Winter doldrums, spring fever and summer sweat.

 My world is a wonderful place!  Winter is behind me and since it was a mild one and all the geese survived, it was a fairly good one.  Spring bursts forth with a wonderful display of leaves, foliage and flowers to stir the juices in my soul and make my heart sing.  Now we enter summer.  I like summer.  Not sure why, but I do.  It brings out the bugs, bees, hummingbirds, and vicious summer storms.   The first three things I really like.  The summer storms I can do without!

Now, Kansas was a different story as far as storms go!  Most days were just days.  Some were hot and some were hotter.  Some times it rained and some times it poured!  But always in the summer we watched the sky line for the clouds that could bring the tornadoes.  There always seemed to be a feeling in the air of what could be.  The tornado clouds were low and dark and the storm trackers were in their element as they scurried from one area to another to get a closer look at impending doom.  The air seemed to be full of electricity from the approaching storms.

Since I had a nest full of kids at the time, I watched the sky line and wished that this time I had a house with a storm cellar.  Now when I did have a house with a storm cellar I never went down there.  Storm cellars were just for that purpose and since no one went down there, spiders were prolific and BIG!  I harbored the idea that the tornado would suck all the webs and spiders out before I got down there, but I am not sure that was a rational thought!

A side note here on the cellar business.  When we lived in Glasco, which is in northern Kansas, we lived in a farm house that had a root  cellar.  This was a nice root cellar with concrete walls and floor and ceiling.  It even had a light hanging from the ceiling.  Of course, the first thing Duane and his brothers did was to "set" a crock of grapes which would ferment into wine.  Also something that would turn into some other form of alcoholic beverage in time.

The rules on this was that under no condition was myself or Maude, Larry's wife, to go into that root cellar.  That was "man business".  I also at that time had a little Chihuahua dog named Jake. (Jake will enter the story again!)  A couple weeks passed and the men went to work and the women stayed home.  We were very compliant about not going into the root cellar, but alas!  Much like the forbidden fruit that tempted Eve, the root cellar called to us.  What was going on down there out of our sight?

So one day we decided to just go look.  Two crocks were setting on the ledge and we lifted the cover and peered in at a stinking mess of grapes and water  with foam on top.  That was one foul smelling concoction, so we quickly covered it back up and scurried up the stair.  We saw no hope of any of that mess being of any use at all to us.

So the men returned home.  Supper was on the table so we ate.  Then Duane said, "Where is the dog? I haven't seen him since I got home.  That was unusual since Jake was usually there in case somone lost control and threw meat on the floor.  We began the search.  No dog.  After looking in all the usual places we gave up.  Duane then decided to check his alcohol progress in the cellar.  Lo and behold!  There was Jake shut up in the cellar!  How did he get there?  Were we in the cellar where we were not supposed to be?

Oh, no!  We would never break the rules!  Then how did that dog get in the cellar?  And try as I might, I could not lie my way out of that one!  I will not go into the scene that followed, but suffice it to say, I never disobeyed another rule that man made.  Never went into the root cellar again and the biggest blackest clouds could come and the storm that followed was mild in comparison to a husband who had been lied to by his wife!  

That was 60 years ago.  Jakie and Oopsie, my two dogs have been gone for years.  There is no one left to share my memories with anymore.  That is sad to me.  I often wonder if my mother had memories she wanted to share and I did not have the time nor the inclination to listen?  

I miss my momma!  I miss the old aunts and uncles!  I miss the history that I will never have a chance to learn now.  But most of all, I miss who I was then.  I was a 90 pound girl and the world lay before me.  Mother always said, "Hindsight is 20/20, looking back."

So I set here and remember and try to document just some of the history so some day maybe my grand kids and great grandkids will read some of this stuff and know that grandma had hopes and dreams and wants and needs.  Just maybe they will find a tiny corner of their hearts where they can bask in memories that will never pass this way again.

Peace and Love!

I am off on another of my power vacations.

