Liz's Cafe in Bessemer is where I met Delores.

My God!  I do not remember how many years ago it was that I worked there!  I was divorcing husband #3, working days for husband #3, and going to school nights at National College and working on a degree in Accounting.  OK.  It must have been about 1981 or 1982 that I graduated, so it must have been about 1980.  I could not make ends meet on an office managers salary, and I was attending school from 6 PM-9PM,  so that left little time for a part time job.  Liz's was a booming little cafe in Bessemer on the corner of Evans and something.   I think Dorothy and Frank were managing it at that time.  They needed a waitress from 12 midnight to 5:00 AM.  That worked perfectly for me.

The kids were asleep when I left and asleep when I came home.  I slept when I stopped and existed for the weekends when I could sleep until noon.  A schedule like that is not for everyone and I could not have continued indefinitely,  but it worked for a while.  Back to Delores.

Delores was an illegal immigrant who washed dishes in the kitchen.  She did not speak a word of English and did not come out of the kitchen for fear of being seen.  There was also another lady there in the kitchen and her name was Mary.  Mary was born here, so she was legal.  Delores, Mary and I became good friends at work.  When I wanted to converse with Delores the 3 of us would set down and Mary would be in the middle.  I would speak in English, Mary would interpret to Delores language and then interpret the answer back into English for me.  Mary was good!  Sometimes she would screw up and then we all three would laugh like a bunch of loons.  Now here is the moral of this story:

I never knew where Delores lived.  I never met her family.  She only existed in that corner booth for a few moments early in the morning.  She lived in the shadows and when the sun came up she was gone.  I often wonder about her and I can see her in my mind.  She will be forever young.  What I do not understand and never will, is why it has to be that way.  I do not know where she came from and I do not know where she went.  For some reason, I think she returned to Mexico.  I can still see her in my mind.  Delores lived in fear that she would be "caught and deported."  Why she was not here legally, I never knew.  That was a long time ago.

The point I am making is this;  She worked hard.  She spent her money in our country to exist and sent money home to her mother in Mexico.  Is that bad?  She had come here for some reason and her life touched mine, but it did not end there.  That was almost 40 years ago and I am still involved in the shadowy world of illegal immigrants, or maybe they are not illegal.  I think they are here legally, but afraid none the less.  I make regular trips east of town to visit my little friends that live out there.  I do not ask for citizenship papers.  I don't care.  They are my friends.  They live in the shadows and work in secret. 

Now we have kids locked up and parents looking for them.  And we have a caravan headed for our borders containing lord only knows how many men, women and children fleeing from drug cartels that are sacking their homes and killing the residents, raping the women, beating innocent children to death and more atrocities.  They are seeking asylum in our country.  And how do we respond?  They will be met at the border by OUR National Guard and turned back.  These guardsmen are under orders to shoot them if they try to enter.  WTF?

I am sorry, is this MY America?  My Grandfather came to this country 120 years ago when he was 9 years old.  I am a third generation immigrant.  When my grandfather came here he was just one of the huge family of Johann Haas.  Germans.  They came with Bibles in their hands and a fire in their bellies.  They walked the hall at Ellis Island.  They could have been from Mexico, just as easy.  I am proud of my ancestry and had they crossed the Rio Grande in the middle of the night, I would still be proud of them.  This is America for crying out loud!

I pray that when I stand before the throne of Christ and he judges me that he will not hold the behavior of my government against me.  I am not sure what I should be doing.  I can not change the course this country is taking with walls and tent cities for helpless children who have been separated from their parents.  I can not stop my government from trading bullets for rocks, but I can make my voice heard.  At least I think I can make my voice heard.  How long will it be that even my voice will be silenced?  How long will it be before we will be watching the parade and putting our right hand in the air and saying "Heil!"

Our country is divided on everything and the elite are lining up and Armageddon is on the horizon. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Our government is made up of a bunch of selfish aristocrats who will draw a paycheck for the rest of their lives.  Until we can get our government under control, we are doomed.  It gives credence to the adage, "You can send an honest politician to Washington, but you can not get him/her back." 

  I am sorry that so many do not grasp the reality of what is happening. 
 

Finally I am in touch with real time!

Set all my clocks back one hour last night before I went to bed and I woke up at a decent hour and felt like I was back in the real world.   It is 6:00 AM and I have been up over an hour and now the sun is coming up.  When I go to pick up baby at 7:00 AM the sun will be fully up and the geese will be out looking for whatever it is geese look for all day.  Why can't we just leave the damn clock alone?

