The Mesa is changing and so am I.

I moved out here in 1982, one year before I married Kenny.  We lived in sin.  I thought if I could live with him for one year and not get my "knickers in a knot" and walk out that I could probably make him my 6th and final trip to the alter.  As you see, I am still here, so that was a wise decision.  Either that or it was meant to be.  But that is not what this is about.

When driving out here on the 50 hwy bypass the fabric of the whole landscape has changed.  Coming out Santa Fe Drive and turning east on the highway has stayed fairly unchanged, although the 2 bars on the Southside of the highway are shuttered and have been for years.  The one known as "Bear Country" is the only one I was ever in.  There used to be a functioning lumber yard (forgot the name) and it is now vacant.  Right after crossing the bridge, there was a produce place on the north named "Cheatum' and Chiselum'".  It was rumored that some guy killed his wife and cut her up in there.  He then dispersed her parts into trash cans around town.  I am just reporting the news as I recall it, so do not ask for details.  The house across the street is now a car wash the produce stand is a strip mall.

The Headquarters restaurant was where anyone that was anyone went for coffee every morning.  It turned into a Wendy's and is now vacant.  There was another hamburger place that turned into a bank.  We now have a total of 5 or 6 strip malls,  5 or 6 marijuana outlets.  KFC is a pizza place.  While most of the landscape has changed, some of it has remained the same.  Candy's Tortilla is still here.  Chet's is now Lagreese's, but is still a grocery store.  Mesa Vet is still there. Frank's Meat Market. Taco House. Giadonne still has a restaurant, but has torn down the ice cream stand and put in a marijuana store and a Bands in the Backyard amphitheater.  Johnson's auto parts changed hands.  The milk barn is a liquor store.  Mesa Hardware remains the same.  Of course the Mesa Kitchen still sets in the corner of 25th Lane and the highway along with Jr's and the drug store.

I do not like to do the "remember when" thing because it just makes me feel old.  I guess I have been in this same house for 37 years which seems like a very long time because some people do not even live that long, but to me it is only a "little while back".  I was a wife, mother, grandmother.  Now I am a widow, mother, grandmother, great grandmother and I am getting tired. I am an  inch and a half  shorter.  My dreams of what my future will be have changed several times.  When I was young I wanted to sing with a country western band and go all around the country singing in bars, now I just want to listen to my cd's and caterwaul away when I am driving.  Haven't been dancing in 40 years, so probably not going now.

Mother always told me that every thing changes and that hind sight is 20/20 looking back.  I think I have lived a pretty good life and I have definitely outlived most of my enemies.  I think I am ready to maybe set back and let whatever happens, happen.  Tired of chasing rainbows and butterflies.  Maybe they can chase me a while.

We will see!

God Bless us everyone!

It is fall of the year and once more time to gather my friends. partners in crime, or what ever you want to call them together.  Here we have Pastor Faye Gallegos and going to her left we find Sister Barbara, Paul Gilbert, Sister Nancy, Sandy the nurse and the empty chair is mine.

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We dined on mashed potatoes, chicken and noodles, then finished up with pudding filled cream puffs.  We drank Chamomile tea so we wouldn't be too rowdy.  And of course there was home made bread. 

We had lovely conversation about the work at Los Pobres as well as what is going on around our church, the churches in the Springs.  We missed Maurine and Max Hale.  They have moved up North and do not travel down this way much.  We discussed shelter, or lack of one, for our homeless population.  I do not entertain much, but this is one of my high points.  I gotta tell you, this started out years ago as a Liver and Onion lunch, because very few people like Liver.  I missed last year for some reason so I was adamant about having my Liver Lunch this year.  I invited the ladies and Paul and then Pastor Faye told me Sister Nancy told her how much she was looking forward to Chicken and Noodles over mashed potatoes!  Since both menus are easy, I went with the noodles.  Paul and I can eat anything that does not eat us first!

Any way it was a day of friendship and catching up.  I cherish those times because they are so few and far between.  So tonight I am tired, but happy.  I just ate a bowl of leftover noodles and I think I am going to go eat that last cream puff before Mikie gets home and snarfs it down!

Good night all and sweet dreams from South Road to your house.  God bless us everyone!

Ringworm, head lice and God only knows what else!

