I have a theory about memories.

Many years back I read a series called "Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean Auel.  The gist of the story, for those who did not read it, was that there existed a tribe of people who were apparently Neanderthals and they had found a young girl who was more advanced  (cro magnum) than they were. ( I may have those 2 backwards, but so be it.)   Apparently her tribe was wiped out in an earthquake and she was the only survivor.  She was found and taken in by the head medicine woman of the Cave Bear Clan.  To make a long story short (since there were 4 or 5 books written ) Ayla, became the protégé of the medicine woman.  I forget her name, but she was capable of calling into memory all her ancestors before her and when a question needed an answer she would seclude herself and with the help of some "herbs" go back in time and find the answer.  Lots of other stuff  happened, but this memory thing is the one I am addressing today.

As most of you know, I have a total of 6 kids.  I never really taught them to cook and yet they are all very good cooks and cook in much the same way I do. ( Little aside here.  The youngest may or may not know the fine art of cooking, but he is certainly an experienced eater, so I guess that qualifies him.)  When I lived with grandma Haas the only time we really ate a big meal was on Sunday.  Sunday mom and dad always came from Nickerson and Aunt Lola and Uncle Alvin would come in after church.  At precisely 1:00 dinner would be put on the table.  Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and cream gravy, green beans, fresh rolls, pickled beets, sweet pickles,  relish, butter, jelly.   And it seems Aunt Lola always brought some sort of chiffon cake, or bread pudding, or something like that.  When dinner was over and the table cleared and the dishes all back in the cupboard, it was time to doze.  A nap was always in order before the long drive (20 miles) back to Nickerson.  Us kids were allowed to run out in the yard as long as we stayed out of the street, which was also the highway, which was actually a county road.  We would walk up to the main business area which was one block away and consisted of Hinshaw's General Store, the bank and a filling station with one gas pump.  Oh, and the school.   Grade school was down stairs and high school was upstairs.

Sometimes if it was really hot, Aunt Lena would run water in her horse tank and we could jump in it and splash around.  (Aunt Lena was the old maid Aunt that is in every family, or was back then.)  We wore our clothes and let them dry in place when we got out.  Right beside Grandma's house and across the street on the way to town, was Great Grandma Hatfields old house.  She had lived right next door to grandma and had planned on marrying some guy and moving him in there when, sadly he dropped dead.  Since she was 75 or 80 years old at that time. she just closed up the house and moved across the street since by that time grandma Haas had her stroke and needed taken care of .  As her mother Great Grandma felt it her duty.  So there they lived until Grandma passed and Aunt Mable moved Great Grandma Hatfield (who was 99 years old at the time) to Coldwater where she lived until her death at age 104.

Grandma Haas is on the left and Great Grandma Hatfield is in the back.  If you notice Great Grandma has sandals on and Grandma has more sturdy shoes.  Great Grandma was a fashion plate right up until the day she died.  The plant in the pot is an Oleandar.  It is deadly poison.  Grandma had 2 of them .  One was white and one was pink.  They smell much like a sweet almond.  I have one that someone gave me 20 years ago.  This picture was taken outside Grandma's house about the time of her first stroke.  She was using a walker, but they wanted to look independent. The window is in front of the setting room.  That was where I slept.   Bless their souls.  I would give an arm and a leg to see them today.  They taught me to crochet.  We read the Bible every night.  Every night.   We never missed a night and we read it out loud.  We did not discuss it.  It was not up for discussion.  We read it and we memorized the important parts and I still know them today.

So where was I before I wandered off?  Oh, yeah.  Memories and the clan of the cave bear.  So there are times when I start to do something and it is like I did this before.  Never even thought of it before, but now I know how to do it because I have done it before.  Baking bread and rolling noodles comes as natural to me as walking, but no one ever showed me how to do it.  I can pluck a chicken and not miss a feather faster than anyone I know. (Of course I really do not know anyone else who cleans a chicken from the point of beheading it, to letting it bleed out, to scalding it and separating the feathers from the chicken and then gutting it.)  Actually, that sounds pretty barbaric, but there you go.  When we lived in Glasco, Kansas, I could buy 2 old hens at the feed store for 50 cents.  That fed us for a week.

Well, Good Lord!  I have no idea what I had in mind when I started this, but I need to wind it up somehow.  I guess you will just have to take my word for it that when I got up at 4:30 this morning I had my head full of wisdom that is far beyond my years and I wanted to share it with you.  I guess it is your loss!  That is what you get for thinking I actually know something! I guess I wish I could remember the things I am doing today as well as the things I never did that I remember so well.  Does that make sense to you?  Oh, shit!  If it does, we may both be in trouble!

Still water is not always running deep!

When I started datiing I drug home some of the damnedest things you ever saw.  Back in those days "cool" boys wore jeans with no belt and the waist band rode about 5" below the waist.  The legs were hemmed so they did not drag the ground.  Of course, back then kids had mothers that sewed and knew how to hem pants.  A sewing machine was a staple in any home.  Steve Dorrel was the first in our class to comb his hair into a "duck tail" and it was held in place with "greasy kid stuff."  He always wore a white shirt and the collar was turned up.  Every boy in school was measured by the Steve code and they all were found wanting.  Luckily, we had no idea what sex even was back in the 8th grade or everyone of us girls would have been in big trouble.

But grade school passed and high school was a new game.  No more Steve.  High school was pretty much a blur the first 3 years in Nickerson.  I was friends with a girl whose dad made home brew and that was fun.  My senior year I started in Hutchinson High School, ran away from home, came back and got a job in a "Toot and Tellum" which did not work out well at all.  It was at this juncture that mother suggested I might want to catch a man and get married, because I did not have a very bright future in store.

Now mother had always dispensed her wisdom on every subject known to man and people seemed to be her specialty.  "Still waters run deep."  This meant if a man was quiet, he was thinking, and if he was thinking that meant he was a good man.  Well, momma missed the  mark on that one!  I met my first husband because my brother brought him home to me.  He was quiet.  He opened doors for me.  So he had a beer now and then, but dad kept corn whiskey in the refrigerator so that meant nothing.  So in a matter of a few weeks I became Mrs. Tall Dark and Handsome.  He was actually a blue eyed blonde, and he wanted to get married and have babies and there I was!  Sadly, my first baby did not arrive for almost 2 years.  Mr. Still Waters became a regular little babbling brook and it was all aimed at my inability to conceive.  Hell, I was doing all I could and it seemed maybe he was at fault.  Yep.  Got scars on that one!  When my fertility kicked in, it was not to kick out for 7 years and 5 kids later.

But back to this still water running deep crappola mother was so fond of telling me.  My baby daddy was just the first water I encountered and let me assure you, I have learned a lot over the years, but it has taken me 75 years to get that one out of my head.  So let me fill you in.

(Now I am using the masculine noun here, because I am giving you my perspective as a woman.  Nothing personal)

If a man is not talking, it may be because he actually has nothing to say!  

Or he has something to say and he knows he is going to get an ass  eating if he says it.
Or he may be thinking about the hot little number he has lined up to see as soon as he gets rid of me.
Or he is waiting for me to excuse myself so he can pull his bottle out of his boot.
Or he may have actually forgotten I am there.

So there is a lot to be said on the subject of still waters.  Sometimes the still water is over the cesspool.  As I struggle through this life I meet a lot of people.  Most of them are just people and to be taken at face value.  But ever so often I latch on to one and hang on for dear life.  It never turns out well.  I have been a widow for 15 years and I have dated 2 men in that time.  I never really knew either one of them. 

I had a real connection with the first one, but he passed away.  He loved me and had we met at another time it would have been different, or so I think.  I even wrote a story about he and I.

The second one was a lot like a feather in the wind.  I never knew him at all, although I invested 5 years in what should have been a relationship, but was pretty much a superficial  sort of  a one sided friendship.  The boy was a lot like a bubble riding down a babbling brook.  Not all of us have to deal with reality.

I do not regret the time I invested in them, but I am pretty sure I am done with that dating business.  I tend my own flock, mow my own weeds, wash my own dishes and drive myself where ever I choose to go. I am starting to get out and do things that I did not have confidence in myself to do.  I went to Lakin last week and got my hair cut.  In April I am going to crawl on an airplane and fly to Dallas.  

Lord only knows what heights I can achieve if I just soar on my own wings for once in my life.  Bottoms up, momma, your little girl may be a woman yet! 

I am contemplating a trip.

