Luther

Some one asked me what my husband called me.  Louella, Lou......Well, it was Luther.  From the first date until the day he lost the ability to speak, I was Luther.  Funny how that worked and thinking about it now brings tears to my eyes, because I know the no one will ever call me that again.  He never called me honey, or sweetie and sure as hell never darling.  Luther.  Now I am Lou.  Just plain Lou.  Few people even know my full name even more do not even care.

My first husband called me Peanut, or Bitch, depending on his mood.  I became Lou when I entered the work force at the Red Carpet Restaurant.  Bob Bailey deemed that I should be Lou Seeger.  And from that day forward I was Lou.  The last name changed with amazing regularity , but I remained Lou.

Funny how we pick up our little nicknames isn't it?  When I was in third grade my nickname was Mudpie.  That only lasted through my friendship with Barbara Hawk.  After her brother got into the upper grades that name faded.

All these years later it kind of makes me kind of sad to know that my nickname days are over; to know that I will never be somebody's darling, or sweetie, or Luther.  But that is why we call it "life" isn't it?

Mother's Day approaches and the oven is hot!

Ah, this is the sixth annual Mother's Day Tea that I have hosted.  Every year I swear this is the last one and every year it gets bigger.  These are the tea cups from 2015.  You may not believe this, but they are hand washed and dried and not a single one has been broken!  The first thing you do when you come in (Well, after you pay, of course or check in at the door.) is to choose your cup and take it to wherever you choose to set.  I will be busy in the kitchen.  You will receive a teapot full of tea and that will be kept full.  Then you will find clotted cream and lemon curd delivered to go along with your first course of cheese scones and apple scones.  It is downhill from there!

Your next course will be Cream of Carrot Soup and Vegetable Quiche!  Then move right along to Cucumber sandwiches with the crust trimmed off.  Smoked Salmon Rounds,  Chicken Salad Pofiterols, Ham Salad on crackers.  More tea.

Here are a few of former guests, two of which are no longer with us.  They will be missed.

Then we come to dessert.  Not sure what we are having just yet, but pretty sure Lemon Bars will show up along with Chocolate Beet cupcakes, fruit and lots of other little morsels to pop into your mouth.  And more tea.

If you are missing my tea this year, there will be another on the day before Mothers Day next year.  You might want to get your reservation in early because, trust me, it fills up fast.  I think I have 2 spots left this year.  Course if you are not there we will miss you!

Mr. Jerome Drupiewski will be playing the violin to set the mood.  I think Marilyn,  another violinist, will accompany him this year!

Wish you were here!

I have a license if I passed the test!

So, just like I told you I would do, I applied for my license to make food at home and sell to the public.  Deric Stowell and I went to class yesterday.  Now you know Deric!  He is all over the natural gardening and he is an actual Master Gardener.  Has all his little certificates and runs the seed bank at the library.  He is active in politics and is an all around citizen of the year!

So last Christmas when it was time for me to cater the holiday dinner that I cater every year, I enlisted Deric to help me make tamales.  Oh, and Michael McGuire also.  Trust me, I work better alone, but sometimes I have helpers just so I do not have to talk to myself.  Last year it was Deric and Michael.  So we got to talking about making and selling tamales as a means of trying to make ends meet in this dog eat dog world.  We see ads in the paper all the time for "Homemade tamales! $25 a dozen!"  Now that looked like some easy money.  In the course of 4 hours, 3 of which was cooking time, we had made 5 dozen tamales.  Probably spent $25 on product so this seemed like the way to go.  $125.00 tax free dollars!

Now Deric also spends a lot of time at the County Extension Office, so when the opportunity to attend and receive a license came up, we were all over that!  So yesterday we met at the Black Swan, the Chinese restaurant that is on 7th.  I had egg fu young or however you spell that.  He had fried rice.  In my anal retentive state we were very early and so had lots of time to kill.  Then off to the meeting with 19 of my closest friends. The lady who gave the class was very nice and very knowledgeable.  Three hours later we were done.

No, I can not sell tamales or anything with meat in it..
No, I can not make salsa and can it.
No, I can not make Jalapeno~ jelly with real Jalapeno~.
I can make and sell homemade egg noodles, but they must be dried in a dehydrator.
There are stringent rules on the gluten free stuff.
And there are 3 different disclaimers that need to be put on everything I make and sell.
And I must wash my hands every 3.5 minutes and dry them on a clean paper towel.
And the cat can not walk across the counter while I am mixing and packaging.
Oh, and it would be wise to carry an insurance policy just in case someone chokes on a ring I dropped in the batter.

