What good is a hog head without a hog?

I woke up with Kathy Matea and this song on my mind this morning, fixed Bret his "to go sandwich" and then turned on the computer.  Now how my little mind made the leap to an old dish called "scrapple" I do not know.  What I do know is I used to do quilting for an older lady and she had put together a cookbook of old recipes.  Now if there is one thing I like, it is food.  And I dearly love to try to replicate the old dishes the older folks used to make.  My mother could make as a four course meal out of a spider web, an apple and 3 pounds of imagination.  Times were sure rough back then, but like my husband told my mother one time, "You can never tell by looking at her today that she EVER missed a meal." 

I can recall back in my Nickerson days, that dad always had a pig or two in the pen.  When the time was right the old iron 3 legged pot would be filled with water and a fire built under it.  The pig would be caught, trussed and tied to the tripod which stood over the 3 legged pot and it's throat would be slit.  When it had "bled out" it would be lowered into to the boiling water and then taken back out and gutted.  It was then moved to a very big table and everyone had a job.  Sometimes us kids were "allowed" to scrape the outer skin to remove the hair. 

I think the meat was taken into town to the locker plant when it was wrapped.  We had only a small icebox back then so there was no storage at the house.  The skin, feet, and head remained behind.  The black kettle was cleaned and the fat cut into small pieces and thrown into the pot.  The fire was stoked back up and the fat was rendered giving us lard.  When the fat was rendered there were crisp skin pieces left that were called "cracklings".  To my way of thinking that was the very best part.  The best ones were the ones that bubbled from the heat.  Those were especially crispy.  Cracklings were used to flavor beans, cornbread, and of course for eating.  The ears and the tail were pickled as were the feet.  The jowls were salted and put in the cellar to age into bacon.

But the head!  The head was put back into the 3 legged kettle, which was now scoured clean.  It was covered with water and a fire built under it.  The lid was in place and it was left to simmer all night.
The next day it was allowed to cool until it could be removed from the kettle.  The skin was discarded (that means the dogs got it) and the eyeballs, brain, and everything else except the meat was fed to the dogs.  This left mother with the water it was cooked in and the few bits of meat that had escaped . 

With all the stock now clean she  now stoked up the fire and threw in sage, salt, onion, a bay leaf or 2 and corn meal equal to the stock.  This required a lot of stirring so it did not stick.   In due time it was pronounced "done" and the "scrapple" was now dipped into loaf pans and moved to the lower part of the root cellar and allowed to cool.  When it was cool it was wrapped and taken to the "ice box".  That stuff would keep forever.  Mother would slice it in one inch slices and brown it in very hot lard.  It was served with maple syrup and it was the best food in the whole world.

Mother went to the Salt City Business College in Hutchinson and got an office job in Hutchinson.  Of course, we moved to Hutchinson down on A Avenue.  When we left Nickerson, mother took one look at the 3-legged iron cook kettle and never looked back.  She now had running water, gas heat, indoor plumbing and electricity that was in every room of the house.  The old coal oil lamp was left on the table.  The door was closed, but not locked because we had years ago lost the skeleton key.  We were city folk now.


Today I miss my mother, but there is not a day goes by that I do not.

Center Beauty College and several state boards.

Many years ago there was a thriving Beauty College down town.  It was run by a man named Frank Shultz  who was a friend of my first husband.  He was also a sponsor for AA, if that has any bearing.  A very nice man.  By the time I moved to Pueblo, my former husband had gone back to Western Kansas.  Now the part that is relevant here is that my daughter Dona  moved out here and wanted to go to beauty school.  Of course she picked Center Beauty College since her dad recommended it because he was friends with Frank.  So off she went.

Now I do not remember all about her schooling, but there came a time when I could help.  That was in the form of being a "model."  A model, in this case is someone who the student works on to hone thier skills.  So I went once a week so she could work on my hair and nails.  I got facials.  Manicures.  Pedicures.  And free haircuts.  I actually had well defined eyebrows. Life was good!