     It is that time of year and I have not done it for several years so, today is the day.  We discussed this and my friend wanted to have the Kansas experience and who should know better than me about Kansas?  Having lived there for the first half of my life I should have a vague idea about it.  As I recall, the " Kansas experience " is best done in the early spring when the Lilacs are in full bloom or in the fall when the wheat has all been harvested and most importantly, when the temperatures are moderate.  Lord I remember that Garden City and the thermometer on 115°.  All that was back in the day when air conditioning was a rare luxury and having a fan put you in the upper echelon of society.

     That being said, back to my "vacation".  So we will be leaving here this afternoon, and racing to Lakin, Kansas.  There Dona will cut my hair since I just decided yesterday that I can not go another day with this mop hanging in my eyes.  After a night of visiting and sleeping in a bed that is not my own with out any dogs on my feet or a cat on my head, it will be off to the Garden City Zoo.  Course I am going to need breakfast there some where.  Then on to Dodge City and Boot Hill.  Oh, yeah, and I need to eat again.  Arrival in Hutchinson should be sometime in the early evening.  Visit with Sister Donna and unload the car.  Go visit with Sister Dorothy.  Maybe squeeze Evelyn and Kay in also.  Oh, forgot about Tommy and Alina.  And the baby.  And the nieces and nephews.

     Jump up on Monday and hopefully meet cousin Daryle over at McDonalds.  Run out to the Nature Center, drive through Carey Park, stop at Smith's and see cousin Stephen, drive to Nickerson and see the old home place, or at least where it was when it was still standing.  visit the cemetery in Nickerson and also the one in Hutch.  And a trip back home is nothing without a tour of the Amish district.  Day should be pretty well shot by then.  Hope Larry brings Mary over for a visit.  Bed.

     Tuesday will be get up and have coffee with Karen before she goes to work and then off to  breakfast at Skaets.  Hopefully I will meet cousin Sandy and MFR at Skaets for lunch and an hour or so of frivolity.  Then back to see Evelyn, Daryle, Stephen, Sister Dorothy, and miscellaneous friends that I need to touch base with before I go.  I will spend the evening unwinding at home with Donna and Karen  preparatory to my departure early Wednesday morning.  Got to get on the road early because the doggies are going to be kenneled this trip and the place closes at 5.  They are going to be so happy to see me.

     Wednesday night will be spent thinking of all the things I forgot to do and all the people I forgot to go see.  Thursday, Friday, and probably Saturday will be spent flat on my back wondering why in the hell I bothered and what exactly became of the trip to the Cosmosphere, antique district, hike through the sand hills....and what exactly is the definition of vacation.  Let me grab my Websters here.  A period of rest or freedom from regular work or study.  Well, alrighty then!  It will be that! 

      It does not say I have to do all this stuff to relax.  I am sorry, but I do not relax well at all.  And it does not say I have to visit every tourist site along the way.  Would like to swing through Greensburg and see how that is progressing.  That was my friend, Lyn's biggest complaint.  She wanted to look at stuff and relax and not think.  Those of you who know me, know that I am a bit of a whirling dervish, so to speak, and I do not chill out well at all.  So hopefully this travelling companion will understand me a bit better and can keep up or otherwise be entertained without me.

    So, power vacation, here I come, ready or not!  See you people in about a week and I should have the slide show from hell for you to view!

 

 

 

Cyclone, Tornado and Bull Frog!