But it was fun and I learned how to wash my hands properly.  Well, sort of.  Deric made me walk all the way down the stairs when we left.  Little shit head!  So, now it is back to the real world.  I got one goose egg yesterday and I brought it in the house and washed it very good and put it in a special place.  So with pleasant memories of yesterday, I went in the kitchen and looked at the gluten free starches, flours, and additives.  I am going to need to get a big plastic tub and scrub it out good, dry it until it is bone dry, find a lid that fits.  That will free up the one cupboard I had kept the stuff in which is right next to the wheat flour with the dreaded Gluten in it!  (Sigh!)

Perhaps it would be best if I just mowed the grass and finished dragging that Apricot limb to the tin shed.  I am going to get my little hatchet and chop chips out for my smoker.  Bret made it look so easy when he started dragging that limb that I told him I would move it later.  I think he may have nailed it to the ground because the damn thing is stuck right there by the clothes line!  Anyway, it is Saturday and I need to go to Lowe's and get covers for my basement windows.  Or not.

Just got off the phone with a friend and she said something to the effect of "If God had meant for today to be perfect, he would not have invented tomorrow."  Made sense to me.  Think I will just go with  that

I had a second thought....

Have you ever had a thought and decided that it was sheer brilliance?  And then you actually thought that one through to an illogical conclusion?  Then you had a second thought that beat hell out of that first thought!  Well, I am here to tell you that my world is full of those thoughts.  Most of my day is spent thinking second thoughts until nightfall comes and I wonder just what in the hell I was thinking.  Maybe it is best that I not think at all!  Like now.

I spent yesterday with Michael Wenzel, a realtor with Keller Williams Realty.  He is a delightful man and honest to the core.  I am not real sure I am quite ready to sell, but when I do, he is my man!  He told me apartments are few and far between, nursing homes are full and houses are selling about as fast as they are put on the market.  This tells me, I might want to hold on to what I have until I fall and break the proverbial hip!  I have to live somewhere and this one is paid for so that holds a certain charm.

Now Michael is a very well spoken man and anyone who knows me, knows that I have the first thing I ever touched in life and when I spend 30 years collecting, something is going to get full!  When he talked about showing the house, he said "You might want to open it up a bit.  That makes it look bigger. " He could have said , "You need to get a dumpster in here!"  I will consult with my kids over the next couple weeks and come to some sort of conclusion about where I will go if I sell this place.  There is a lot to be said for just "sheltering in place"  like they say when a storm is coming.

But, back to the title of this post.  I shudder to think how many times I have had an absolutely brilliant idea and then thought it through to the conclusion that I should probably be locked up for my own safety!  I can think of several husbands that were fleeting instances of my lapses in good judgment!  Coulda', woulda', shoulda', are words that do not appear in a dictionary, but probably oughta'.

I planted an Apricot tree out behind the house 25 years ago.  Monday I started removing limbs with my bow saw.  I am going to need to call a tree man.  Another instance of not thinking things through to a logical conclusion.  That little Mulberry tree that came up in the middle of the old fashioned rose bush is another instance.  I could have taken a pair of nippers to it, but now it is chain saw material.  Those sprayers that come on automatically in the garden are going to need removed because I was burning weeds and got to close to one.  Oh, yeah, and that blackberry bush with the 11 inch razor pointed thorns is going to need removed also.

 My mother once told me "You are your own worst enemy!" I did not understand what she meant all those years ago, but I am beginning to see a pattern developing here!  I am thinking that someone ought to just come and throw a net over me and drag me off to the loony bin, wherever that might be.  I assume someone would feed me and give me a place to sleep at night!  And there is that word "assume".  Kenneth explained that one to me once.  "Assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

And there you go.  More ramblings of a mad woman!  Have a good day!

We all have our baggage.

And my Father was no different.  When he married my mother he already had a shattered family behind him.  He had been married and had 5 kids.  One son and one daughter had died at a very young age.  His wife was deceased and he had been left with 3 sons.  The boys had all ended up in an orphanage.  Earl had been adopted as had Richard.  Sadly, Gene had not found a forever family.  Earl seemed to be the most normal as he married and sired 2 boys and 1 girl.  We were in contact with them although it never was a close relationship.  Richard had a lot of mental health issues stemming from his years in the Army.  Ah, but dear Gene was a study unto itself!

I did not see Richard or Earl until my teenage years, but Gene turned up early.  We were living on the Stroh place.  I must have been 5 or 6 years old, possibly 7.  I recall him turning up in the middle of the night, or so it seemed.  He came with somebody named Banks and that is about all I recall about that meeting.  When you are little you pick up scraps of conversation and piece together your own reality.  That is what I have done with Gene Bartholomew.  Over the years I learned that he had a wife and son back east some where.  Seems brother Gene had a bad habit and that was writing checks on someone else's bank account.  The state also had a bad habit of arresting him and putting him in prison.