I am thinking of going to Dallas for a few days.  Well, I am going to Dallas for a few days it is just a matter of how to get there.  So I called my precious son (and I drip with sarcasm when I say that) who lives in Dallas to consult with him.  I have managed to live on this blue ball 76 years and never had to crawl my ass on a plane, but he has faith in me.  The idea of flying terrifies me.  I would rather have a hysterectomy through my ear.  I would rather have my finger nails pulled off with pliers, but sometimes he makes me feel so silly with my phobias.

If I fly from the Springs I have to leave my car in the parking lot for 8 days and that will cost me over $80 which I am in no way in hell going to pay.  So I asked him if I could fly out of Pueblo and he explained that I would be on a tiny plane with no room and would wind up with my knees around my ears, but then he decided since I am short that would really not be a problem and then I had to put up with his maniacal laughter.  That plane would take me to Denver and then I would fly to Dallas.  I do not want to go North to get South.

A bus ride would take 14 hours, but who cares.  Course I could always drive, but my little car has a lot of miles on it and may not be the most dependable one on the road, but then again it might be kind of fun and I could stop and see Cindy!  Or I could rent a car.

So that is where I am tonight.  Thinking about doing this trip some time in April so I have a few days to plot and plan.  Hell, I might hitchhike.  I did that once you know.  I think I would be afraid to do it now with all the killers on the loose.

Well, time for Jeopardy!  so I got to go park myself in front of the television and sleep through that before I can go to bed.

I miss the good old days in the news room!

I can remember way back to when I first watched the news.  The camera would open on a man setting at the news desk and he would be reading the news of the day from a pile of papers in front of him.  We listened very carefully as he read to us.  Later there would be pictures sometimes.  Women were not newcasters at that time.  They were not even called newscasters, they were called newsmen.  Men gave the news and men gave the weather.  Women cleaned the newsdesk.

Time took care of that and I remember the first woman that was allowed to read a little of the news.  Of course I do not remember her name, because I mostly try to forget anything in the past.  The past is gone.  No need to remember that, unless of course it was something that was a learning experience and in that case it fell under the mother lesson of "Those who forget the past tend to repeat thier mistakes."  Newscasters' names did not tend to affect my future so I did not need to remember them.  Anyway, she sat quietly until something very boring like the social at the church came up and she was allowed to read that.  Sort of the token straw man or in this case woman.

A man always gave the weather.  You see, women have never been real bright when it came to important stuff, or so we were taught.  Kind of glad to see some of the changes that have come along, but back to the news desk.  The piles of paper were replaced by the teleprompter and the news feed and even the weather desk began to change.  A man used to tell us what last nights temperature was, and what we could expect tomorrow.  Some guy would usually show us either a sun or a cloud, or maybe even a snow flake!

Well, welcome to today's news and weather!  I am sorry, when I turn on a channel and there stands some man and woman in the center of the stage with thier hands folded and they are giving me the news, I rebel!  Sit down!  Sit down behind the desk and at least look like you are giving me the latest update.  I see your videos.  I realize you are just parroting what is going on in your ear from the tiny microphone hid there, but at least sit down behind your desk.  Look like you are a news person and not a fashion plate.  Standing there telling me the news is second only to the chipper your fashion plate that shows up in front of a weather map in her tight fitting dress with no sleeves and I know it is freezing cold outside.  She is telling me to bundle up and she should be bundling herself!  But the best part is when she hurries across the stage so I can get a better look at the weather back there on the board and then begins to tell me about the "out the door" clothes I need to wear.  And tuck in the old umbrella because it may or may not rain.  This little lady has no idea what time I am leaving the house, so she does not know what time I will be home.

Of course all the news is mostly teasers and some one tells me I will hear more on the news at 5:30 or 6:00 or later on in the evening.  Now, sorry about this, but I do have other things to do.  I want all my news in the first 10 minutes and all my weather in the next 3.  Show me a map of the jet stream and I can draw my own conclusions.  I do not have time for your opinions and your speculations and as for the weather a simple "windy tomorrow","gonna rain" or "I have no idea" will do nicely.  Spare me the cutesy little asides.

Hey! just found a channel where the woman is actually dressed for the weather.  Have not seen the newsman yet, but sure he is there somewhere.  There are actually 3 women and 1 man.  They are dressed for the weather and the man has on a suit.  Whoohoo!  I may actually set down and watch a little bit!

Disclaimer:  All opinions expressed in my writing are completely my own and should not reflect on any woman or man who appears on my television.  If you are tempted to call me names and throw eggs at me, that is your right.  I live solely by the motto of "Live and let live!"  And the last newswoman I actually knew the name of was Sandra Mann.

You can please some of the people....

Mother was adamant about this one!  I used to try to make every body like me, but it never happened.  As soon as I got a friend, I pissed some one else off.  So Mother was clear about it.  " You can please all of the people, some of the time.  You can please some of the people all of the time.  But you can not please all of the people, all of the time. "  She was right, you know.  She was always right!  Not right some of the time, but all of the time and the wisdom that came from that woman's lips never ceased to amaze me.  She just had a way of looking at life that made so damn much sense.

When I married my first husband she said "You made your bed, now you can sleep in it."  Later it was "If you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas."  "Live and learn."  "A new broom sweeps clean."  And of course the clincher, "Never bite off more than you can chew."

"Can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear."  "Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind."  That woman just never ran out of things to make me think and regret that decision.  "Too little too late."  "Can't put that toothpaste back in the tube."

So now when I think of mother I think of a poem that ricochets around in my brain.  It goes like this:

The wise old owl sat on the oak.
The more he heard, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
We should be like that wise old bird!

Or something like that.

Some things will always be the same.

I lay in bed awhile this morning thinking of something from long ago.  The road in front of the Strong Street house was dirt.  Actually all the roads in Nickerson except Highway 96 and 56th Street (the back road to Hutchinson) were all dirt.  Well, the county road to Sterling and 3 blocks that made up Main Street were paved.  I think they were originally brick, but who knows.  Back to Strong Street.

It was the silty stuff and I can still feel it on my bare feet.  In the summer it was very warm, but the sidewalk was hot, so the sandy dirt was much preferred.  I should explain that the sidewalk of which I speak was a block away over beside the highway.  It was a 2 block long sidewalk that ran from the Fein house, along an empty field and then the block in front of Mr. Kings house, a rental house and then in front of the house where some crazy lady lived that we never saw and she may or may not have actually lived there.  The side walk on that block was pretty cracked and had chunks missing.  So if we were lucky enough to snag a pair of skates we could only skate on the first block.

Three things come to  my mind from the above paragraph.  First, Mr. King (and that may or may not be his actual name, but it works for me this morning.) is the one who slept face down in his garden one day all day long until a black hearse took him away.  Second is the matter of snagging skates.  My friend Barbara had skates and sometimes she would let me borrow a pair to skate home from her house which was in town and where I visited sometimes.  There was always the stipulation that I not skate in the dirt and I not lose the "key".

For those of you who do not know about old time skates, I will update you.  They were made of 2 steel platforms with two steel wheels in front and two wheels in back.  The body was held together with a nut which required a "key" to tighten and loosen.  Loosen the nut and slide the platforms either apart to make them bigger or together to make them smaller.  The front had clamps which were loosened and then adjusted for the tight fit needed to hold the front of the skate on your shoe.  The back had a strap for you ankle.  If everything was not tightly fitted your skate could come off and down you went with your tender flesh skidding along the rough side walk.  Ah, but when everything was perfect the feel of the wind on your face and arms as you sped along at 3 MPH was worth all the risks!  The best way to stop was to steer off into the dirt and that worked every time.

click here to see a pair

The last thing that comes to my mind from that paragraph is that the corner of the sidewalk that was by the Fein house had several steps that brought you up from the highway to the sidewalk.  It was on those steps that my brother brought the news to me that Hank Williams had died in the back seat of his limousine on his way to do a show in Nashville.  He was so young and we could not believe it.  People did not die for no reason, but there it was.  How very sad we were that day.  WSM had announced it.  WSM was the Grand Old Opry station.  I wonder if it still is?  I may turn the radio on some Saturday night and see.  That is if I can find the radio and if I know which button it is.

But what I really started out to tell you this morning, is how clearly I can feel the sandy dirt on my feet from all those years ago.  I used to like to wiggle my toes into a pile of it where it had blown up along side the road.  It felt silky and warm and made me happy.  But when it would rain and there would be puddles, that was fun too.  If the puddles stayed several days there would be little things in the water that looked like tiny dots with a tail.  I soon learned that those were pollywogs, which would turn into toads or frogs in just a couple days if the mud puddle did not try up and we did not step on them.  They were pretty damn fast, so stepping on them was really not an option.