My grand daughter was here this weekend with her husband and 3 kids ages 5-13.  All boys!  It was a lovely visit and I look forward to the next visit.  Her husband carpeted my stairs and did a lovely job.  I want to go on record as saying, the title of this blog is in no way connected to her family.  It just brought back memories of when I was first out on my own and my kids were my complete responsibility.  That was a horror story.

Having spent a couple weeks with mother watching the kids and my working, I rented a house down on Smith Street.  The first thing that happened was I hired the girl across the street to babyset.  Then the car broke down.  I paid $49 to Clell Burnett for a 1949 Black Ford 2 door.  Sam immediately poured sand in the gas tank.  School started and Debbie immediately came home with a ring worm.  I knew about ring worm and how to treat them, but she could not stay in school with out a doctors note, so off we went.  Treatment consisted of shining a purple light on it to be sure it was a ring worm and then a tube of something to smear on it which did not work.  Total cost for that (not to mention my time off from work) was $10.  A car cost $50 and a doctor visit 20% of that.  Hmmm.

Time passed and the neighbor girl stole any jewelry I had, Sam set the bed on fire, and my rental house began to leak.  The landlord told me if he fixed the roof, my rent would be raised.  Apparently I had not read the fine print about the roof being extra!

Mother at that time, had her house at 217 West 5th setting empty and she let me move in there with the understanding that I would make the house payments and all upkeep.  Sounded like a dream come true.  She still owed $11,000 on it.  It was perfect for us.  Bunk beds for the one bedroom and twin beds in the front bedroom.   Huff family lived right up the street with kids my kids age.  They also had a big dog.  They also had head lice!

Now, I will go on record as saying ring worm is a whole lot easier then head lice!  Ring worm can actually be controlled with a cotton ball and a bottle of Clorox.  Head lice requires washing everything in hot water, medication on a fine tooth comb and doing it over and over again.  Nope.  Do not want any more of that.  Seems like if you have one or 2 kids that Lady Luck lets you slide;  5 kids, not so much.  Luckily, back then, immunizations were requested, but not required.  I tried to keep the kids current and with help from the programs at school I managed to get them all into puberty without any of them contracting, small pox, polio, or any of the other fatal diseases.  Childhood illness was kept to a minimum, thanks to God and love of their mother!

So here I set almost 60 years later remembering how I raised kids, and how the are raised today and I can not help but be amazed.  Her oldest son is 13 years old and I think she said he is 5'7" and Lord only knows how much he weighs!  He is actually the same size his grandpa was when I married him!  Big boy.  Bigger than his dad.  Wonder what she feeds that kid!  I know he plays football.  Very polite kids.  At least I think they are polite.  There is always the off chance that they are scared to death of me!  My kids called my mom "Grouchy Grandma".  I wonder what these kids call ME?  They actually seemed to like me.  I could be wrong.

Well, this is what I woke up to this morning.  Another day another dollar, I guess.  Today is the day I am going to get something constructive done.

Yeah, right!

Who's gonna prime my pump?

I recall in Nickerson that running water was more than just turning on the faucet.  709 North Strong Street had no faucets.  Out by the horse tank was a field pump.  When the tank started getting low someone, usually Jake, had to pump the water into the tank to fill it back up so the horses could drink.  At the bottom of the pump hung a can.  That can was filled with water from the horse tank and poured into the top of the pump while pumping in short, fast strokes.  With luck, the pump would "catch it's prime quickly" and water would pump out through the mouth of the pump.  If you understand the workings of a pump you know that there is a leather inside that when pumped up and down draws the water up from deep in the well. Occasionally the leather becomes worn and needs replaced.

The pump at the horse tank was a big iron pump.  The handle was long and we used to like to pump because if we could keep a rhythm going the pump handle would sometimes jerk us up off the ground by the sheer force of the water.  We were also allowed to get in the horse tank and play sometimes.  Can you imagine how dirty that water was in that tank?  That coupled with the fact that the horses might want a drink while we were in there scared hell out of me!  Have you ever looked at horse teeth?  They are big and very yellow and I lived in mortal terror that one of them would eat me.  Life was hard back then.