In a box in my closet are letters from Gene that he had written to our father.  Parts of those letters are seared in my mind.  I do not read them anymore.  "Dear Daddy, When are you going to come and get me?  We are going to get a new pair of overalls in a couple weeks.  I miss you, daddy"

Some time in my grade school years I recall carrying on a correspondence with him while he was in Lansing Prison.  I recall that he was an artist at calligraphy.  Mother always said that was his downfall because he was in prison for forgery.  He did have beautiful handwriting.  I do not know what we wrote about, only that we did.  I do recall once when he was released he came by the house and somebody with a car drove him out to the Arkansas River and dropped him off so he could "be alone to clear his mind."  The next day she picked him up at the specified time and he once more disappeared.

He turned up again when I was in high school.  This time he stayed with my sister and her husband, but that only lasted a few weeks and then he was gone again.  The last anyone heard of him, to my knowledge was that he had been arrested in Nebraska and rather then prosecute him for whatever he had done, they took him to the county line and dropped him off.  He was never seen nor heard of again.

I have often thought of his son.  He would have to be about my age.  His name was William (Billy) Bartholomew.  Of course I am too late, I am sure.  But wouldn't that be nice if he had heirs and one of them read this?  I am not holding out any hope at all.  Just a silly old woman waking up in the middle of the night with something on her mind.

The nastiest duck in the yard.

As you will recall I, at one time, had a  flock of 37 ducks and 15 geese here on South Road.  I can only thank God Kenny did not live to see that fiasco.  In that flock there were 4 Muscovy ducks.  All the others were just plain ducks.  By that I mean they were plain little Polander which is a domesticated Mallard that can not fly, or a mix of breeds that were like the United Nations of Duckdom.  I did have one that walked upright.  That one was white.  There was also one that was a cross which walked about half upright.  When Mr. Fox finished visiting, I had 2 ducks left, a Polander and the white upright.  A friend took them to the pond in Pueblo West and to the best of my knowledge they are still living happily ever after.  Below is a picture of the flock about half way through the fox episode.

The point of this entry is to discuss the nastiness of the 4 Muscovy ducks.  To the best of my knowledge, the Muscovy is the  only ones that can fly, and fly they did very well.  Let me go back a little further to the house on Strong Street in Nickerson, Kansas.  You recall it was built in the shotgun design which meant you entered the front and if an intruder was in the back you could  fire a shell in your 10 gauge and the shot would travel through the house and hit the bad man without touching anything else.  On the back wall was the sink and pump with a drain pipe from the sink that went through a hole in the back wall and water from the dish washing process or whatever else could be disposed of that way without having to carry a bucket outside.  It sure made life easier for us lazy little kids.

So now you are probably wondering where the water went after it got outside, aren't you?  Well, the end of the pipe was about 15 feet from the house and that is where the water went.  Also in the back yard was where the ducks lived.  I do not remember how many we had, but I do know they were nasty.  They took their little beaks and dug into the standing water looking for God only knows what to eat.  Of course anything that went in that beak was going to come out the other end.  Needless to say we were not allowed to play in that standing water.  Pretty sure that was one rule that we did abide by!

Now, I have got to explain how a Muscovy duck is different than other ducks.  Domesticated ducks do not fly.  The Muscovy is a whole different story.  The neck on the males is very thick.  The males are also very aggressive.  They did not quack, but rather whispered.  And they flew.  The would leave the pond and fly into my small back yard and roost on my air conditioner.  Now I did not like that.  When I tried to shoo them out back the males would ruffle their feathers and scare hell out of me.  The females were very docile and about half the size of the drakes.  One morning I went to the fowl house and found a dead goose.  It's neck had been broken.  Since the fowl house was attached to a wire enclosure whatever killed the goose had to be inside that place.  I watch my geese fight all through breeding season and never have I seen that kind of violence.  It had to be one of the Muscovy drakes.  So I called the guy over on County Farm Road and he came and was in agreement with my findings.  He then loaded all 4 Muscovy's into his truck and off the to the sale they went.  I never tried Muscovy's again.

Above is what I have left of my flock.  Actually I have all 4 of the African Grays, which are the dark ones. One of them is a hen.   I lost 2 of the white ones, leaving me with 2 male Emidens and 1 male and 1 female Chinese.  The two hens lay in the Spring and I practice birth control via noodle making.  Snakes are rampant in the goose house since they like eggs so as long as I keep the eggs picked up, the snakes are forced to find me some other way.  I am going to get someone out here to go in the neighbors yard and move that pile of tires because I think the snakes live in there. 

Or under my deck!

Well, that is it for today.  Spring is here.  The ducks are all gone and the weeds are coming up in the fence line so I better get on the stick.

Time and tide wait for no man...or woman!

I wish I was smart enough to read it myself.