Ah, but the best part was when the puddle dried up if we did not disturb it, there would be a whole new thrill.  If left alone the sun would dry the mud and the top layer would curl up.  When that happened I could step barefooted on the dry mud and feel it crackle under my feet.  That was a whole new feeling and if Jake got to the puddle first he did it and that used to piss me off so bad!  Sometimes he would save it for me and that made my whole childhood worth while.  I do not know the last time I actually stepped on dry mud.

Funny the things we think about in the middle of the night when the world is asleep and we are all alone.  Guess that is why God gave us a memory.  It keeps me grounded.

Just a hairy mass of molecules.

My late husband had his own way of describing the various pets we had over the years.  He called them a "hairy mass of molecules"  and that seemed to describe about any one we had.

When I married him I had a dog named Sysnyck.  She was a poodle/Chihuahua mix.  Very black and with the hair that required a groomer.  She was named after a television show that was about a drill instructor that opened a gym in the heart of gang territory in New York City. I just name my animals whatever comes to mind.  No thought for gender or looks or size.   Sysnyck lived to be 12 years old and died of kidney failure, a weakness in both of the breeds at the time.  She is buried in the front yard.

Then Kenny's sister gave us a red dingo cattle dog.  We got her the same day I peeled 3 bushels of chile, so we named her Chile.  I guess she was actually a heeler.  She was nuts about tennis balls and loved to play catch.  She played catch as long as someone would throw the ball.  Key here was it was between you and her.  You throw and she fetched.  One time we had company come and they had a couple boys about 11 or 12.  We sent them out to play fetch with Chile and they decided to toss the ball to each other.  The came in crying and terrified because Chile sent them up the tree because that was HER ball.  End of that game. 

She would play with one ball at a time.  When she was tired of the ball she would shred it and pick another.  We picked up 12 tennis balls at the flea market once and brought them home to her.  We dumped them all out on the ground.  She sorted through and got the one she wanted and the rest were put away because if we threw one of those she would not chase it.  She only wanted HER ball and when she tore it up she was ready for another.  She is in the front yard.

While Chile was still with us we got a little blond poodle since that was Kenny's choice of a dog.  Chile helped house train Tammy by standing in the flap of the doggie door so Tammy could go out and in to potty.  Damn smart dog.  Chile died before Tammy.

Next dog was another heeler named Polly.  She was white with one black eye.  She became very possessive of me and finally attacked Tammy for getting too close to me.  That was sad as we had to have Tammy put down from  her injuries.  We thought about having Polly done also, but decided to be a one dog house instead and that was what we did until the neighbor lady came dragging home a little white dog with 2 black eyes.  By this time Polly was ready for company and we pretty much lived happily until Polly passed and Elvira needed rescued.  I never knew how old she was.

Also interspersed through the years were several cats.  I only like calico cats and I only like distinctly marked Calico.  First was Charmin who lived 18 or 19 years.  Boots was Kenny's cat because he was a boy and he was gray.  He was around 15 years.  I finally got my last Calico 7 years ago.  I had a friend who named her.  Calicos are always female for some reason.  He named her Icarus.  When I explained that Icarus was a boy, he informed me that no one but me was smart enough to know who Icarus was.  So Icarus she is and is on my lap constantly.

My menagerie that is shrinking.  But memories live forever, don't they?

Rest in Peace

RIP

My Little Elvira

Unknown-1/18/2018

So now the shock has worn off and reality sets in on us.

It has been almost a year since Donald Trump took office and not a day has gone by without a new upheaval and new ways to shock us.  His approval rating hovers right around the sewer pipe  as we express our disgust at his latest hate filled statements.  We are shocked.  We are offended.  We shake our heads and go back to whatever we were doing.  Is my assessment of the situation correct?  Sure it is.

Well, after a year of down hill maybe we need to rethink this little fiasco we are involved in.  In order to not sound confrontational I will say "We elected a mad man to the white house and we need to do something about that."  I want to go on record as saying I did NOT vote for that man, but by saying that I would appear condescending and that is not the point I want to make.  But we have to think about this logically.  He was voted into office.  I was not worried because I know we have a system of checks and balances and the Senate and the House of Representatives should keep him in check.  We elected those people on promises they made to us, so we should be safe, right?  Uh oh.  It ain't happening is it?

His cabinet is a joke.  He has hired and fired more helpers than Walmart and all the retailers combined and still has people operating from positions of power that are incapable of tying their own shoes.  Betsy DeVos is a prime example of what not to do to advance education.  Schools are operating with ice cycles hanging in bathrooms and kids wearing coats in the class rooms, but thank God the private schools get their tax breaks.  And speaking of tax breaks, I am so happy that they got that tax bill passed.  How long did it take for Walmart to declare they were giving a $1000 bonus to employees while slamming the door shut on 63 Sam's clubs to idle how many employees?  And they are raising the pay to $11.  Holy Mother of God!  That is just a few dollars more than I make on Social Security which does not stretch to cover my bills and there is only one of me.

What is it going to take to wake you people up anyway?  Now here is the deal, Trump is in bed with the Republican controlled congress.  Or they are in bed with him.  Six of one and half a dozen of the other.  Same thing.  For some reason the word Republican seems to loose a legion of demons and we Democrats do not stand a chance.  You want to know why?  Because we are honest, we have feelings for the under dog, and we live in a polly anna world where right will always triumph.  Sorry guys.  The other side plays dirty.  So here is what we have to do. We have to vote and get our friends to vote.  And we have to vote Democrat.  See we are so sure that good will triumph that we are setting here on the back of the wagon singing our song and the bandwagon is headed for one helluva cliff.

See the dipwad at the helm is spewing his filth and signing his executive orders and congress does nothing to stop him.  Republican Congress.  Luckily most of the shit he pulls can be undone by the court system, but it should not even be happening that way.  The man is not fit to pull latrine duty let alone hold the highest office of the land, so if Congress won't stop him, we have to replace Congress.  For now, stay on top of the news.  Call your Senator and Representatives and tell them what you want.  Vote in you local elections.  If it says Republican after the name, that is not the one you want.  Democrat. Bleeding heart Liberal Democrat.

Vote early and vote often!

Rubber Hoses are replaced by time outs!

I have my biggest inspirations at 3:30 AM and if I don't go with them, they are just lost.  So this morning I woke up with a boy named Dwight Kite on my mind.  He was an 8th grader at Nickerson Grade School and I must have been in 4th or 5th grade.

* I must put a disclaimer here to say that while the names are pretty close to accurate from my childhood days, the memories that accompany them are solely my perceptions recalled 65 years later and may or may not be completely accurate.  But the events usually have some merit for some reason.  That having been said, I will continue.

As I recall Dwight was a big boy.  He was referred to around town as "now quite right in the head."  There were several of those in my growing up days and were times different they would have been referred to as "special ed" and later "special needs" and today I think they are just kids.  We have certainly come a long way in how we treat our children, but remember the time frame I am talking here.  Dwight was big.  Dwight was slow.  Dwight was easily led astray.

The incident that is in my mind today was one of those times.  There were also big boys who thought it fun to "rile Dwight up."  I have no idea what had gone on and it is entirely irrelevant.  I do know Dwight was "called into the office."

Mr. Houston was our principal.  As I recall he was tall and skinny, but when you are 3 feet tall everyone looks tall.  He wore suits and his shoes were always polished.  His hair was parted on the side and combed in the manner hair was combed in those days.  Several times a day he would walk slowly down the hall and peer into the class rooms to make sure we were studying.  He could stop a heart with a look so we always kept our heads down.

Dwight was in the office with amazing regularity and we heard things were going to "come to a head" soon.  Now you need to know, that back then a teacher could administer "discipline" in the classroom.  Miss Howe in 4th grade was fond of coming up behind the dawdler with a wooden ruler and cracking it down with the straight edge on top of your head.  Oh, trust me!  You do not know what pain is until suddenly that ruler hits your bony head and the stars fly.  Dawdling days were over then!

But if the teacher could not control someone, they were sent to the Principal for a "talking to" and usually that was all it took.  I never got a "talking to" and I was very sure I did not want one.  Dwight on the other hand received several of them.  Mr. Houston kept a rubber hose in his office and we always thought it was just to scare us straight, but Dwight learned different.  We all watched as he came out of the office with tears streaming down his face and red marks on his arms.  Mr. Houston had won.  We all were sad and of course went home at night to report the action to our parents.

Well, that is called "corporal punishment" and Dwight had been bad and no one seemed to know just what he had done that was so bad, but it must have been bad or Mr. Houston would not have whipped him with the hose.  Dwight was never quite the same after that.  He came to school and was just a big, hulking boy who didn't have much to say.  And then he was gone.  He still lived in the house across the street with his mother and father, but he was rarely seen.  I never saw him, but the other kids said they did.  I don't know.