All the house water for cooking, cleaning, bathing or whatever was carried from the pump outside into the house in buckets.  The tea kettle that set on the wood cook stove was kept full at all times and a cup of tea was just seconds away in case one of the fancy ladies from town came.  (This did not happen very often, and to my recollection, never.  Mother did clean houses and sometimes a lady would come to discuss her availability, but they were usually in a car and stopped in front of the house and honked.)

Ah. but fate smiled kindly us. I do not remember who, why or when, but at some point in time someone decided that mother needed a sink and a pump inside the house in the kitchen.  It was then that we were blessed with what was known as a "pitcher pump."  Now this was the cat's meow in pumps.  It did not need primed!  When we wanted water, we just started pumping and very soon it would "catch it's prime."  Talk about uptown!  It set of the end of a big oblong enamel sink.  The drain pipe ran through a hole in the wall that extended about 8 feet into the back yard.  There the drain water ran out onto the ground where the Muscovy ducks played in it.  Boy, that was one stinking mess, but it was sure handy.

I have to go into detail here about the Muscovy Ducks.  Those are about the nastiest things I have ever seen.  When I had my 17 geese and 37 ducks here I had 4 Muscovy's.  Now to the best of my knowledge, Muscovy's are the only domesticated ducks that can actually fly.  The 4 of them used to fly up to the house, across the fence and roost on the air conditioner.  Nasty.  The hens were little and delicate, but the drakes were twice as big and their necks were as big as my upper forearm.  They did not quack; they sort of quibbled.  I did not like them and I think they actually broke the neck of one of my geese.  They even looked evil.  All this has nothing to do with pumping water, does it?

I attended my first 3 years of high school in Nickerson.  It was during those years that I made 2 discoveries; home brew and boys, in that order.  I had a friend named LaVeta (no last name) whose dad made and bottled home brew.  He liked to go to the big city and gamble on Saturday nights and we liked to stay home and sample his home brew.  Her mother helped us.  She would take all us kids to Sterling and there were boys there!  There were dances there.  Sadly, I could not drink and dance, so the dancing went by the wayside and I learned to worhip at the feet of the porcelain God.  I have not had a bottle of homebrew in 60 years, but I can still taste it.  Once more I digress.

In due time mother graduated from Salt City Business College and we moved to the big city of Hutchinson.  The rest is history.  Louella Bartholomew grew up and not longer exists, or so we think.
Some where deep in my soul, she lives.  Her memories are as vivid today as they were when she was living them.  Homebrew and boys are a thing of the past, but the wants and the needs of that skinny little girl are as alive today as they were in that stick and mortar house at 709 Strong Street.

Peace to all.

One of my favorite things.

Abandoned and Haunted Places is a site on facebook.  Go there and do a search and it will come up.  It is a closed group, but they will let you in just for the asking.  I just came from there and saw a big layout of a mansion fallen into rack and ruin.  I have always been fascinated by old houses and that used to be a big deal back when we were young.  Around Nickerson there were several old houses that were within walking distance that I could go explore and I did.  I would let my imagination run wild and picture the mother and father with the children and the dog.  The family always had a dog.

When I moved to Colorado, this fascination moved with me.  Charlie took me up to the abandoned town on the old LaVeta Pass.  At that time there were several buildings still standing and still intact.  The cemetery was right on the edge of town.  I was fascinated with one grave that was surrounded by a wrought iron fence.  I do not remember any of the particulars, but it was clearly not tended.  None of the graves were.  Cemeteries hold a lot of history and I am sure if I could spend enough time there I could conjure up a ghost or two, but I have yet to meet anyone that shares my fascination.  When I go up to Beulah to see my friend Jan, I always make a drive through the cemetery up there.  I always visit the Caple lot and usually encounter a few deer.  But houses have a whole different fascination.  This is my friend who went with me once, Patty Crehan.  The Caple lot is in the back on the right side of the picture.

This is a house in Longton, Kansas near where my daughter, Patty lives.  It is very well maintained. Or I should say "was " since it burned to the ground several years back.

Now here is something very fascinating!  This house is on the other end of Longton and is surrounded by trees.  It is not well maintained at all, but if you look at the architecture of the two houses, they are nearly identical.  This one was taken over by the druggies, but Patty has assured me that it has since been reclaimed and restored to it's former beauty.  I have not been by there, but next time I go I will.