The television is full of the Mueller report that has just been released!  I have 4 people on channel 11 explaining to me what the report says.  See, I am not smart enough to read something and know what it says, so they have to tell me.  Hmm.  Seems my late husband had a saying that fits the cause here.  "Opinions are just like assholes!  Every body has one and most of them stink."  Just saying that this is the time of morning when Millionaire comes on for my perusal enjoyment.  I love that game along with Jeopardy and any other trivia game that comes on my television set.

I do not know if the American people have yet figured out that when my game shows are interrupted for a basketball game, a special bulletin from Washington, it thrills me almost as much as when the "breaking weather"  preempts what I am watching so I can stare for 3 hours at the weather map and watch a tiny cloud on the horizon that might or might not come to fruition as a snowflake on the road between Colorado Springs and Denver.  The broadcaster must warn motorists of the hazards if this actually happens.  Not once, not twice, but over and over and over again.  These people out there driving are not smart enough to check the weather before they leave one job to go to another.  Now how many of these motorists have an actual television set in the car and are actually watching that little cloud is beyond my comprehension.  While I am comfy in my chair waiting for a Jeopardy! rerun that is not going to happen the world in the television weather room is a bustle of a man in a suit or a lady in a little blue dress walking back and forth across in front of the camera smiling.

Now I have got to go on record here as saying, my life is pretty much boring or this would not bother me.  I have lived many years on this earth and seen about all there is to see.  I can actually remember back  when Winter weather was predicted by the length of the hairs on the caterpillar and rainfall was predicted by how high up the mud dauber built her nest.  Leaves folded inward if the weather was going to be dry.  And President Franklin Roosevelt had little fireside chats with us on the radio so we knew what was going on with our government.  And when the war ended it took him 3 words to tell us, "The War is over."  And we knew the war was over.  Three means of communications were "Telephone, Telegraph and Tell a friend."

Well, the crisis with the Mueller report must be over for the time being because I hear the sounds of "The Price is Right" on the downstairs television.  Brandi from the Travel Agency just called me so I could hang up on her.  Soon someone else will call to send me my new credit card!  And then there is that trip I can go on if I hurry.  But I have other plans for today.

I am going to crawl in my little car here pretty quick and go meet a couple lady friends at the Red Lobster.  Yummers!  Then I am going to come home and see if I can possibly load a couple television sets in the back of my car and take them to the recycle place and pay them $60 to take them.  Maybe I will get something done down stairs in that one bedroom since I have someone coming to stay with me for a while in May.  Or maybe not.

The nice part of being an old woman living alone is I do not actually have to do anything at all.  Oh, watch Jeopardy! at 3:00 and again at 6:30.  And then there is my 8:00 bedtime.  Seems I am sleeping a lot more lately, but that is alright, because I have very nice dreams!

Oh, the things in my mind.

Click here to listen  I woke up this morning with this song on my mind.  Then I went to facebook and some one had posted the same link.  Small world.  However the context the person had posted the link was far different than the link in my mind.

Like most, actually all, people, I had a father.  I knew him.  Or I thought I did.  A very wise woman once told me, "You never really know anyone, you only know of them.  You know what they let you see."  And so it was with my father.  He was a lot older than my mother, but the wedding picture shows a very happy woman.  My mother was very well liked in high school and married soon after she graduated.  Sadly that marriage did not end well and soon she returned to her roots and married my father.  He was a widower (? but some secrets are best left untold).  He had 3 sons that were past their teens.  They had been put into an orphanage when Dad's first wife died.  2 were adopted, one was not.

Jake was the first born to this union followed by me, Donna, Mary and Dorothy.  We were all as different as night and day.  Jake was the only son and he was a screw up according to my father.  Of course I was perfect, but he never did particularly like me much.  He was of the old school that kids were to be raised and leave home.  Now just look at me!  Wasn't I the cutest thing you ever seen?

Donna was smack in the middle so she had middle child syndrome.  Dorothy was the baby, so she carried those tendencies throughout her life.  Ah, but Mary.  Mary was cute and delicate and everyone loved Mary. Now you must understand that this is being written by me and is my feelings.  I am sure if the other sisters were alive they would dispute my findings, but you must realize that we are all a product of our raising and I never at any time ever in my life ever thought my father cared about me in any way shape or form.  It was as if I existed in a vacuum.  If he was there he ignored me.  He refused to attend my first marriage.  I simply did not exist.

Ah, but he had a weakness.  He liked babies. Shortly after the birth of my first daughter he paid my older sister to sew her a pretty red dress and he bought shoes and a hat to match.  Some where I have that picture of him holding Debra when she was about a year old and wearing that outfit.  That is the only one of my children he ever touched.  I don't recall him ever touching me in anger or love.  I never actually had a conversation with the man.  If I fell and skinned my knee that was my problem. 