That was a long time ago, but it still sticks in my mind.  I marvel at how our world has changed, but no matter how much it changes, it still stays the same.  Oh, the days of the rubber hose are gone, pretty much and replaced by more modern methods like "time out" or Lord only knows what.  But there is still the standard there that kids have to measure up  or be labeled different. 

I wonder what Dwight Kite's home was like.  I wonder if our society been back then what it is today what Dwight would have become.  I do not know when they quit beating kids into submission, but I am thinking maybe some of them could still benefit from a little of that.  Just not from the principal of the place you go to learn.

It was a different world back then.  It is sad that all these years later, I still think of Dwight Kite.  Our family went to church with Mr. Houston and his wife and son, and I was as afraid of him in church as I was in school.  Later Miss Barkiss, the music teacher, married the son, David.  That is all I know.  That may be all I want to know.

Another year down the shitter.

Made it through the New Years Eve thing stone sober and sound asleep.  Not the first time that has happened.  Oh, I had a nostalgic moment before I went to bed.  I thought about the past year and asked the good Lord to forgive some of the vindictive thoughts I had.  Also asked him to bless all those who are less fortunate then I am.  All in all the last year was not a bad one.  I managed to spend a lot of the kids inheritance.  I made a few enemies and got rid of a couple toxic friendships (for want of a better word.)  And I thought about making a bunch of New Years Resolutions on a sheet of paper and putting it on the refrigerator so I could look at it every day, but I had a second thought that beat hell out of that first thought!  But since I did all this thinking in the middle of the night, I just rolled over and went back to sleep!

Let's just face it!  I am who I am and I shall remain that way.  I should quit cussing, but that just ain't happening.  I should start being a softer person, but hell with that.  I already go to church every Sunday, so that is a given.  I try to be kind to people, but some people are just such total assholes that they make it impossible.  Most of the time I grit my teeth and just put one foot in front of the other and it works for me.  But of course there is always that one person that is insistent on having my honest opinion on our politics and they ding at me until I give them my opinion and then they will talk louder and faster to convince me that I am wrong.  Well, it is down hill from there.  When I get in a screaming match I tend to spit when I talk and there is nothing more degrading then an old woman foaming at the mouth  over something she has no control over.  I am getting pretty good at just walking away from those situations, but it has taken me 76 years to learn that art.

I gotta tell you I am not happy with our political climate today.  I spent many years working on gay rights, migrant rights, women's rights, racial equality, animal rights, Black Hills Energy rate hikes, health care, food labeling and that damn GMO crap that we are forced to eat or starve.  I want a quiet peaceful world where we all are equal and it just isn't happening.  I thought we had made strides and then some lunatic becomes our leader and with a stroke of his pen changes it all.  Or he thinks he does.  Most of his edicts can be overturned because they are illegal and won't happen just because he wants them to, but we are in limbo as they creep through the judicial system to be declared unconstitutional.

And that damn wall!  Did we not learn anything from the Berlin Wall?  I knew a lady once who moved to Mexico and lived there until she died.  Why?  Because she could afford to live on her Social Security down there and she had a cleaning lady and ate very well.  The climate suited her and her little condo was very nice.  I survive on Social Security because my home is paid for and so is my car.  Sadly, if I want anything extra I am dipping into the kids inheritance or taking in some sort of work that pays cash under the table.  And while we are on the subject of the border wall, is that for us to keep the Mexicans out, or for keeping our own people in?   Our little world is collapsing around our heads and we are not smart enough to see it.  But that is alright, because they just voted us a tremendous tax cut!  As long as they keep telling us how well off we are, we can keep thinking some one cares for us.

We can not pass a gun law because the NRA owns us.  I hear the argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people and they can do it with a knife, or a car, or anything."  We live in an atmosphere of hate.  Pure and simple.  We are controlled by who we send to Congress.  It is that simple.  We have morons in Congress who have been there forever and we keep sending them back because when re-election time comes they tell us things will be different.  Well now you see what different is!  Talk about raping and pillaging that goes on way back in history and then take a look at what we have in Washington today!  And enjoy yourself, its later than you think!

I hope I live long enough to see Americans pull their heads out of their asses.  

Now they call it harassment. I thought it was a way of life.

I had a long talk with my son today.  Not the young one, the older one who will no doubt put me  in Shady Pines someday.  The subject of the "Me To" movement came up and I was explaining to him that when I was newly divorced and in the work force needing to make a living it was what it was.  Back then women were supposed to stay home and if a divorce was your lot you should quickly find another husband.  When I mentioned that I was paid less then the men in the work place for the same exact work or sometimes more work because the men had families to support, he could not believe it.

When I left my husband, I immediately went to work because I needed a place to live and food for the table.  I applied for welfare, but was turned down because I worked.  I could not get a medical card because I worked.  There were no programs to help me because I was eligible for child support.  Of course there was no child support forthcoming, but since I was eligible I was out of luck.  No stipend for child care either because I had a husband who did not pay child support.  I am happy to say that has changed.  Well, not for me, because my kids are all grown and gone, but for other women.

Back in the early 1970's I went to work at the Holidome which was owned by Holiday Inn.  Fancy place with an indoor pool and poolside rooms.  Top notch back in the day.  There were 2 cooks.  I do not remember the other cooks name, but it seems like it was George.  Our duties were the same.  We cooked orders for the clientele.  George had a helper so mostly he just smoked (and you could have a cigarette dangling out of your mouth and a spatula in your other hand and that was alright back then) and told his helper what to do.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that they were both paid more per hour than I was.  I say surprised, but not really.  Back then it was expected.  Men were superior to women and they had families to support.  I had 5 kids at home, but that was irrelevant.  What really frosted my cookie was when I found out that the boy who made salads earned more than I did.  He was hired after me and called in sick at least once a week.  That meant I had my work and his work to do for $2.00 an hour less than he made.

I talked to many people about starting some sort of union so pay was more equitable and sick days could actually be earned, but all that ever got me was laughed at.  It was a lot easier to get a  husband then to get a day or 2 paid vacation.  When I first started the restaurant jobs we got free meals, but then the owners decided we were eating them out of house and home so we could buy our meals at a reduced rate, but if we sat down to eat them we had to clock out.  Having a pizza delivered was out of the question as was bringing a sack lunch.  We either paid or starved until we got home where food was free.  Although free in not to say it was free.  Just cheaper then eating at work.

I bartended a while and was also a waitress in a bar.  Now if you think my ass was not grabbed on a regular basis you are nuttier than bat shit!  It went with the territory.  If a woman worked in a bar it was because she wanted a husband or a sugar daddy or at the very least a one night stand.  Being friendly brought tips and I needed tips, but not that badly.  A drunk in a bar is not what I wanted out of life.  When the bell tolled midnight I just wanted to jump in my car and race home to my bed...alone.  I did not last very long in the bar setting.

The point I am trying to make here is that sexual harassment has been around as long as I can remember.  The "glass ceiling"  has always existed and it was not until I left the work place that there were improvements made.  I am happy for the women who have made strides, but let me clue you and them in on something, it is still alive and well in suburbia.  After my husband passed I was left to handle all the household repairs and maintenance.  First order of business was to have the septic tank pumped.  Being new to this I got out my yellow pages and called the first one listed.  And here he came.

Short, greasy and with a definite attitude.  He jerked the lid off and informed me that it was dirty and nasty.  (Concrete lid covered with dirt on top of a riser where there were spider webs.)  Where was my husband and why was he not there?  Let's see, after he died he quit caring about the septic tank!  The $100 fee I was quoted immediately jumped to $150.  He informed me that it needed pumped every 6 months.  I paid him and never called them again.  I have a nice guy now who comes every 2 or 3 years.  Just one of the ways he discriminated.

Want my car worked on?  I get several estimates and if they ask about my husband, I don't call back.  There are shops out there who will discount because I am a widow.  And they repair what I want repaired and don't pad the bill.

It is no fun being a widow in this world of men, but more women are making it better for me.  I appreciate that.  But do not kid yourself into believing that we are on equal footing with the male population because they want us to be.  It is dog eat dog world out there and you can bet your sweet ass on one thing and that is I am no longer going to cow tow to the mean spirited little men I deal with on a regular basis.  If I pay they are going to treat me fair.

Life goes on.

Santa used to be on radar!

Life was not all bad back in the long ago days of raising children.  The one part I took advantage of was when they finally got Santa on radar.  The kids were always excited on Christmas Eve because they knew all they had to do was go to sleep and Santa would pop in and leave them presents.  Now I kind of resented the fact that I had busted my ass to buy presents and some fat fart was getting all the credit.  So I devised a way to actually turn the table so I could get a little credit for myself.