For some ungodly reason, I woke up at 3:33 this morning and after laying there I decided to get up and face the world.  What I had on my little pea brain at that time of morning was thinking about my childhood.  After we left the "Stroh" place we moved to a place called the "Ailmore" place, again on the edge of town.  I remember it a little better since I was a little older.  It was a wood frame house with 4 rooms; kitchen complete with a wood stove and a sink that drained into a bucket, a front/dining/family room, a bedroom with 4 beds like a bunk house, and a back porch.  We did have electricity, I think.  Our water source was about 15 feet out the back door.  Jake and I were in charge of keeping the stock tank pumped full of water for the horses and the milk cow and water brought into the house for drinking, cooking, cleaning  and what ever else  was needed.
Josephine was in charge of us, as usual.  Her job was to clean the house and make sure we did not get into trouble.  One day mother had left us money to go to the movie.  I think it cost 7 cents each.  Only Jake and I could go.  So off we went.  I had on my good dress.  In those days a wardrobe consisted of a dress and a good dress.  Good dress was for town and church.  We never wore shoes in the summer.  We were bought a pair of shoes before school started and we better hope those stayed the right size until the ground thawed out in the spring.  Of course we handed our clothes and shoes down to the next kid, but remember I was a girl and Jake was my "hander down".  I digress.
So off we went.  Between the house and town was a bridge that spanned Bull Creek.  Cow Creek was farther from town and much bigger, but Bull Creek fed into it.  Bull Creek carried just enough water to make seining for Crawdads a lucrative chore.  We would take the big wash boiler which was used to heat water for the laundry and a seine and catch a bunch of crawdads.  If we were real lucky we would catch big ones.  We pulled thier tails off and boiled them.  Then we would remove the shell and eat the meat.
  (It was shaped and tasted much like a teeny, tiny, little bitty lobster, I think.  But today was movie day!  I must add here that since those days I have tasted crawdad and it was not nearly as good as back in those days when daily fare usually consisted of potatoes, corn, beans and that sort of thing served up with a loaf of bread that cost less than a nickle at the store.) 
As luck would have it we were almost over the bridge when Jake spotted a big Bull Frog.  Nothing would do but to catch that bull frog.  Down the bank we scrambled and after that frog!  He was fast, but we were faster!  We had visions of froglegs soup for supper!  Mother would be so proud!  At last Jake stood in front of me with the biggest bullfrog in the world clutched in his two hands.  Now what?  He was covered with mud.  I had not fared much better myself.  A plan emerged.  He would go down the creek a ways where the water was not so muddy and I would carry the bullfrog in my skirt back to the house and have Josephine put it in something.  Then I could put on my old dress and come back and we would go on to town.  Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men some times go awry.  And such was the case with the bullfrog in the skirt.
As I approched the door, Josephine ripped it open with her eyes very, very wide and her mouth drawn up in a tiny, tiny, very tight scowl.  "What have you done?"  Ah, but my pride of what I carried could not be contained as I stepped in the door and opened my skirt.  "Look what we can have for supper! " And you already know what happened next, don't you!  Mr Bullfrog saw his opportunity for freedom and leapt from my confines. Josephine screamed and ran around in terror ordering me to catch that monster and get it to hell out of the house.  Ah, that I could, but he was very good at escaping.  Even better than on the creek bank.  Under the bed, and as soon as I got there, he was out and under the dresser.  By this time Josephine had found the broom and was urging me onward.  What followed has probably scarred me for life,  but to make a long story short, eventually the frog was caught and set free outside.  I think the cat finally killed him.  Jake got tired of waiting and returned to the house just as the frog was launched out the front door.  He spoke not a word.
Josephine confiscated our money and the movie trip was cancelled.  My dress was removed and I was scoured clean in the stock tank with the cow and horses looking on in bewilderment.  Life returned to normal.
Across the road lived two sisters.  Well, we thought they were old maids, but they probably were not that old.  We used to hide in thier forest and watch them set in their back yard and drink tea.  Wasn't that exciting?  On up the road lived Mr. and Mrs. Rumble.  Mr. Rumble always wanted me to sing Buttons and Bows and told me that when I learned all the verses he would give me a nice shiny dime.  Then he would hold it up for me to see.  I dreamed of that dime all the time we lived in that house.  I could not learn the words because I could only hear part of the song sometimes and isn't like now when I can type it in the browser and there are the words.  I remember him.
There was a family friend named Ed Chrisman.  He and dad share cropped for many years.  This one particular time I recall, dad had gone off drinking in Hutch.  Mom was home and Ed Chrisman came by to see him.  A storm was expected and he did not want to leave a woman with a bunch of kids there alone and no one knew when dad would return.  So we closed all the windows and waited.  Jake and I went to the pump house to fill the tank before the storm, so we were out there when it hit.  We felt the shed begin to shake so we turned and ran as fast as we could into the house where mother waited with the door open. 
I still remember that wind and how scared we were.  And when it was over and we went outside it was like a war zone.  The haystack that had been so neatly piled for the winter was every where.  The only building left standing was the house.  The barn was gone.  The hen house gone and the chickens wandering around like little lost souls in the yard.  The tool shed was in shambles and the old milk cow lay dead in the field.  The horses had escaped and were Lord only knows where.  Later dad would come home and go "round them up."  We learned later that it had been a cyclone.  I think a cyclone and a tornado are basically the same thing, but I am not sure.  There was a lot of controversy over the proper term at that time.  I just couldn't see what difference it made, the results were the same.  I guess it is just like when you are in total shock, you reason things out and put all the facts in their own little places and then you can make sense of the situation.
I started school on the Ailmore place.  First grade and Miss Donough.  She later married Mr. Breece.   The circus came to town and I had a free ticket.  When I went to the circus and presented my ticket, the man told me I had to pay 5 cents.  I was devastated.  Mr. Breece stepped up and gave the man a nickle.  I was so happy and every day after school I stopped by his house to see if I could do some chores to pay him back.  He always said no and finally I stopped asking, but I never forgot.  I often wonder if I have ever done anything as I wandered through this life to make some little kid remember me.
 Funny the things that stick in your mind as a kid.