And. as with all good things, it came to an end.  The end was when we loaded into the car and drove up to where the State Boards were to be held.  Seems like it was in the 29th Street shopping center.  All went well and in due time she received her license.  I went back to being the good little housewife and bookkeeper.  But I got bored and I received a call from the Beauty College.  Seema a guy named Dana needed a model.  So off I went.  Dana was a very nice man and I began seeing him every week and then we went to State Boards.  It went very well, and we parted ways.  I went back to the home life.  And then I received a phone call from the Beauty College and off I went again.

I am here to tell you, this one did not go well at all.  I have blocked this boys name from my brain as the only means of survival.  From the very first day that he shampooed my hair with water alternating from freezing cold to scalding hot, to the manicure that left me with bleeding cuticles, to the burn marks on my scalp line from the curling iron.  It was not pretty and I did not have a good feeling about the upcoming boards, but a promise is a promise and off we went.  The haircut was the only event that did not leave me bleeding or burned.  The haircut involved removing at least one inch of hair and this particular haircut left me with no 2 hairs on my head the same length.

The permanent curler pulled every hair so tight I was worried my hair would leave my body.  After that he needed to style my hair with the curling iron.  More burn marks.  The facial was almost more than I could endure, but we soon moved on to the "application of makeup and eye makeup."  Oh dear God, let me forget!  When I looked in the mirror and saw racoon eyes looking back, I nearly died.  I have a light tan complexion, but he liked the really light make up so that is the route we went.  I looked much like the Dracula victim after Dracula had drained her.  The only color on my face was the black eyeliner, the black mascara, and a 3 x3  inch  light green color on my top eyelid.  His final act was to glue an artificial fingernail on my right index finger.  He stood back and dutifully waited  for the judge.  I did my best not to scream from the pain of the burns on my scalp and to not burst into tears.

The judge started on my hair.  She checked to make sure he had removed an inch at least.  She checked my burn marks, noting that I might want to put something on them when I got home.  She struggled to keep a straight face when she checked my makeup.  I knew and she knew there was no way in the world this kid was going to pass.  With a solemn face she told me to hold up the finger with the artificial nail.  It chose at that exact moment to fall into my lap! She made her final notation and moved away.

Richard! (I just remembered his name!)  Richard looked at me and said, "Well, I think that went really well! I would like to take you out to eat for being my model."  Dear God in heaven would have struck me dead had I walked into a public place with the clown makeup on my face.  I thanked him for the offer, but told him I really needed to get home as my husband would be waiting supper for me.  (I did not tell him that Kenny was out of town, but there was no sense breaking his heart.)  So we parted company and never seen him again.  I did learn that he had failed his state boards and was not going to try again.  Thank God!

I am not sure Center Beauty College is still in business.  I do know Frank passed several years back, so I am assuming not.  In the meantime, I just set here with my hair needing cut and hoping I can make a trip to Lakin where Dona Marie has her shop.  

Life goes on!

Black Lives Matter. Indian Lives Matter. Hispanic Lives Matter. Where does it end?

I shared a post on facebook.  Poor little ignorant me.  It showed a picture of people; men, women, whites, blacks, Hispanic, all kinds of people.  It said "All lives matter."  It was soon pointed out to me that I was the racist in this occasion.  WHAT?  You have got to be kidding.  How is that racist?  Don't all lives matter?  Apparently not.  So here is my reasoning:

I am white.  I am privileged.  I accept that.  I think my life matters.  I do NOT, however, think my life matters more than yours.  I have white friends.  I also have friends who are not white.  Does one of their lives matter more than another life?  I think not.

I have got to admit, that when someone called me out as using white privilege's I was very hurt.  I could not then, nor can I make the connection now.  I have seen the meme that explains to me in cartoon pictures that the blacks are discriminated against and need our help, as white people, to stand with them in thier struggle.  Got that.  Have had that for a long time.  The same happened with Gays.  Same happened with Vietnamese.  Same happened with equal rights for women.  Same happened with equal pay.  My life has been spent fighting for rights of humans, animals and I even helped sandbag when Midtown was in danger of flooding.  

You know, after all these years, I am ready to throw in the towel.  I realize that right now, at this point in time Blacks have priority, but isn't there a way to stand with the Blacks AND the Indeginous tribes whose lands have been stolen by OUR government and thier women disappearing?  Don't they matter?  Don't the kids locked in cages on our southern border deserve part of our attention?  Or are we so single minded that we can not think about more than one thing at a time?