When the weather man would come on and show the tiny Santa and his tinier reindeer, they were inevitably clear up in Montana or somewhere just as distant.  I would carefully explain to the kids that they should go ahead and go to bed and I would keep watch and if they happened to notice I was gone it was probably because I had made arrangements to meet him in Nebraska or some where because no way in hell was I going to not let them have Christmas and there would be presents under the tree from that rascal or by God I would know the reason why.  So they went to bed and slept the sleep of children who could always depend on mother.

Now in all likely hood, had they awoken and gone to check under the tree and found me missing, I was probably at the bar just down the street for a quick beer or at the liquor store at the other corner replenishing my "will to live."  But either way, there was always a pile under the tree for each of them and I had the satisfaction of knowing there were 5 little kids who loved me and were grateful that I had stayed up all night to make sure Santa came through for them!  I was a damn good liar back in those days, but now I am not so good at it.

But then I really don't need to do it any more!  I may stay up tomorrow night just to see where Santa is and relive the days when a hairy old man in a red suit was something I really wanted to see.  I have my brother Jake to thank for ripping my belief in Santa to shreds.  I in turn twisted the knife in my sister Donna, she in Mary, and when the veil fell from the eyes of Dorothy our childhood was over and we transitioned into a family who celebrated Christmas for the birth of the Christ Child.

Everyone except my father, who was an atheist.

Merry Christmas from Liberal, Kansas!

I do not remember the year, but it must have been about 1966.  Sam was barely walking and he was born in 1965.  We had been living in Garden City, but Duane (I some times refer to him as Earl, but he was always Duane to me.  Earl Duane if I was pissed.) and his brother decided they were expanding the tree trimming business so we were in Liberal.  Duane had found a farm house outside of town that was abandoned.  He made a deal with the owner to fix it up and make it livable and we would not need to pay rent until it was done.  We would buy all the cleaning supplies, wall paper and paint.

I have always been handy with soap, water, wall paper and paint, so that became my job, along with raising the kids, so the deal was struck.  I am sure none of you are going to know what I am talking about when I tell you how we got water to the house.  Ever see a windmill?  That is a pump with a shaft that goes up a tower to a giant blade.  When you want water, you loosen the brake and the blades begin to turn causing the apparatus that goes down into the well to go up and down, thus pumping water up the pipe and into the big holding tank above (and for the life of me I can not remember what that tank is called.).  There was no top on this tank so I am sure it was good clean water.  Water then flows from the tank into the pipes in the house by the gravity concept.  It was important that the tank stay full so there was water pressure.  All that is irrelevant to anything except that is the way we got water.

At that time we had the 4 oldest kids, Debbie 4, Patty 3, Dona  2 and Sam 1. The first item of business was to move into the house and set up sleeping quarters in the front room for the kids.  The furnace was also gravity operating on the concept that heat always rises.  The furnace was located in the basement and I do not recall ever going down there.  I think it was propane.  The vent was in the middle of the front room and the kids all learned very young to not walk on the furnace vent and if you look at the bottom of their feet you will probably find little squares where each one learned their lesson the hard way.

I vaguely recall that we moved in during the summer so by the time Christmas was upon us we were fairly settled into our new home.  I had finished our bedroom, the kids room, the front room and was starting the kitchen when Christmas time came.  Duane went to the "shelter belt" and cut down an evergreen tree, which ticked off the farmer, but oh well.  Decorations consisted of popcorn on a string, some red and green colored papers cut and glued and linked together and tinsel.  I do not know what Santa brought that year, but I do know he brought Sam a blue elephant on wheels and it was designed for him to set on it and move with his feet.  Would have been nice had it worked that way, but he was scared shitless of it.  Every time he seen it he went into screaming and crying fits like it was going to eat him.  We mostly kept it hidden and the only time it came out was when the girls wanted to torment him, which was often.

As I recall, winter was mild in Liberal since it was down in the southwest corner of Kansas.  I do not recall where they came from, but we had chickens which stayed in one of the out buildings.  I also recall we had a little black dog who brought me one of the chickens and laid it at the back door.  I do not recall ever seeing that dog again.

By the time spring arrived the house was in pretty good shape.  Every room had been gone through and cleaned, the wood work painted, walls newly wall papered  and the floors sealed.  I only had the bathroom left and was finishing pasting the trim around the top of the kitchen sealing when the landlord paid a call to see how the work was coming.  He was very impressed!  He walked slowly through each room noting the clean windows, the wall paper, the paint and praised my work.  The next day we got out eviction notice.  Seems his son was taking a wife and this would be the perfect place for them to live.  Talk about luck!

Back in those days we traveled light.  It was easier and cheaper to just leave the furniture and scrounge up new, then it was to load it and spend the gas money moving back and forth.  By the end of the next week we were living on the edge of town in a 3 room house with a huge back lot where I could grow a garden and a garage where I could keep my chickens.  For some reason the owner had painted every room black.  That was weird so the first order of the day was to drag out the paint brushes and spruce up the place.  The first swipe across the door post proved to be a rude awakening.  The place was almost devoured by termites!  It soon became apparent that what we saw was what we got in that house.  But I was always an optimist so I settled in.

I bought 100 straight run chickens and kept them in the garage.  In 2 months they were butchering size and I rented a locker in town.  75 fryers went in the locker.  The garden produced and I finished filling the locker with corn on the cob cut off the cob.  I was ready for winter!  The locker burned down and the man had no insurance.  All that work was wasted.  Then there was a windstorm and anything else we had was gone.  At some point the chickens that were in the garage  all ended up dead.  I called the sheriff and low and behold two boys in the neighborhood were found to have killed the chickens just for fun !

Debbie had started kindergarten some where along that time.  We decided we had enough of Liberal and we moved on.  Not sure where to, but if I think about it, I am sure I will remember.  That may have been when we moved back to Garden City. Or maybe that was when I moved to Hutchinson.  I need to think about this.

For now, I think I will get another cup of coffee and maybe run through the shower.  I am sure of one thing, the sun is up and the geese want out of their house.  Tomorrow is my anniversary.  I think I will bake me a cake.

But what about the rest of us?

I see people dashing about in the stores with thier carts loaded with gifts.  Christmas music is blaring over the intercom and seems to spur them into a fever of shopping.  I continue to the fabric section because I need 2 yards of blue gingham for an order.  Nothing else.  The lady at the measuring table folds the 2 yards and lays the ticket on top of it.  As she pushes it towards me she smiles brightly and says "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays " or some such nonsense.  "Thanks", I mutter, ;not bothering to return the greeting.  I am glad she is in the holiday spirit.  I almost wished I could be.  But I am not and there is very little chance I will get into it.

Don't get me wrong on the Christmas thing.  I love Christmas.  I love the baby Jesus and the wise men and all that.  What I don't love is the commercialism that has taken it from a religious  holiday to a shopping frenzy and Santa Claus trying to out do each other.  I like to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and put a roof over everyone's head.  But I am not going shopping.  I am not buying presents.  Just not buying into the whole thing.

Several years back I gave away all my Christmas decorations.  All the outside lights went also.  And along with the trinkets and baubles went any  appearance of adhereing to the Christmas season frivolities.  Now don't get me wrong.  I celebrate Christmas, but I do it at church and it is for the birth of Jesus and all the symbolism asscoiated with that.  I do not buy presents and I do not want presents bought for me.  For most of my adult life I bought for a Christmas list that was 45 people long and I enjoyed doing it.  Then one year I looked around and I did not know who had given me what, nor did I remember what I gave anyone else.  Consquently it was the same year my husband died.  I made the turkey and the ham just like years before, but it was not the same.

I may have just lived long enough and seen enough to become jaded, but it is what it is.  I can not judge those who continue to fight the crowds nor do I want to.  By the same token, I do not want you to judge me.    I like to be alone, not that I am anti social, I just  like solitude.  Christmas seems to bring all my sad thoughts to the front and every year it gets harder and harder to cope with the holiday season.  Do I remember a time when I really enjoyed Christmas?  Not really.  I suppose when the kids were little and I could surprise them with Santa Claus things, I was happy.  But even then I remember how hard I had to work to do that.  I guess life has just never came easy for me in that aspect.

So Christmas will come in 4 days.  But before Christmas comes, I have an anniversary.  Kenny and I would have celebrated  34 years together on December 23.  So there you go.  Another thing I can do alone.

If I could turn back time....that's a song, you know.