If there is any one out there with the same fascination for the obscure and forgotten that I have,hmu!  (That means Hit Me Up!  I learned that on facebook.)  It is getting a little cold right now to be tromping around abandoned houses with rotten floors, but Spring will be here some day.  Kenny always meant to take me up on LaVeta, but some how the time was never quite right.  He rode a Harley when I met him and it had a small problem.  The brake cylinder leaked and threw the fluid out on my leg so I had to wear clothes I did not want to wear again.  Of course there was always the inevitable application of the brake when the fluid was all gone and no hope of stopping.  Luckily he sold that before we were both statistics.

So, in the meantime, I will just be setting here waiting for someone to realize that I need someone to go exploring with me.  I am sure I can talk Irene into it when she comes back in the Spring, but maybe not.  In the meantime, there is an old cemetery out east of town and I forgot the name, but I saw an arrow pointing that way when I was in Avondale some time back and driving on a back road, so I know it is there.  And a man once told me about some hieroglyphic's he came across just this side of the New Mexico state line.  He found a lot of arrow heads there. He said it was undisturbed.  He found it when he was on horseback herding cattle.  Might look into that, but it would be nice to find a fellow traveler.

In the meantime, I will just set over here and tend to my knittin' like a good little girl.  Maybe I could go pour through my pictures and organize them so next time I want to find something it will be in my newly organized photo album online and waiting!

Have a good one! 

Happy Birthday to Hammer!

I am not sure how old Hammer is today, but I am pretty sure he is old.  He is married to my oldest daughter.  They live in Longton, Kansas.  They are survivalists to the max.  They have a 40 acre farm, many cats, a dog or two and are right now down to a couple calves.  Usually they buy calves, fatten them up and then sell them to pay the bank the money they borrowed to buy the calves and feed them.  It is not a real profitable operation, but it keeps them off the streets.  They are also raising 4 grandkids which is not a break even operation, but something that needs done.

Hammer had done his 2 tours in Vietnam before Debbie met him.  Needless to say, he had the normal problems that all the boys coming home from there had.  Vietnam was a terrible operation and PTSD is a side effect that is never completely over come.  He still suffers from the effects of Agent Orange as well as the horrors of a war that should never have been undertaken.  Hammer and I are pretty much from the same era.  I know other men who served in Vietnam and all I can say about that is I hope our government learned something from those mistakes, because it was certainly an exercise in futility and anyone who was there still has nightmares even if they say they don't.

I do not know how many years they have been married, but I know it is a lot and I was there that day.  They had been living up in the mountains above Eleven mile Reservoir as I recall, but were in the process of moving down into Pueblo.  Since they were between homes they spent a few days here and in the course of finding a home, they decided they should just trot on up to the court house and "do the deed" which is the equivalent of "getting this shittin' mess over with that Kenny and I had done several years earlier.  I would be one witness and witness number 2 was decided to be a lady named Shirley Smith.  Shirley and her husband, Bill,  ran the UPumpit in Blende.  So off we went.

For some reason, on our way to town we decided that Shirley would be Hammers Best Man.  I was mother of the bride, because that is what I was.  The Judge who was officiating was very understanding.  I am not sure he had ever married anyone in Levi's before, but that is what we were wearing.  Hammer is a big bear of a man with the full beard, biker tattoos and a gruff whiskey voice.  He and Debbie make a great couple.  They went to the motel for their wedding night.  (I know this because I just called her and asked her.)  It was 30 years ago.  Damn!

There has been a lot of water under that bridge and a lot of changing on both their parts.  Well, maybe not changing so much as just adapting to each others wants and needs.  They are talking about moving out here closer to me and I think that would be great.  I guess a lot depends on the 3 grandkids which are currently in their custody.  When life hands us lemons, we make lemonade!  Just the way we are.

Today was also my sister-in-laws birthday.  Not sure how old she would have been because she tended to sugar coat a lot of things.  Sadly, she is no longer on this side of the veil.  Very few of my relatives are.

So any way, Happy Birthday to Hammer!  I know he is on a road trip right now, but I trust he will drive carefully and hurry home to Longton.

Peace! 

Oh, hell man! I was a hippie!!

We are 7 days into October and I am still soul searching. No signs of depression today.  