And then he died.  By this time I had the 3 girls.  I left them with my sister in law and came home for the funeral.  I remember how very sad that was.  I stood at his open coffin and cried my heart out for a man I never knew.  I do not think a child ever understands their parents and I envy the children who played catch with their fathers.  Or took walks.  Or went fishing.  That is why I always tried to keep my kids and their father in close contact.  He and I had a strained relationship, but he and the kids found a way to make it sort of work.  We sort of shared custody, but that is water under the bridge.

I do remember far in the back of my mind, that dad was a share cropper with a man named John Britan.  John had acreage across the river and sometimes (and I will never know why) I would go with dad to the acreage and John Britan would make me hot chocolate using cocoa, sugar, hot water, and Pet milk.  It was the best stuff in the world!  I have tried to make it but it is never the same.  I also remember that there was a little creek that run through the farm and sometimes it had water in it.  Jake made me a little boat out of a flat piece of wood.  He put a stick through a hole and tied a string to it so it would not get away.

So, as sad as my childhood was, I do have some good memories.  I just forget them sometimes. 

Bowls are good for lots of things!

Went to Western Kansas last week to see part of the tribe.  You should know that my middle daughter, Dona M Seeger owns a beauty shop in Lakin,  Kansas.  The first order upon my arrival was to take a nap in the back room since she was busy with customers.  Bill, my son in law from my daughter Patty, came and woke me up.  He has been having some health problems so I was glad to see him up and about.  As soon as Dona finished her last customer we went to Mi Ranchita to eat.  There I seen more grand daughters, grandson, great granddaughters and more great grandsons.  It appears I have been very prolific because this little gathering produced 12 or 13 paying customers and only 2 of my daughters were accounted for in this gathering.

After supper we headed out to Dona's house and bed.  Now, I forgot that I wanted my haircut while we were in her shop and I did not think about it again till the next day.  I was one tired puppy.  I did not think about it the next day, but rather Sunday morning when it was almost time to leave.  Now I do not know if I discussed the bowl business with Dona or not.  Sometimes I have conversations with myself in my head and the bowl business may have happened that way.  What I wanted to tell her and did not, was that I was proud of her and the way she has made a successful business to take care of herself and her sons.  The bowl business aside.

Back before I was even in school mother was a lady of leisure.  Dad did something to make a living , but I do not know what it was.  I know he drank and I think he may have been involved in something not quite legal because we always had money when we lived on the Stroh place and he went to the sale and brought home a Shetland pony and that was the meanest damned horse on earth.  That is the one that kicked my brother in the face and left him with a very ugly scar that he carried all his life.  Jake may or may not have goosed the horse which is what one of his friends said happened.  I just don't know.

The important part of the story is that mother always went "to club" and we had to be clean when she took us.  Did I tell you how she used to put me under her arm and pump cold water over my head when she washed my hair.  Jesus!  That water was cold!  I still cringe when I think of that.  But anyway, back to club.

I do not know what went on at club because us kids had to go into the other room and somebody watched us.  The ladies of the club were very helpful to each other.  All of them were dressed very nice and wore little hats because that was what they did back then.  They shared recipes and gave each other tips on how to raise kids.  One of the ladies was a hair cutter.  That meant she came to the other ladies houses and cut the kids hair.  That was always a day to be excited about.
 
"Mrs. Soandso will be by on Friday to cut the kids hair."

 Now my mother had a special bowl which was for Mrs. Soandso to use as a pattern for the hair cutting job.  First we had to get out the haircutting stool which raised us to the proper height so Mrs. Soandso did not have to bend over.  She had sharp scissors that were used only for haircutting.  The haircutting usually went very smoothly and very quickly.  Course if the recipient moved at all, the bowl would slide a bit and one side might be longer then the other.  At times like that I was a stone statue because I sure did not want my hair to be uneven.  And when she was all done we would line up for inspection. Mother would gush about how beautiful we were and then insist that she take a quarter for herself.

Have you ever looked at the old school pictures?  You can spot the kids whose mothers went to club.  All of our hair ended right below our ears and sometimes our bangs were only about an inch long .  because Mrs. Soandso was tired. Of course we always had to have a "fresh haircut" for pictures.  I often wondered back in those days, if there really was a god!

For some reason, when we left the Stroh place and moved everything we owned on a hay rack to the Ailmore place, mother quit going to club.  Dad quit going to where ever he used to go.  Mother started cleaning houses for the rich ladies in town and life changed without me even knowing it.  I wish I had remembered what changed, but I didn't.  Sometimes way in the back of my memory, I almost remember something, but not quite.  Some where is the memory of a big house with an elevator across the river, and I seem to remember going there once with my dad.  But it was never talked about and Dad never went there after we left the Stroh place.

Isn't life funny that way?

I have miles to go before I sleep.