That is a song and if I wasn't so lazy I would go to youtube and then paste the link here, but basically I am pretty lazy in that department.  Pretty lazy in most departments actually.  But I can let my mind drift back in time and I am thinking my life would have been so different if I had do overs.  Course I would have been screwed in the beginning because I picked the wrong family!  Sadly back in the picking days, I did not even know I had a choice, so I just got born into the one fate set me down into that day.  So for the first 15 or 16 years I was happy.  You know the old saying, "Bloom where you are planted."  I bloomed where I was planted and then I found out there were other gardens that actually got watered on a regular basis.  Even got a little fertilizer from time to time.  Those were the kids that turned into jocks, cheerleaders, musicians, brainiacs, and such.

Sadly I wandered through high school without ever actually participating.  I knew my future would be to wed some hardworking man and raise kids.  I flunked cooking and I flunked sewing, so the hard working men were out.  They wanted a woman who could actually do something.  You know, a helpmate of sorts.  I guess the saying "Poor people have poor ways" comes in to play here.  I am not sure my dad ever went to school at all so an education was not very important to him.  Mother had graduated at the top of her class, but it didn't help much on the farm so she married dad who was a farmhand for my grandmother.

My dad's occupation was listed on the census rolls as "farm worker" and mother was "house wife."  And that was a good thing, but sadly father liked to drink.  He also fought the mechanical advancement in the agricultural movement.  He was one of the last to give up is horses and only then because they died.  His productive years were pretty well over at that time.  We became just simple folk and mother cleaned houses for a living.  It was a good honest wage.

A side note here is that I do not ever remember a firearm in our home.  Jake hunted rabbits with a sling shot.  There just never was a gun, nor was there ever a discussion about a gun.  There was corn liquor of some sort in the fridge and dad made hot toddy's when he had a cold.  I think he had a cold for all of his life.  If he was in a good mood he would let us sip a taste of the hot toddy from a teaspoon . I have often thought I would like to have  a hot toddy again just to see if it was as good as I thought it was back then.  Seems like it was a shot of liquor, boiling water and I am sure some sugar.

I digressed there, didn't I?  So if I had it to do all over again, I would.  But this time I would study very hard.  I would not even look at boys and I sure as hell would not have drunk that home-brew LaVeta Bankey gave me in my sophomore year.  I would not have dated that guy named Gene who brought me a satin pillow case home from Germany.  I would not have dropped out of school and ran away to Louisiana with a couple friends in my senior year.  I would have been so good.  So very, very good.  And I would have went to church every Sunday and memorized all my bible verses.  I would have been a missionary like I wanted to be when I was 15.   Hell, I might have changed my name to Teresa and been a Catholic and fed the hungry in Calcutta slums.  But I didn't.

Instead I set here like butter wouldn't melt in my mouth and dispense my wisdom not telling anyone that experience is your best teacher.   As you sow, so shall you reap is a favorite passage of mine from somewhere in the Bible.  Nothing wakes you up like a good dose of "sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.."

Now back to the subject, if I could turn back time.  I can't.  Try getting that toothpaste back in the tube.  Water under the bridge.  Things like that come to mind.  I have had some very good talks with God and while he does not answer loud enough for me to hear, he does answer.  And he has me believing that I really am not such a bad person and I will have another chance.  What did not kill me has made me strong and I hope I can help someone else along the way at some point.  Guess we will see.

And Christmas is almost here again!

It is almost 5:00 AM.  Coffee is perking.  The cat is fighting me for the keyboard and life is good.  I woke up a while ago and thought back to the Christmas seasons on 5th street.  I was divorced with my little nest full of babies and they always expected Santa to come.  I was not much into church back then.  Kind of hard to work God in when I was working a full time job and 2 part time jobs to put food on the table.  I did make sure the kids got on the bus for church every Sunday.  At least most of the time.  OK.  Some of the time,  but that was a rough time for me.

So anyway, I tried to have money put aside for Christmas, and usually did.  If not there was always the credit card and that was used more often then not for Christmas.  Nothing else. I recall the first year.  I really thought Duane would come and help me, but he didn't.  I ended up the afternoon of Christmas Eve doing the shopping for Santa.  Talk about a joke.  The shelves were bare and pickings were very slim, but I ended up with my car loaded.  Not sure anyone got anything they wanted, but they did get to unwrap presents on Christmas Day.  I vowed that the next year would be better and it was, kind of.

That year I splurged and bought each of the girls a bike and Sam a trike.  By the end of Christmas Day every tire on the bikes was flat.  I heard the rumor that Sam did it because he was jealous that he did not get one, but Lord only knows what the truth was in that case.  The next year they got Susie for Christmas, the gift of a failed reconciliation.  At least they did not flatten her and she was actually kind of cute.  Debbie, Patty, and Dona wanted to take her for "show and tell" and Sam just wanted her gone.  Take her to school and leave her was fine with him.

Christmas Dinner was varied.  Sometimes it was turkey and all that stuff.  Once it was ham.  One year I let the kids choose and we had corn dogs.  I can not eat a corn dog now without thinking back to that day.  I made red chile once.  I think Coloradans call it chile beans.  I did not know what green chile was back then.

Time kind of runs together back in those days.  Seems like I was always in a money crunch, but that is what 5 kids and no education will do for you.  If I had it to do over again, I would, but there would be some rules laid down on the first date.  I strongly suspect I would not have had 5 kids, but I am not sure which ones I would send back.  In later years they had welfare programs, to help with mothers like me, but at that time it was either sink or swim.  I paid $15 a week for child care and I had some doozies.  Ida May was a friend of mom's.  She always had a pocket full of candy for the kids.  She also had a full beard so they were afraid of her.  Mrs. McIvers lasted a few months.  Then there was a lady on 6th street, but her kids were meaner than shit!  I finally found Mrs Benson, who moved across town to be close.  At the time she seemed like the answer, but now I hear horror stories.  We did survive though.

Back to Christmas.  Christmas of 2002 found Kenneth in Colorado Springs on life support.  He had been in the hospital since Thanksgiving.  Our 20th Anniversary was December 23, so I spent the night at Semper Care.  I spent a lot of nights there .  Christmas was pretty sad that year.  He died the end of January 30, 2003. Christmas has never been the same since.  Probably never will be.  Seems I always get weepy this time of year.  Hell, it seems the older I get the more weepy I get.  I tried dating a couple times, but that did not turn out well.  The first one died about the time I got to really know him.  The second one was just a jerk.  There are a lot of those out there, so I am giving up on that.

There is no tree in my house.  No decorations.  I will spend Christmas Eve at church for the morning service and the evening service.  That is how I want it.  I think this Christmas I may get out the box of cards I got when Kenny passed and read them one more time.  I have not opened that box since he died.  I may go through Mother's box also.  But who knows.  This may be the year I do something wild and crazy.  I do know that unless it snows, I will be taking a long walk along the ditch.  It is quiet there.

Surely we will talk again between now and then, but just in case, I am going to tell you

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year and grab all the happiness you can while you can!

I was married to an ostrich and never knew it.

The light of dawn, or in this case, the light of way before dawn is very enlightening.  I woke up at
4 AM this morning to begin the tedious task of sorting through my mind.  It is normally a scary process and today was no different.  Like many times before, I thought about my brother and how he died.  But this morning I also thought of my first husband and how he handled Jake's death.

It had been a few weeks since Jake's passing and I mentioned something about the event to Earl Duane, my first husband.  His response was simple.  "I don't think about it.  I pretend he has gone to another town and I will see him when he comes back or we go there."  Such a simple premise.  I often envied him of the ability to just ignore reality.  I wished often that I had taken lessons from him.  It has been 52 years and it is just as fresh in my mind today as it was back then.  I see him in the hospital bed in McPherson, Kansas, with his head propped up and his sandy hair falling across his forehead.  The scar on his right cheek was vivid.  He had no bandages because he was too injured to bandage.  He passed on October 31, 1965.  My dad had passed in February of the same year. 

I am not good at dates and can not tell you what day most of my family died, but Jake was like an extension of myself.  I do not know why I woke up with this on my mind, I just know it was not the first time and will probably not be the last time.  I do not remember any of my marriage dates except for Kenny.  Let me tell you, when I had to come up with all those dates for the social security I was one busy little girl!  I was on the phone with the Bureau of Vital Statistics for probably an hour while the man researched  the various marriages and divorces and separations and such. 

When it was all over , I thanked him profusely for his time as he had been a lot of help.  He knew more about me then most people and his last question to me was "I just want to know, what happened with old Earl."  For some reason that struck me as funny and we both had a good laugh.  But sadly enough, I have often wondered the same thing.  I did envy him his ability to completely disregard any thing that was not what he wanted it to be.  I am sure he did the same thing with our divorce.  He certainly was adroit at ignoring that little sentence about the child support.