 

OK, Shea kids, here it comes!

Way back in the deep recesses of my mind I recall working at the Ineeda Laundry in Hutchinson, Kansas.  Now I seem to be drawing a mental blank on this one, so it was probably in the days before I had sense enough to actually remember stuff.  I strongly suspect I may have been doing a little extra drinking back in those days.  So I am assuming it was before I began the wild child bearing cycle.  But maybe not. 
I do recall one afternoon Sister Mary called and told me to come to her house on 25th (?) Street as Tommy, your dad, had called from work and said there was a tornado heading right for her house and she needed to grab the baby and head for the basement.  Now back in those days, I was good!  I could beat a tornado to some one's house and save them. So I clocked out and made a bee line to Mary's.
Upon arrival we began to carry stuff to the basement.  Snacks, milk, pop, water, blankets, coffee pot, coffee, bread, tooth brush and tooth paste, the bassinet,  a change of clothes, pillows....and at last we were ready.  We secured the door and awaited the wrath of the storm.  I do not remember which one of us realized first that we had locked Dorothy Rene on the other side of the door.  We immediately undid the door and saved the baby.  Then we laughed so hard and made a deal that we must never tell another soul what we had done.  Oops!  That slipped out.
Then there was the time she called frantically alternately between laughter and horror.  Seems there were a couple cats on the roof doing what a couple cats are known to do, and she was mortified that the neighbors would see.  She insisted that I must come immediately and get them down.  Well, kiddies, needless to say, I did not answer that call to do the big sister duty that time.  Even in a drunken stupor, I am smarter than that!
Once she invited my husband de jour and I to supper.  She was making Chicken and Noodles.  At that time they owned a big black hairy dog.  I watched the dog eating his kibble and then helped set the table.  When she appeared with the Chicken and Noodles in a big pink plastic bowl, I  remarked, "Oh, do you have two of these bowls?"  She replied that she did not.  More fits of laughter because I had just seen Poochie eating out of this one!  Your dad was horrified, but we got a big kick out of it and my boy toy never knew what was going on there.
I remember way, way back when Mary was maybe 9 or 10,  Mother would cut our hair and it was a rite of Spring, so to speak.  But Sister Mary did not want hers cut, so she was the only one of us kids who did not suffer the dreaded "bowl hair cut".  That was in our house on Strong Street.  I also remember once mother was going to run the vacuum for some reason unknown to me since we had linoleum floors, but when she opened the bag there were a nest full of newborn mice in it.  She handed them over to us to take out to the front sidewalk (And why we called it that is beyond me since it was the only sidewalk on the whole block!) and smash them with a rock.  Even writing that sounds gruesome!  We, of course, spirited them off to a safe place where mother could not find them.  I think the cat took care of our little hatchet job.
Anyway, this is the first time in a few years that your mom has not come to spend a month or so with me and I sure miss that.  I am going to try to get down sometime this spring, but it just does not seem to be working out for me.  I miss Mary very much.  I miss all the sisters, but I guess life just hands us all these little twists and turns and then Dame Fate sets back and laughs at us.  I wish you kids could peer inside my head and see some of the sights in there.  Glad I still can!