Hook, line and sinker!

 My eyes popped open before 5:00 am, and I lay there thinking of my first husband.  Now, I was not thinking of him in a romantic way, but rather as how he lived his life in a way that he wanted.  To say he was a rebel would be an understatement, because he did not rebel.  He just lived his life the way he wanted to and never bothered with the rules society tried to place around him.  My brother introduced me to him in the bar up the street and 3 weeks later we were standing in front of the preacher.  To say he swept me off my feet would have been an understatement, but there we were.  Of course it all ended up badly, but there were good times and that is what I am thinking this morning.

One of his favorite things was to drive the back roads and just do what came naturally.  There was always several guns in the back seat and fishing poles in the trunk.  His motto was "Be prepared."  I guess he may have been a boy scout at some time! If a pheasant made the mistake of stepping out of the ground cover it was dinner.  I spent many hours picking buckshot out of a pheasant breast so I could cook it for supper, or dinner, or breakfast.

And while the pheasants, doves, and rabbits were not my favorite fare it was rather exciting to know that we were breaking the law because not only were they out of season, Duane never procured a hunting license in all the years I knew him.  You should know that I participated in the hunt as a spectator.  Now don't get me wrong as to the killing of animals.  I could rip the head off a chicken, dip it in scalding water, defeather and gut it in seven minutes flat, but a chicken caught with a wire hook and butchered was a way of life.  Killing a beautiful pheasant was another story!  Survival.

While driving we often came to a creek, river, brook or an unattended farm pond that was stocked with fish.  I could fish!  A babbling brook was my favorite as it contained Crappie!  A creek, lake, pond or river were sure to hold catfish which was my least favorite eating fish.  Perch were fun to catch, but very bony.  Ah, but the Crappie was a delight!  Now it is pronounced with a soft "a" as in awe.  They are small and much like a Perch, but a Perch is very boney and fishy tasting.  The Crappie is a white meat and very mild.  They like running water and a "fly" is the best bait.  When they strike the lure it is a thrill like no other.  With catfish you have to set very quietly and wait until they are damn good and ready, but while you think  you are snagging a Crappie, he is snagging you!

When I married Kenny, we fished out of a boat.  In Colorado trout are abundant, so that is what we fished for.  Kenny would clean the trout, pack the stomach area with butter and roll it in flour and wrap it in tinfoil.  The packet was then placed on the cooling coals of the campfire.  Talk about the good life!

Several years back  I bought a tackle box, fishing pole and all the stuff to fish with on the river.  I never went.  I did tie a weight on the end of my line and practiced my cast, but that is as far as it went.  Maybe I just got old along the way, but something about setting on a lonely creek bank went from being peaceful and fulfilling to hoping no one comes along and kills me.  Old age!  I friggin' hate it, but I guess it beats hell out of dying young, which was the option I did not take.

So, the fish I eat now comes in a bag and is labeled as "farm raised".  I do not have to gut it, or skin it, or debone it.  Just take it out of the package, thaw it out and pop it in the microwave with butter, lemon, and a little dill.  Course I have to put my dishes in the dishwasher and then kick back in my recliner and remember the good old days!

Makes me think of that song I have playing in my head.  "I'd trade all of my tomorrows for a single yesterday."

Peace.

Money tied in the corner of a handkerchief.

I remember only snippets of life on the Stroh place because I was 6 years old when we left there, but I do remember my very first trip to the grocery store alone.  Looking back I realize it must have been 6 or seven blocks one way which would make it about a mile round trip.  Back in those days most errands were done without the benefit of a motor vehicle because if we had one we did not want to "wear it out" doing menial things like going to the grocery.

I remember mother placing some coins on top of the grocery list and tying  them into the corner of a tattered handkerchief.  That was what served as a coin purse back in the days of abject poverty.  I had walked to the store many times with mother and my sisters, but for some reason this would be my first trip alone.  I expect sister Dorothy was either newly born or about to be and momma needed something from the store for supper.

I clutched the handkerchief  in my little fist and began the journey.  I was familiar with our long driveway so that was no problem.  Jake and I ran up and down it many times barefoot in the soft, silty black dirt.  It was under the tree at the start of the driveway that Donna had gotten a turtle latched on to her finger, but I think I told you about that!  What lay ahead was a long block before I got to Main Street where I would be safe.