Normally I do not talk about him as he is the father of my children and I respect him for that, but he had a different relationship with them from the one he had with me.  As long as we can all separate the man into two parts, we are good to go.  We did talk on occasion and he remembered me as the skinny little thing he married and nothing I did after that mattered.  In his mind I never left.  I was just gone into town to pick up some groceries.

So in closing, I want to say, my life is good.  My home is good, but way to big and way to much work for me.  I want to do something although I am not sure what.  I do know there are big changes coming in the next year.  It is going to start with a giant rummage sale in the Spring and then I will just see where the future takes me.  I have lived over half my life in Colorado.  For the first half it was Kansas.  Do I think about going back?  Sometimes.

For now, I am going to run through the shower and start a new day.  That is the best part of life to me, knowing that each day brings a fresh page and yesterdays are just that.

Now it is tomorrow.

Yesterday Al Franken resigned from the Senate.  That made me very sad.  To be honest, this whole mess has made me stop and rethink and wonder just what in the hell kind of mess we have gotten ourselves into with the "Me to" movement.  I woke up at 4:00 AM with this on my mind.  I guess this is just the one that pushed me over the edge.

You all know most of my story.  I married before I was 20 and had my first baby 2 years later.  That one was the first of 4 born in 4 years and then a short break and the 5th came along.  Sometimes love does not conquer all and I ended up a single mother with no skills with which to support myself and an ex-husband that did not pay child support because he did not want a divorce.  Needless to say he was my first "me to" although I can not say it was so much sexual harassment as just a case of a man trying to hold a woman and keep her in her place.  But that is neither here nor there and it is what it is and ended up in a divorce.  I was awarded $50 a month for 5 kids, but that was back in the day when a man could just move to another state and the child support was not going to follow him.  And that was what he did.

Of course, I had to go to work and the only work I had ever done was restaurant or laundry.  Laundry work is very hot, and very heavy lifting, so I opted for waitress work.  The night shift always had better tips, but I wanted to be home with the kids at night so I approached the boss about training me to be a cook.  That was better.  I guess the first time I ran into blatant sexual harassment was at the Holiday Inn.  It was not really harassment so much as just being paid half as much as the fry cook that I did the same work as and less than the salad boy.  When I complained the boss explained to me that it was just the way it was.  Men had families to take care of so they needed more money.  When I told him I had 5 kids to take care of he told me I should have practiced keeping my legs together.   Back in those days restaurants were not covered by any kind of wage control, so to make the money I needed I worked double shifts.  I went to night school and got a degree in accounting, but I was still a woman and did not make the wages I needed.

I lost count of how many times I was propositioned when I was a waitress and how many men tied the amount of my tip to how friendly I was to them.  Of course I also learned that the wife was prone to just reach over and pick up that tip if I were too friendly to her husband.  It became a balancing act of being just nice enough to the man that he would leave a tip and even nicer to his wife so she would not pick it up.

I am glad that things have changed and women can now actually support themselves.  Too bad I am too damned old to work now.  And I rather resent it when I go to the feed store and load my cart with 50 pound bags while the clerk is over selling a roll of wire to some farmer.  And I hate that I have to tell them at the counter that I need help loading it into my car.  Course when I get home I am on my own,

But back to Al Franken.  I loved him when he was a comedian and was happy when he was elected to the Senate.  I saw the picture where he appeared to be groping that woman and it was clear to me that was something from his comedy days, back when that was considered funny.  I do realize that there is a real problem with some men and their inflated egos',  but I do not think for one minute Al Franken falls in that bunch.  It is sad that we lost him in the shuffle, but I was happy to hear he will still be an activist.  I really expect him to make another run because the people in his home state know the character of the man.  And they know what an asset he is to our party.

So until our government figures it out I am just going to stay in my little house and when I need a repair man, I will call my son, because if I call the repairman, the house call rate doubles.  But that is not because I am a woman living alone, it is just how it is.

The dress code has definitely changed.

Thinking back to when I was a little kid back on Strong Street and I must admit, we definitely dressed a little different than the kids today.  Jake always wore overalls.  So did dad.  Church dress meant clean overalls.  As little girls, my sisters and myself always wore dresses.  As the poor family in town we were given a lot of "hand me downs" and that was good.  Josephine handed hers down to me and I handed mine down to Donna, Donna to Mary, and Mary to Dorothy.  By the time they got down to Dorothy they were pretty tattered.  But when one of the ladies from town showed up with a bag of clothes that her daughters had outgrown it was like a gift from heaven.  These were clothes that were brand new to our system.  Sometimes there were even shoes which was really great.

The way the shoe thing worked was we each got a new pair of shoes for the first day of school and we wore them until we could not get our feet in them any more and then handed them down to the next kid.  Some times we would finish out the last month or so of school barefooted.  I liked that best.  I hated shoes.  We had 2 choices for shoes; black or brown.  I think I was in 7th grade when I found out there was another choice.  That was "saddle oxfords" and they were for the very rich kids.  Those were white with either brown or black through the center part of the shoe  hence the name "saddle oxford".  If you owned a pair of those you had to put white polish on the white part and that was just a waste of money as far as we were concerned.

I know I have told you about how mother used to save feed sacks that were pretty fabric and make us dresses.  I told you how I thought my name was Gooch when I was a kid.  Now I want to tell you something off the cuff here.  I sell on ebay and several years back a lady gave me a big pile of those feed sacks to sell.  I think there were probably 40 or 50 one yard pieces.  They brought some very good bids.  One of them I sold to a lady in Korea for $48.00 plus shipping.  The lowest priced one brought $9.99.  That is for 1 square yard pieces of fabric.  Made some good money on that lot.

Jeans or slacks were NEVER worn.  Girls wore dresses.  That is what we wore.  Even in the summer there were no shorts.  Dresses.  That was it.  We played in the dirt and made mud pies in dresses.  We always kept the dress that was in the best shape for our "Sunday go to meeting dress."  No wearing the everyday dress to church.  That would have been sacrilegious.  We could shinny up the ladder to the hayloft and watch the cat giving birth in a pile of hay in our everyday dress.  We could pick corn and throw it on the wagon in our everyday dress.  But you know something?  I can not remember any dress I ever owned except one my Aunt Helen gave me when I was in 6th grade.  It was store bought and was a grayish green everglaze cotton fabric and it had a tie at the neck which had 2 white daisy's on it.  I wore that damn dress until it almost cut me in half.

When dresses got to the point that they were pretty much thread bare, the went to the rag bag.  Periodically  mother would empty the rag bag and take her scissors and cut out any good fabric.  This was then cut into strips and each strip had a slit cut in each end.  The strips were then laced together through the slits and rolled into a big ball.  When enough big balls were rolled up, they were taken to the weaver lady who would weave them into a rug.  The rug was probably 8-10 feet long and roughly 28-30 inches wide.  They were beautiful and I still like to make them today.  Back then the weaver lady charged $2.00- $3.00 to make and they were very sturdy and wore forever.

Back to the shoe thing.  I am sure we had socks.  I know for sure Josephine did because they came up to her knees and when she got out of sight of the house, she rolled them down so here legs were bare.  She always was a dicey female.  Oh, and we always had to wear a slip!  Our dresses were always cotton, so there was no danger of a boy seeing through and lusting after us, but we were always afraid that if we did not have our slip on that someone would know.  A bra was never anything that I ever needed because I just never had any boobs to speak of.

I must tell you, mother always wore a hat to church.  Well, any time she dressed up she wore a  hat.  Women were expected to cover their head in church.  She could have walked in stark naked and caused less of a stir then what would have happened had she not worn her hat.  Oh, and that damned hat pin was good for getting our attention should our shallow little minds wander!

Funny, looking back, that I remember so little about clothes when I was little.  I guess back then we were more worried about starving to death than about freezing to death.  I want you to know it could get cold back in those days.  But we could make snow ice cream with out fear of radiation fall out.  Course we knew not to eat the yellow snow.  We could snap an icicle off the eaves and suck on that and convince our selves that it was good and filled us up.  I would dry up and blow away now before I would eat an icicle.  God only knows what is in our atmosphere today and he ain't talking.

So, I don't know just what the point of this was when I started writing tonight, but I am pretty sure I am done.  Going to be a long day tomorrow.  Hope I have time to get my naps in before Jeopardy.  In the mean time, just be kind to each other.  You never know what kind of burden the other guy is carrying.

Peace out!

The road is a lot shorter than it used to be.