Spring is here and this is the time of year that I get itchy feet.  I left Hutchison, Kansas in 1977 with my then husband and with everything in a U-haul we moved to Pueblo, Colorado.  Since he had lived here before, it was a returning for him, but for me it was a leap of faith and a complete 180 degrees from my life in Hutchinson.  I gave my mother the keys to my little Lou's Kitchen on 4th Street and fired up the engine on my 1973 Chevy and headed West to seek my fame and fortune.  I was one naive little girl back then.  The husband turned out to be a little less then I hoped.  We did start a business so I had a job to do.  

The husband soon became an ex husband and the job a former place of employment.  At that time I thought about pointing the (now a Cadillac) east and leaving Colorado, but I could not go home a failure, so I stayed.  I went to  College and got a degree in Finance while waiting tables at a small cafe in Bessemer.  I married a local guy and divorced him 2 months later.  Then I met and married Kenneth.  The rest is history.  Through all the years, I made trips to Kansas in the Spring to see the Lilacs.

And, of course, a trip to Hutchinson also called for a stop at Skaets Steak Shop on the corner of 23rd and Main which is the entrance to the State Fairgrounds.  That was the first place I ever worked and a member of my family (sometimes more then one member) has always been on the payroll there.  My sister, Dorothy, had a heart attack and died there.  Luckily they hit the restart button on her and she lived several more years.  

I would meet my friend Joe there for a 2-3 hour coffee.  That was always fun.  I do have a gold elephant I need to send him someday.

But, those days are behind me.  The days of throwing the pistol in the suitcase and driving 8 hours to get anywhere are now behind me.  Water under the bridge.  Lately I have been studying the family tree and I was surprised to find that I am now the top nut on the tree.  I used to ask someone older then me about our lineage, but now I find that the buck stops here.  There is no one to ask.  Damn!  When did that happen?

I think about the trips to Hutch and I get sad that they are no longer.  I have my own Lilac in the back yard.  I feel much like Robert Frost must have felt when he wrote this poem.  Am I really done?  Is this where it ends.  Wait!  I have so much left to do...….

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

So, from someone who knows, life is short.  Love your neighbor, brighten the corner where you are and if perchance you think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, stretch your neck over there and have a bite!  You may be right.

There is a heel in every loaf.

Well, actually there are 2 heels in every loaf, but I am not sure how to spell heel.  I think this is right.  I like home baked bread. Like may not be a strong enough word for my love affair with baking.  I know I can get into the car and drive into town and find several bakeries most willing to take my money and give me a loaf of their bread, but some how that just seems so wrong. It will have all kinds of stuff in it to make it better than mine, but I gotta tell you, it always falls short of the mark.  Sure it is crusty and tasty and already baked, sometimes with an egg wash to make the crust even crustier.  Sad, because I like mine better. 

Mine is made with water, yeast, salt, sugar, oil, and flour.  That is it.  Nothing fancy and I don't have to scald, puree, or infuse anything.  I throw it all in a mixing bowl with a dough hook and 4 minutes later, the dough has climbed the hook and it is ready to be covered and let raise.  I usually make a couple double batches and set them to raise on the stove top.  When the pans are almost ready, I turn the oven to 355.  The bread bakes about 20 minutes or so.  Nothing is set in stone at my house except my naptime at 3:00 while Jeopardy is showing.

Now this little fellow decided he might like to try a piece of the heel on the first loaf out of the oven.  It was his own idea, not mine.  Something about the aroma of fresh baked bread is just more than a human can resist.  He just wasn't sure at first that eating a piece of bread was what he really wanted to do.  I did not push it because I like the heel best myself and there are only so many in a loaf.  So he took it.

And the rest is history.  He used to look for cheese puffs, or orange juice, but the aroma of fresh bread is his new mantra.  Bless his little tiny heart.

This little fellow is not real fond of meat and sweets are not his thing either.  Mostly he dines on fruit and cheese.  Kinda fun to have around.  Looks like I will be making bread for him for several more years before he figures out about junk food, but maybe not.

He does keep me on my toes and he is now trying to teach me to jump.  For the record, I am not learning that one very well.  I think it is this damned old age thing.  Not only am I not good at jumping, I don't even want to try.  It all seems pointless at this juncture.  So we shall engage in our little war of the wills until I either jump or he gives up.  

How ya' betting?

The heart of hearth and home and the back yard.

The center of the home was usually a fireplace.  This was replaced later by wood burning stoves, but let's just stick with the fireplace for now.  The focal point of the fireplace was a trivet.  Our forefathers were famous for using 3 points to hold and lift.  My husband always said "Give me a pivot high enough and a lever long enough and I can lift the world."  And I am sure many of our modern day inventions went back to that statement.