Thank you, Janet Altman, for this recipe!  This was a de ja vu moment for me when I saw this recipe!  I was transported back in time to Glasco, Kansas in the year of 1962.  Debbie, my firstborn was a wee lass.  We lived in a farmhouse outside of town.  Duane and I and Debbie lived in the house and 3 of my brothers-in-law lived in various trailers in the yard.  The income of that year came mostly from Walnut trees that the men stole from the river that was located nearby.  The buyer would come and pay cash for whatever we had laying in the yard.  Cash was good and as Duane explained, it was not really stealing because the owners of the land did not know they were there.   

Of course, the men went into town and trimmed trees and such for cash money.  We did have to pay rent you know.  Also, they liked to drink and that costs money.  It was the only recreation they had, so who was I to complain?  One night we actually had a Rattle Snake on the back porch right outside the screen door.  One of the workers killed it with a ball bat.  Scared hell out of me.

Back to business.  When there are a lot of families living in a small area, I think it is called a commune.  Of course everyone contributes something to the needs of the commune.  (Oh, shit!  I just realized, I WAS a HIPPIE!  I always thought I was, but now I see it for what it was!)  The men folk fished the Solomon River which had lots of species of fish and they were big.  They also brought home game in the form or rabbits,  squirrels, pheasants, quails and wild honey from the trunk of an old tree.  Of course we bought potatoes, onions, rice and staples from the local store.  Occasionally, I could pick up an old hen or two from the feed store for fifty cents.  Life was good.

Then they met a man and his wife in nearby Delphos.  This old man had 'coon dogs.  In case you do not know, those are the dogs bred and raised to hunt for racoons down on the river.  That was a sport in and of itself.  The idea was to take a pack of dogs ('coon dogs) and go down to the river at night and turn the dogs loose and let them find a raccoon which they then chased down the river until they "treed the 'coon."  At this point all the dogs would try to climb the tree and get the coon down.  If the 'coon actually fell from the tree all the dogs attacked it and ripped it to shreds.  (My God! That sounds barbaric!)    But if the hunters were good they could call off the dogs, shoot the Racoon between the eyes and have supper the next night {more about that later).  Sometimes the dogs would not come when called and the next day was spent finding them because they had followed a racoon off to God only knows where.  I used to lay in bed at night and listen to the baying of the dogs and I could tell how close they were by the tremolo of the barking.  My commune (I just love that word now that I know I lived in one!) had 5 dogs.  2 Black and tans, 1 Blue Tick, 1 Blood hound, and a small mixed breed terrier that was actually Delvin's little dog that thought he was big and wanted to hunt so they let him.

So let me tell you about the first Raccoon I ever cooked.  I still have nightmares about that.  The menfolk always cleaned the game.  They were hunter/gatherers, you know.  So they brought in this cleaned Raccoon on a pan.  I immediately thought of my friendly little house cat that I had left at home.  I salted and peppered it, put a little water in the bottom of the pan, covered it with foil and put it in the oven.  It smelled really good as it was baking.  I made a pot of mashed potatoes and fixed some green beans.  When the time came that it was done I put everything on the table and called the 4 men I was feeding that night.  They oohed and aahed and I ran outside and threw up.  I was still thinking of Fluffy my cat back in Hutch.   (I learned later that I was pregnant again which may have had some bearing on my mental state at the time.)

As time went by we cooked and ate many wild animals.  I must say my favorite was Pheasant which was much like chicken except the breast meat was darker and the legs had leaders which made eating a  leg a challenge and wings were impossible.  That, coupled with the fact that they were shot with a shotgun and you just might bite into a piece of lead wrapped in feathers made the eating a challenge. Quail made a great pot pie.  Wild Turkey (not to be confused with the whiskey kind) was actually very good, but therein again you have wild game that is tough and a real challenge to fix, but there was always potatoes and I could make gravy out of a gnat if I had too.  Squirrels live every where and a good marksman could bring one down with a 22 rifle shell through the head.  They were good eating, but I have since learned they belong to the rodent family, which means they are a big mouse!

Damn!  I miss the commune days and wish I had known then that I was in a commune.  I am going to relive my hippie days, because I did not know I was one.  I guess the only thing I missed was Woodstock!

And with that I bid you adieu and remind myself what my mother always  said, "Life is 20/20 looking back!