I entered that block very slowly because on the right side was a big black cow (which was no doubt a bull) that looked at me with huge black eyes.  He watched my slow progress as I never took my eyes off of him for fear he would jump the fence and eat me.  His horns were long and I knew he was going to be there when I came back so I did not want to make him mad.  I did not see his teeth, but I knew he had them because he was chewing.  I was flooded with relief  when I reached the end of his fence and safety!

The next block had 3 houses before I got to Main Street.  I walked quietly and slowly in case there was a mean dog that wanted to eat me.  As I recall there was not and I reached the safety of Main Street.  Why I thought I would be safe on Main Street is beyond me because I still had the railroad tracks to cross, but Main Street and the Nickerson High School was a beacon to me.  With the giant cow and his big teeth behind me I breathed a sigh of relief, and turned right onto Main Street.  Two blocks passed without incident and there was no train.  I was almost there!

Arriving at the downtown area which was 2 blocks long was monumental to me!  I was only 2 blocks from my goal!  I remember looking in the window at the Library and seeing all the books.  Then Corrington Dry Goods had a dress in the window that I knew my mother would never own.  Then the jail which I walked past very quickly lest a bad guy grab me.  The sheriff was on his chair in front of the door.  He had the chair leaned back against the door and was sound asleep.  The bank was next and then Berridge IGA, but I was going to Flemings.  The drug store was on the corner and across the street I reached Flemings Grocery.  

I handed the handkerchief to the lady at the counter like mother had told me to do.  She opened it and went to fetch the items.  Seems like it was a loaf of bread, a piece of suet, and a portion of butter.  She handed me the parcel with the now empty handkerchief, smiled and I left the store.  My job was almost over!  

The trip home was uneventful until I reached the railroad track.  I saw the arms go down on the crossing and I knew the train was coming!  If I hurried I could make it, but fear froze me in place and I waited by the grain elevator until until the train lumbered past and the arms were once more raised.  Then I waited a little longer just to be sure it was not coming back.  And I still had the giant cow to pass.

I left Main Street and walked as quietly as possible, but that damn cow had supersonic hearing and when I reached his fence I was scared shitless to see that he was looking right at me.  He was waiting.  My mind raced for another way home, but there was nothing coming to mind.  He looked at me and chewed something that I would learn later was a cud.  He never took his eyes off me and after a time I knew I had to go past him again.  Every watch something move so slowly that you never really detected  movement?  That was me!  Looking back and watching this is slow motion from the cows perspective, I am pretty sure he was laughing his ass off, if cows laugh!

When I reached the head of our driveway I broke into a dead run.  When I burst through the door and into my mothers arms I also burst into tears.  I was safe at home!  The mean cow had not eaten me!  The train had not run over me!  I had not been devoured by a vicious dog!  And best of all my mother was proud that I had gone to the store all alone and came home with exactly what she needed.  

I realize now that my mother had probably been more worried about me, then I was. It was my first tremulous step into being a responsible person, but it would not be my last.  Life would always hold challenges and I would always know that at the end of the task my mother would be there with open arms and pride in her hazel eyes for me.

I have met many people through life who have cheered me on and celebrated my victories and wept at my failures, but none as special as the one I called  "Momma."

Those damn Muscovy Ducks!

 

Thinking back to Nickerson is impossible without remembering the stinking ducks.  Let me lay the scene out for you.  We had a sink in the kitchen and a hand pump to pump water for indoor use.  The drain consisted of a pipe that ran through the wall and extended about 10 feet into the back yard.  Beyond that was the rabbit hutches and further out the chicken house and yard.  The chicken yard was fenced and they had a very nice house.  Horse pen and barn were over to the left.  Ah, but the only thing not restrained were the Muscovy ducks.

As I recall, there were 4 of them.  Black and white.  Now a Muscovy duck is different than other ducks.  The Muscovy is a "warbler"  which means it sounds like an old man mumbling to himself.  As a general rule ducks are pretty quite and when they do talk it is a definite "quack".  I am pretty sure that the male ducks I had never uttered a sound and the females were quite vocal.