To me this is the equivalent of having 2 fires on the stove.  Do you just put out the one that is bigger or work on them both at the same time?  Or when an army is engaged in war, do they only fight the enemy they see or do they work on another flank as well?

I am going to say this to whoever wants to listen:  What ever color your skin is, I care about you.  If these means I am exerting my "white privilege"  so be it.  This is all I am going to say about this matter and you can either take me or leave me, and that  my friend is your choice.

What you don't know won't hurt you.

Or so my mother, the wisest woman who ever lived, taught me when I was growing up.  It was not something she told me once to help me over a rough spot.  It was a fact that she lived and breathed.  And she was right.  What I did not know did not hurt me, but there was that part she forgot to add about "The chickens always come home to roost."  These two adages are intrinsically tied together in this game of life.  I think this one came about when I thought my first husband was fooling around on me.  And she was right.  If he was and I really did not know it for a fact, it did not hurt me.  Sadly, though, God has his way of dealing reality to a situation.  This reality came in the form of a venereal disease when I was 6 months pregnant.  Yep, the chickens came home to roost that day. 

That should have been the end of that marriage, but I hung on for 5 more years and 3 more kids.  During their growing up years, I labored under the adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."  Yep.  I kept the handles on the stove turned in after  Debbie reached up from her walker and grabbed the cord on the electric skillet.  That could have been a fatality very quickly.

 "Better to be safe than sorry."

"Do not judge a man until you have walked  a mile in his shoes."

"No sense beating a dead horse."

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

And then I figured out that  "What is good for the goose is good for the gander."  only I was the 'goose' and he was the 'gander'.  Divorce became a frequently used word in my vocabulary, along with the  "A rolling stone gathers no moss." and "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach."

As for  going back and rehashing old wrongs, that fell under the saying of, "Let sleeping dogs lie, " and "Never poke a hornets nest."

I think a lot of the best ones actually come from the Bible, but mother was prone to spit out a few of them also.

"As you sow, so shall you reap."

"Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind."

My oldest daughter taught me (many years later) that  "What don't kill you will make you strong."  And she was right, or so it seems as I near the end of my journey. 

I find myself reaching for my Bible more regularly these days.  I do not know whether it is because we are limited in our interactions because of Covid 19, or just because I am getting old.  I do not feel old, but I can count the numbers and I find myself reaching more often for the handrail on the steps.  I guess it is just the old circle of life and it all boils down to "click here".

Plevna, Kansas, class of 1959

I woke up at 2:30 this morning thinking about my classmates in Plevna, Kansas.  It was my Freshman year and I was living with Grandma Haas and Great Grandma Hatfield.  The high school was on one end of Main Street and Grandma's house was on the other end.  Main Street was 2 blocks long.  The High School, the bank and the filling station was on one side.  On  the other side was Hinshaw's Mercantile, the phone company and Grandma Hatfield's house.  The next house was Grandma Haas's house and then then church.  Great Grandma Hatfield's house was empty since she had moved next door to take care of Grandma Haas.

Great Grandma was a legend in her time.  She was born Helen Gagnebein.  She had married Frank Miller and had 3 children, Lou, Mable, and Grandma Josie.  When he passed she married a man named Hatfield who had a son named Steven.  I always liked Uncle Steven because he had a very round face and always seemed to be happy. Rumor had it that she was headed to the alter with #3 when he suddenly died.  She declared that she had buried 2 husband and the love of her life and was now done.   So she moved across the street to take care of her daughter, my grandmother.  All this has absolutely nothing to do with my Freshman year!

The point is that Grandma had suffered a stroke and could no longer live alone and take care of herself.  Great Grandma needed help and I was the chosen one.  Thus when I left Nickerson Grade School, I was thrown into High School at Plevna, Kansas.  As I recall there were 30 kids in the whole high school.  The Freshman class had like 8 or 9 kids.  When I was laying in bed before I started this missive I could remember 6 of them and clearly see their faces, but as soon as my fingers hit the keys, my brain went south.  I remember Norma Daily, Janet Pastier, the twins Dean and Dale Hinshaw and that is all.  Seems like there were 8 or 9.  I do remember the principal was named Mr. Miller.

