier and walked up the ditch bank a little further then I thought and almost go stuck out in the dark, but now I am home, the dishwasher is running, the dogs have fresh water and hopefully all the fences are going to stay up and all the gates stay closed and I am going to sleep like a log.  Until next time....

Keep your powder dry!

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!