I think back to Nickerson and Strong Street and as I recall, my future stretched before me and the road was very long.  Days were filled with running up and down the dirt road barefooted and playing "Kick the Can" at night.  That was summer.  The sand pit was up the road behind the house.  We were not allowed to go there.  We knew that.  So where do you think we spent the hot afternoons?  Correct.  The sand pit was cool.  We knew we would get a lickin' sure as shit if Momma knew we were in that water, so we made sure we were dry before she got home.  Seems like the name of that sand pit was Vincents.  Athey's sand pit was over on the highway and Mummy's was outside of town near the Arkansas river, so this one had to be Vincent's.  It was not a working pit, so no one was ever around.  Of course there was a "No Trespassing" sign, but we were too little to read it and if we had been able to read it, we had no idea what trespassing meant.

I could not swim when I was little so I always stayed in the low part with the little kids.  To be honest I did not learn to swim until about 10 years ago.  Kenny did not know how to swim either and we took the boat out every weekend in the summer.  I think we were pretty naïve in that area, but it all worked out.  I had made sure that all my kids knew how to swim, but I never thought it was important for me to know.  About 10 years ago, I decided that I should learn the art of that and off I went to the warm water pool at the "Y".  I learned the art of survival and decided that swimming was not for me and I gave it up for other things.  I just never liked the water up my nose or in my ears.  Sorry.  Just not my bag.

I do not think most of you know just what Kansas weather is and how we survived back then.  It is hot in Kansas.  Hot and humid.  There were no air conditioners in those days.  The best we could hope for was to lay under a tree in the shade and with a little luck, a soft breeze would blow across our bodies and that was how we cooled ourselves.  Churches used to have cardboard fans in the rack where the hymnals were kept.  We were not allowed to steal those either.  It was not unusual for the temperature to soar above the 100 degree mark.  And of course on days when it was that hot and a cloud came up there was a damn good chance that it was bringing a tornado.  Feast or famine.  We knew if  a tornado came we were to run for the cellar, but I have already told you that no way in hell was I going down in that hell hole.

If we thought summers were bad, we knew winters were worse.  We had a wood stove in the front room, but it burned out in the night and had to be rebuilt every morning.  That was Jake's job.  Since we walked to and from every where.  When it snowed we followed in Jake's footprints going to school.  I do not remember having boots when I was little, but I do recall at one point Jake grew out of his and they were handed down to me.  Does anyone remember galoshes?  They were black and had 4 or 5 buckles on the front to hold them on.  I would rather have been caught stark naked in a snowbank then to be caught dead in those things.  Of course mother gave me that lecture on "pride going before the fall and a haughty spirit before destruction" and I wore the damn things to school.  In later years I worked and made enough money to buy my first new pair of boots.  I went to Warringtons Dry Goods and they had two pairs in my size.  One pair was brown rubber and the other was white with fur around the top.  I wanted the white pair so bad I could taste it, but I bought the brown pair so as not to be prideful.  What a friggin' moron I was in those days!

I recall mother making me a new coat.  It was light teal corduroy and had been something else previously, but she carefully took it apart and cut a pattern to fit me.  I was so proud!  I wore it to school as soon as it was finished and some boy said, "So you got a new coat.  It is still old and it is not pretty."  Kids are so mean at that age.  I would like to say it did not bother me, but it did.  Until you live in a world where everything is hand me downs, you can not know the feelings.  I tried to just be happy that I had a coat that no one had worn before me, but somehow the joy was gone.

When I entered high school it was in Plevna, Kansas and I lived with my Grandma Haas and Great Grandma Hatfield.  I stayed there for 5 months until Grandma Haas passed away.  Then I was moved back to Nickerson and enrolled in Nickerson High. 

I would like to say that my life got better and I was happy at school, but that would be a lie.  I do look back on my early childhood in Nickerson as the happiest time of my life, but not at school.  I was happy at home, but I was an outcast at school and I grew to resent the snobby kids.  My best friend all through grade school was a girl named Barbara, but when we left grade school she drifted away.  By the time I reached my Sophmore year I had new friends and weekends usually were spent sneaking into Duke Bankey's home brew.  We moved to Hutchinson the year I was a senior.  I dropped out of school and my formal education was behind me.  I was now an attendee in the school of hard knocks and I graduated at the head of my class although I was never sober enough to know it. 

And then life picked me up and spun me around and landed me here on the Mesa.  So here I set looking down a very short road at what remains of my Golden years.  Sorry, but that is such an asinine statement.  I am once more reminded of one of Mother's jewels of wisdom.  I was beating my chest once and she had told me I was my own worst enemy.  At the time I thought she was nuts, but as I contemplate that next hill I have to climb I hear the echoes of another of her adages and I think this was her best.  It was "Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind."  She was right.  I spent many years sowing the wind and now it is time for my harvest.  I gotta' say, it got here a whole lot faster then I thought it would.  Yesterday I was young, but the stop sign is coming up fast!

The hands of time are kind.

Has it really been 15 years?  Thanksgiving is a bad time for me, but then most days are anymore.  It was a couple days before Thanksgiving 15 years ago when my husband was taken to St. Mary Corwin hospital, brought back to life and started the journey to death.  There is no other way to put that and it was what it was.  I could not find his DNR so the rescue squad did what they do.  This has been a lesson well learned.  I have a copy of mine stapled to my head.  This began 3 weeks of ICU and then transfer to Colorado Springs to try to wean him off life support.  Needless to say that did not work and 2 months later I was a widow.  It has been a long 15 years.

I look back  on those years and it is almost like it was yesterday.  We had adopted Bret, so that kept me busy.  He was 10 or so when Kenny passed.  I sent him to public school.  I sent him to charter school.  I sent him to private school.  The little fellow kept me very busy.  I would have no doubt went nuts had I not had him, so for that I am grateful.

Being a 60 year old widow with a 10 year old son was not conducive to dating, so I did not do it.  After 9 years I put my toe in the water and met Sherman.  We know how that turned out and 3 years later he was gone.  I miss having someone to lean on, but I get by with a little help from my friends (I heard that in a song.)  There was one guy that I cared about, but he turned out to be not at all what he presented himself to be, so that fizzled out.

I think about dating some times, but not very often.  It would be nice to have someone that would call a couple times a week and maybe take me out to eat once in a while.  Or a walk along the levee.  I really miss that.  I have lady friends that I go to lunch with on occasion, but I still miss having a man to open a door for me.  I miss having a conversation where I say something and then he says something and then we both laugh.  A sense of humor is so important to me.

Kenny and Sherman were both very intelligent and witty.  They both loved me although not in the same way.  Kenny was fishing, bull riding, family, cooking, gardening, and country music.  Sherman was more high brow, sipping wine and old motorcycles.  We watched a movie once a week and one night we were watching "Cheech and Chong", which was my choice and he told me "Fiddler on the Roof "  would be wasted on you!"  I laughed at him, but I never chose Cheech and Chong again.  I did try to watch Fiddler on the Roof, but it bored me to tears.  He was right about that.

If I could meet someone like either one of those two, but I think God  broke the mold after he made them.

So, Thanksgiving is over for another year.  I had lots of company and they are starting to leave now.  Patty is going to stay a couple days extra so there is that.

I am changing my life and the process is already started.  I am sorting my possessions into 3 piles.  One is to keep and one is to sell and one is trash.  I guess there 3 more piles.  Those piles are "stuff" that belongs to other people.

There are books that belong to the college and are supposed to leave when the book sale is held in the Spring, but I hear the sale is not happening this year. Ever hear of a "book burning".

 Another pile belongs to a guy in Pueblo West and is stuff he wants, but not enough to take it home.  It has been in my garage for about 9 or 10 years.

 And then there are 2 piles that belong to a kid on the west side.  He wants his stuff, too, but not enough to come and get it.  I call it "garage sale shit."

I want to downsize.  Frank and Cliff brought me a roll off this summer and I filled it.  I may need another one of those.  Right now I am sorting and boxing.  I have a pile in the garage that grows every day.  In the spring I am going to have a junk sale and get rid of it.  What does not sell goes to the ARC.   My dogs are old.  If they make it to Spring it will surprise me.  When they are gone, I am gone.  This house will be put up for sale and since it is prime real estate, it will sell quickly "as is, where is, with all faults and weaknesses."

Some where there is a place for me in this world.  Course I come with a cat.  That cat and one suit case is about all that I need.  I suppose I can not completely change everything and I am sure wherever I am and what ever I am doing, I will pause for a run out to Los Pobres to see Sister Nancy and Rosie.  I expect I will still be gathering wax for the candles for the homeless.  I expect I will still have a crochet bag to work on, but who knows.  I guess I will just set back and see where the tides of life blow me.

In the meantime, if you see me on the street, I can sure use a smile and a hug.