They did have a girls basketball team, but I was not allowed to do that because it entailed wearing pants and neither of the grandma's approved of that!  So while the basketball season was on I played ping pong in a room above the stage in the auditorium.  I was not very good at that either.  Everyone brought their lunch except me and I had to run home and check to see if the grandma's needed anything.  Great Grandma would have an orange peeled for me.  When I left the school I could hear Great Grandma's old stand up radio blaring the noon market report.  While we had not farmed for years there were relation who did and the market report kept Great Grandma apprised of the price of wheat, cattle, corn and pork bellies.  I never really gave a shit, but it was important to them!  I would then dash back to school before the bell rang.

Now the most thriving business was the Hinshaw Mercantile.  Dean and Dale would some day fall heir to that!  They were twins, but you would never have guessed it.  Dale was the one who must have gotten to the table first because he was a pudgy, red hair and freckles, pale skinned, mean spirited creature (for want of a better description) fellow.  He never had a nice thing to say to anyone and I sincerely hope he grew out of that!  Dean was a skinny, tanned, dark haired little fellow with a very beautiful smile.  They were as different as night and day.  Needless to say, I thought often about how maybe someday, Dean might hold my hand.  (It never happened.)

The grandma's were united in their way of raising me. The only reading material allowed in the house was the Holy Bible.  No newspaper, no magazine except for the Workbasket which was a crochet magazine that was treasured beyond all else.  I was taught to crochet and that was my past time.  My Grandma Haas and her sister Mabel married brothers.  Aunt Mable would come for a visit from Coldwater, Kansas with her husband  Uncle Goll.  Once she brought her textile paints with the intent of teaching me how to do something besides crochet.  We went to the Hinshaw store and she bought me a white bath towel to paint a design on.  Sadly it was shop worn and the brown outline of where it had lain never faded, but I did paint a water lily on it and she made me feel like I was 10 feet tall.  Damn!  How I miss those days!  I gave the towel to my mother and you would have thought I had handed her the moon!  Things like that used to matter.

If I live to be 200 years old, I will always cherish the memories that were made in that little house there on the end of main street in Plevna, Kansas.  I will always remember the round oak table with the crocheted table cloth and the two grandma's I lived with for a time.  I learned to crochet by the light of a kerosene lamp because, though they had electricity, they did not use it very often because they did not want to wear it out!

I can still see the 2 little white heads bent over their needlework and how occasionally one would look up and smile at me.  They both had the most beautiful blue eyes in the world.  I have often wondered if I really was any help to them or if they were helping me.  I do know, if I were able to go back in time that I would not change one minute of my time spent in that house.  Well, maybe I would.  I would listen next time.  And when we read the Bible (which we did every night)  I would read an extra chapter.  Living with those two women was the best part of my whole entire life.  I just pray that they know what an impact they made on my life all those years ago.

Thank you God for the gift of Grandmothers.

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When is it my turn?

I have been setting here watching this whole pandemic since the beginning and I have these observations:
1.  YOU have your constitutional rights and you choose not to wear a mask.  Well, I would like you to clarify just where your constitutional rights supersede my constitutional rights to breathe?

See, the thing here is I go to the store.  The store is required to require that a mask be worn.  There is disinfectant every where because they are required to provide this in order to be open so I can go to the store and buy groceries.

The store is in compliance.  I have my mask and I am in compliance.  Now I am standing in the checkout line after giving you and your "constitutional rights" a wide berth all the way through the  store.  And here you come.  The 6 foot marks are clearly marked, but you have gone so long thinking this_____________________ is 6 inches that 6 feet means absolutely nothing to you.  There you stood looking like a damn moron, drooling over your Twinkies and 6 pack that were the situation any different, I could have laughed.  But I didn't.

 My thoughts were this:  I am 78 years old.  You are probably pushing 30.  I need groceries, but then you need your sugar fix and a beer is sure going to make you feel better.  I was next in line.  You would have walked right past me, but I think you knew deep down, that I was not going to let you do that.