The trivet was a 3 point apparatus made of iron and usually was decorative, unless the man of the house was lazy.  It set on the hearth, which is the floor of the fireplace.  It usually had a hook that could pivot.  The "tea kettle" was filled with water and hung near the fire.  When hot water was needed the pot was swung over the fire and very quickly came to a boil.  The water was then ready for bathing, face washing, dish washing, cleaning the floor or any of the myriad of chores pioneer women did every day.

Out side in the back yard, but not that far from the house, set the 3 legged cast iron kettle, pot, cauldron, or whatever they were calling that on any given day.  This is where the real work went on.  The other was for women's work, but do not be confused here and think women had chores and men had chores.  Men had their chores, but when there was no one to help them, they became an extension of the women's chores.  I do not know how they arrived at a 3 legged kettle as opposed to 4 legged, which it seems would be more sturdy, but there never was to my knowledge a 4 legged kettle.  3 legged is what it was.  The job of the 3 legged kettle was endless.  It could be used on Monday to scald a hog that was being butchered.  Tuesday it would have a slow fire to render the fat of the hog into lard.  Oh, and the pork rinds from that lard would be snacked on and used as flavoring all winter.  Wednesday might find mother killing and cleaning chickens, ducks, turkeys or geese.  Thursday she might decide to do the laundry so water was heated for that.  Friday was usually cleaning day and we needed hot water for that.  Those are the things that were every day use of the 3 legged cast iron but usually some one would come by and want to do something and sometimes all kinds of vegetables and stuff were thrown in and we had a feast.

And when the work of the kettle was done, mother was not.  She sifted the ashes from the cleanest part of the wood that was burnt and stored them for her lye.  Soap making was an art form back in those days.  We had a metal bucket that set by the back door and any grease or oil went into it.  When it was full, mother would heat it slowly and strain it into the "soap making bucket."  When the time was right she would melt that nasty stuff.  She then slowly dripped water through the clean, light gray ashes which made lye.  This was quickly stirred into the melted, cleaned fat  using a hammer handle.  If all went well, the grease would begin to solidify and mother would pour it quickly into the soap box.  If anything was off it would "set up" on the way to the box and the hammer handle would be embeded until we shaved off enough soap to free it.  Worse yet was when mother was a little off and it did not set up.  It just set there until she threw it out.

Ever smell lye soap?  Back in the day it had a pungent odor and an off yellow color that mellowed with the ripening.  After I married for what appears to be my last time, I had time on my hands, so I tried quilting, weaving and lots of other things.  Finally I decided that I wanted to try soap making  I was pretty sure I was not going to do the ashes part so I went off in search of lye.  It was very easy to find.  It was in Safeway, right down on the bottom shelf under the drano and that sort of stuff.

(I must deviate for just a paragraph here to tell you that buying lye in any store did not last long, because the yoyo's that were cooking meth and stuff like that began using it for their process.  Safeway had already began to lock up all the cold and allergy stuff used in the process, so of course lye went by the wayside.  I can still get it through a wholesale house, but I had to put up my first born child and 3 acres of ground for every pound I wanted.)

To make a long story short, I lined a box with a tea towel, just like momma used to do.  I followed the directions to the letter and soon poured the conglomeration out into the box.  When it was the right consistency, I cut it into squares with an old iron butcher knife.  It said to wait and let it cure for 6 weeks.  So I did.  At that time I removed one of the square bars.  I thought it looked a little rough, but what the hell.  I started the shower and stepped in with my little bar.  I would give it the supreme test for sensitivity on my face.  Lord, my eye immediately began to burn like it was on fire.  I was crushed!  Not only was my labor in vain, but now I was going to be blind on top of it all.  Luckily my husband was home that day and when I went crying to him he just laughed.  Damn him!  "Yeah, soap will do that."  But he was right!  Now I make soap that looks like this:

This is soap like momma used to make only instead of used up cooking grease, I use olive oil, lard, tallow, and stuff like that.  It is smooth and creamy  with tiny bubbles.  I have found since I started making my own soap that my skin is not dry and that is because what you buy at the store is not soap, but beauty bar, bath bar and words like that.  Soap does not appear on the lable.  I used to sell this, but  now I just make it and usually give it away.  

Well, once more I got off target, but you will get used to that.  But just look around you at things in your life that have a 3 point apparatus and you will know what I mean.  If you are old, like me, you can visualize the bales of hay being lifted into the hay mow.  Or if you ever blew the motor in your old Chevy you probably used a 3 pint lift to pull the old motor out and swing the new one in to place.

So, for now, from one old lady to those of you who still remember the old days, have a good one and remember, 

You can not sprinkle showers of happiness on others without getting a few drops on yourself! 

OMG! The great Ski King is here!