An old Indian Chief said it best when he said, "A white man is the only one who thinks he can cut a foot off the bottom of the blanket and sew it on the top of the blanket and thinks he has a longer blanket. "  Hit the old nail on the head there.

We still have the same amount of daylight hours as we did yesterday, the only difference is the daylight starts a little earlier which means kids go to school when the sun is up and get home as it is going down.  To me it means I can let the geese out before I pick up baby and start my day and that eliminates having to make a trip back out here to let the geese out before I start my town stuff.  I can just stay in town and  "gitter done!"  It also means I can close them up while the news is on and I don't have to miss crucial questions on Jeopardy!

So, now life is good here on the farm and shall stay that way until the powers that be deem it necessary for me to go back to the other time which I do not know which time is the time it should really be the real time.  Is this daylight savings time, or was the one we just ended the daylight savings time.  The government should understand that all of us are getting older and while change is inevitable, some things should be left alone.  My little mind is having enough trouble understanding what day it is anyway, without having to remember that while Arizona does not observe daylight savings time, I do not know what time I am on.  Is my time and Arizona time the same now or were we on the same time yesterday?  It is a very good thing that I do not have to conduct a lot of business with anyone in Arizona.  I do have friends there and I could ask them what time it is.  Maybe I will go do that now!  Then  I am off to pick up baby on this Sunday morning, which I do not usually do, but there you go.  No problem for someone who does not even know what day it is anyway!

So, Merry Thanksgiving to you, or Happy Birthday, whatever day it is and whatever time it is in your world! 

And she never left his side.

This morning at 7:00 AM I was setting in a parking lot at 4th and Abriendo waiting for my son to arrive with my grandson.  53 years ago at the same exact time I was setting in a motel room with my husband, waiting to go to McPherson Hospital, in McPherson, Kansas to see my brother, Jake.  Jake had been in an accident the day before and mom had called to tell us to come.  We left the kids with Duane's sister.  Debbie was 3 years old, Patty was barely  2, Dona was 1 year old the day before, and Sam was 26 days old.  His sister was a brave woman.

We had arrived in McPherson late the night before and gone to the hospital.  My brother was propped against pillows and covered with a sheet across his body.  He did not even look hurt.  He did, however, continually kick his right leg and emit a moan.  Mother said that the doctor told her he was trying to stomp on the brake.  The last thing he would have seen was the side of a loaded gravel truck as Johnny ran the stop sign.  Johnny was down the hall in the same condition as Jake.  There was no hope for either one of them.  There was too much damage; too many broken bones to set, and to many internal injuries to even assess them all.  At the moment Johnny's last name eludes me, but it will come as all the memories of that time visit me from time to time.

This was my brother who had set with me beside a car battery and a radio listening to the Grand Ole' Opry from Nashville, Tennessee.  This was my brother who had written all the letters from Aschaffenburg, Germany when I was 15 years old.  This was my brother who dared to tell my husband, "You hadn't ought to hit her like that."  Of course that just got him some of the same.  This was my brother who had a new baby 6 months old and had been attending church.  This was Uncle Jake to my kids.  This was a broken human being that did not even know I was there.  And my mother set beside him holding his hand.

She talked of emptying the other bedroom at the house and setting it up as a room for Jake, just in case he lived and could come home.  She knew how severe the brain damage was and that he would be a vegetable and would need constant care.  She would quit working and stay home and take care of him.  For the first time in my life, I saw a mother's love in action.  A mother who would give up everything for her child.  My father had died only 8 months earlier.  His passing had made no impact on me, but seeing my brother so small and helpless was about to be my undoing.  So we stayed a little longer and then mother sent us back to Hutchinson to rent a motel room.  We would be back in the morning and she could call if anything changed.

We rented a little rat hole room and called and gave her the number.  In only 4 short hours the phone rang with the news.  "Jake is gone.  I will see you at the house."  I can not go into what went on in that motel room when I hung up the phone.  There are some memories that are so terrible they can not be erased and some hurts so deep that they will never heal.  I will just say that Duane was very upset and took the loss of my brother very personally.

So for 53 years I relive the Halloween of my brothers death.  My husband and I were married on October 30, 196?,  Dona was born October 30, 1964.

Guess what I am trying to say, is today is a bad day in my year.  Probably going to survive once more, but just be patient with me today.  Halloween pretty much sucks for me, but it passes.  Every year it passes.

So, life is mostly good.