I smiled at you.  You looked at your phone.  I see you for what you are.  You are an arrogant bastard and you have constitutional rights and no goddam body is going to make you wear a mask.  I am sorry, but I grew up in a different world.  My mother instilled in me the knowledge that all men are created equal.  We ALL have rights and not all of them were given by the constitution.  Some of them are called "common decency". 

One of them is as follows:  Respect your elders.  By the mere fact that I survived 78 years I deserve to have my space in the line at the grocery store.

I wear my mask and that is no concern to you one way or the other.  Wiser men than you decided that this virus is killing people at an alarming rate and we need to do everything in our power to slow it down.  We are now living with a virus that replicates faster in the United States than any where else in the world and I think that it is thanks to idiots like you who have your "constitutional right" to do what ever you choose.  I myself, think you should be jailed for attempted murder.

I do not worry about catching this because I practice good hygiene and protect myself from selfish people like you.  I have grandchildren that I want to protect.  I would like to get back to my church someday, but regardless of whether that happens or not, I will be alright.  I will go to Lagrees again and I will no doubt encounter you again.  I will smile at you, again, because that is who I am, but know this, my friend, you are an asshole.  I know I do not have the right to be judge and jury, but you are an asshole nonetheless.

So have a good day.  You will know me when you see me because I wear the mask with the pussy cats on it!

Can't we all just get along?

Does anyone remember Rodney King?  So much has happened in my world since the days of Rodney King that I can not right at the moment even remember what that was all about, but I do recall that it was in California and the year was 1992.  King was beaten by police officers and when he sued the verdict came back that the 4 police officers were innocent.  I did check and there were 63 people killed in the riots,  2,383 injured, and 12,000 people arrested.  Rodney King himself stood up and begged people to stop.  I remember seeing him on a black and white grainy television and saying,
"Can't we all just get along?"  That was almost 30 years ago and yet, here we are today.  Different state, but same scenario.

I can not watch the news.  I can not watch that video again and again.  To watch that police officer, kneeling on George Floyd's neck as three other officers watch not only brings tears to my eyes, but raises my righteous indignation at everyone involved in that brutal act of murder.  And it was murder; deliberate cold blooded disregard of a human life.  "I can not breathe!"

How many breaths do you take in a day?  I am sure I could google it and I would then know, but does it matter?  We take them for granted.  They come easily inhaled and just as easily exhaled.  A cold, COPD, and other health issues will make us stop and think about the breaths we take, but mostly we just take the first one and then the next one and go right on through the night breathing while we sleep. 

I grew up in a small town.  We had a small place up on Main Street that had bars on the windows and that was where  the "ne'er do wells" or drunks or other miscreants could be locked away.  The "peace officer"  (whose job it was to oversee whoever was locked up) had a chair to set in by the front door in case the person who was locked up needed something.  To the best of my knowledge no one was ever locked inside.  The only excitement that the jail ever saw was when Ory Ayers and her daughter rode their stick horses into town and circled the jail and rode back home.  Life was pretty simple back then.

There were no blacks in our town.  There were only white people.  I know my mother's family came over from Germany and settled in Nickerson or nearby.  There were 3 churches; Methodist, Christian, and Baptist.  I guess growing up in such a place made me tolerant and accepting of other races.  We never fought over anything.  Our environment was just pretty much mundane.  Occasionally families would have disagreements with the neighbors, but it never went farther than that.  The gypsys sometimes camped on the edge of town, but we never seen them.

So here I find myself in a world I do not understand full of people I do not understand and I find myself screaming at the television in complete frustration. Oh, trust me, I have done my share of marching and changing the world, but never was I violent.  We carried signs.  We made speeches.  We helped little old ladies across the street.  And now, sadly, I find myself in need of being helped across that same  street, and up the steps, and on to the other side.

I can not help the Rodney Kings or George Floyds of the world.  I can only set here and watch as it unfolds and pray that some where, some how, someone will pick up the banner and fight for the rights of all the mistreated in our world, but it doesn't seem to be happening.  There is so much unrest in this world today that by the time I figure out which cause to support, the whole thing has changed. 
And so the world goes on.  My words change nothing.  I live in fear that if the world spins any faster we may all lose our gravity and spin out of control.