I recently came across a site on facebook called Kansas Old and Interesting Places.  Being from Kansas I find the history fascinating.  So I joined the group.  While perusing last night on the site, I came across a picture of a big white house located in Toronto.  I started thinking about when Duane and I were first married, before we had any kids and I remembered that we had lived in Toronto for a few weeks.  History lesson coming up here.

I was 19 and Duane was 21 when we married.  He and 2 of his brothers were in the business of trimming trees.  Now in this day and age they would be respectable and probably have an office some where, but back in those days, the car and the pickup were the office, warehouse, job site, and bookkeeping.  The first year we were married we lived in 14 different cities around the state.  We would locate to a town, sell our service, and when all the trees were trimmed we would move on to greener pastures.  It was honest work and Duane was a very good tree trimmer.  It kind of sucked not to have any real roots, but we were in love.  What more can I say?

Back to Toronto.  We pulled into Toronto and immediately went fishing.  First we rented a room at the local hotel.  It had a big room with a couch and bed and a stove to cook on in the other room.  Arrangements were made with the owners that I would clean the halls and the bathroom in lieu of the $5 a week rent.  I would go to the local grocery and purchase food for the day, cook it and have supper ready when Duane and the brothers came home.  Now, suffice it to say, that one of the prerequisites of being a tree trimmer was you must be a good beer drinker.  The day always ended up in the bar.  I did not drink at the time, nor do I now, but he and his brothers drank enough for me.

I remember this song, (click on the blue letters to open the link. Ski King ) Seems this happened either at Toronto Lake or the Fall River Reservoir.

Toronto Lake was some good fishing, for sure.  On one day I was instructed to cook up a pot of beans and the boys would bring home some corn.  Sounded good to me, so I cooked the beans and later that evening they came in with a peck or so of corn.  Well, unbeknownst to this ignorant little girl from the big city, it was field corn.  So I shucked a few ears and threw them in the bean pot.  After due time Duane pronounced it ready.  Hmmm.  That stuff was very hard.  So we cooked it longer.  It got harder.  We cut it off the cob and boiled it some more.  Now let this be a lesson to all of you, field corn is a whole different ball game then the sweet corn I was used to.  For our supper we ate beans and corn, but the corn was picked out and tossed in the trash.

To end this tale of woe, Yates Center was nearby and I had not been feeling well.  Duane took me to the doctor, dropped me off and went to the pool hall.  The doctor examined me and pronounced that I was pregnant.  OMG!  Where is the hospital where I will have the baby?  He looked at me like I may have just fell off the turnip truck and said "Around these parts folks has their babies to home."

And that ended our life in Toronto.  I am a city girl at heart and there was no way in hell I was going to have my baby "to home."  Hutchinson would become my home for the duration of my pregnancy.  I had a mother there and she had running water and all that stuff!

But I do have my memories of Ski King and I have yet to figure out how all this connects.  If you do, please share with me!

The house where the fancy people live, whoops!

Many years ago, my oldest daughter moved to Longton, Kansas.  Her and her husband bought a 40 acre plot with a mobile home and a lake for less then I bought a car.  Longton is about as far east and south as you can go in Kansas without leaving the state.  Seems as though the population is about 102 on a good day when everyone is home.  To make a long story short, my daughter, Patty went to visit.  

There really is not much to do in a town that size except go to the auctions that pop up from time to time.  So they did.  That particular auction was for a double wide modular that set on 5 lots on the edge of Longton.  Back home places like that were selling for $50,000.  When the auctioneer asked for a bid, none were forthcoming.  So, Patty and Debbie put their little heads together, compared bank accounts and walked away owning the whole kit and kaboodle for $12,000.  

Now this place also sported a 3 or 4 car garage.  Hell, even I was tempted to throw things in a suitcase and head East!

When I finally got around to visiting Patty was using her place as a vacation home.  It was definitely a nice place to visit and the town of Longton was very quaint.  It had a restaurant and prices were very reasonable.  A lot of history on these walls.

This one gave me hope.

A stroll around town (which took about 20 minutes to cover the length and breadth of the city including the liquor store and the falling down building with a tree growing out of the roof) produced this picture of a very beautiful home just a couple blocks from Patty's house.  When I asked her who lived there, she told me, "That is where the fancy people live!  They are hardly ever home and do not come out when they are."  Sadly the house burned a couple years back.

This a house down on the other end of town. Since both houses appear to be of the same design and maybe by the same architect and builder, I asked her if that was where more "fancy people" lived and she told me "No, that is the one the druggies have moved into."  How sad because this one actually had a gazebo.

This is another house on one of the roads going into Longton.  Looks pretty deserted to me!

This is the barn setting on the end of Main Street just catty corner from the liquor store.  Not sure they still use it as a barn for horses or cattle, but who knows.  I could be wrong.  This might be a Debbie's house.

So, any way.  Elk County Reservoir is nearby and the fishing is great!

I must be about due for another vacation!  Who knows?