Another interesting point here is that domesticated ducks and geese do not fly.  The exception to that rule is the Muscovy, which can fly and I know this for a fact because at one point I had 38 ducks, 4 of which were Muscovy.  All the ducks liked to float around in the pond, but the Muscovy ducks liked to fly up to the house and set on my central air unit which was located (and still is) near my back door.  It became a regular chore to hose down the unit when they went back to the pond.

But back to Nickerson and the sink draining in the back yard.  It was the habit of the Muscovy ducks to root around in the mudhole that was created by the water draining onto the dirt in the back yard.  I am pretty sure that mosquitoes laid eggs in that water.  I do know when the ducks got through digging in the wet dirt that it was a very stinky mess.  Hindsight tells me that if the health department had ever seen that mess that they would have bulldozed the house, but that was then and this is now and there is not much anyone can do about that, is there?

Looking back down the years of growing up on Tobacco Road, it is a miracle that any of us survived, and yet here I am!  We all have scars that we got when we were wee tykes and I can now empathize with my mother.  My hat is off to that woman if only for the fact that she raised us all to adulthood without any loss of life.  There were 6 of us back then.  Now we are down to only two.  Donna lives in Hutchinson and I live in Pueblo.  

We gathered only for funerals, but now there are just the two of us, so that does not happen very often.  She actually thinks she is my big sister, so I just let her think that.  I do know that we remember our childhoods differently.  I see abject poverty and she recalls a very happy childhood.  She remembers a very kind father and I never met that man! 

The one thing mother did teach me was that we all have our own concept of reality.  Some of us see the glass half empty and some of us see it half full.  

I do not even remember having a glass!

The last thing at night.

 I see him the last thing every night and the first thing every morning.  He is on my dresser smiling the big smile I loved so much.  He has on his sun glasses because his eyes were sensitive.  He had migraine headaches and they helped him during the daylight hours.    When I wake up I come out to the office and he is smiling that same smile at me from my computer screen.  I speak of him now in the past tense.  There is no present tense when it comes to him.  

I have quit waiting for him to call.  I have quit reaching for the phone to call him.  I do not put 2 cookies in a bag for him.  So much has changed in the last four months and they have been the hardest months of my life.  I have seen and done a lot in my life, but never have I been through anything that has so completely made me question whether life is worth living as this.

This covid crap has not helped.  I have been forced into isolation at a time when four walls are not what I need, but it is my reality.  The one thing this has shown me is that I have friends who love me and care about me.  I have friends I have never met!  Once I received a simple bouquet of flowers from someone I worked with long ago.  There was a phone call from a friend from Garden City that I had forgotten.  A lady brought me some "healing soup" and left it on the porch.  There was a gift of 4 Red Big Chief tablets for me to write my thoughts in.  And so many thoughts coming my way!

Most of my friends have no idea what happened and only know that I am hurting and reach out to let me know they are here for me. They only know that they want to share my pain.  I appreciate everyone of these gestures.  I will survive.  I may not want to, but I will!

My daughter in Longton, Kansas, always said "What don't kill you will make you strong!"  And she is right.  Some day I may need to look some one in the eye and say "I know what you are going through."  When that day comes I will remember what I went through.  I am growing stronger every day .

I am sure of one thing, if the Lord brought me to it; he will bring me through it.  My church was not there for me when I needed it most, but God was.  I could bury my face in the folds of his blood stained robe and he held me when I cried.  

I will be alright.  I make strides every day.  I can say his name without crying.  I can laugh at his little idiosyncrasies that made him so unique.   

And that, my dear friends, is because of all of you!

Ten dollars and 200 miles.

 I do not know about you, but I have 20/20 hindsight looking back and right before the crack of dawn is when I can see all my choices clearly!  Today is no different.  I woke up about 4:30 remembering my last day as a married woman in Garden City, Kansas.  The events leading up to that choice are irrelevant, only know that I had reached the end of my endurance and whatever lay ahead had to be better than the current situation.  Had I remained in the situation I would no doubt have ended my life that day.

With $10 in my pocket and a full gas tank in the 1967 Chevy I waited for my husband to leave for work, or wherever he went most days.  With him safely out of the house, I loaded what I could for clothes in the trunk on top of the spare tire.  That was days when there were no seat belt laws, so 4 kids were stuffed in wherever they could sit, stand or lay and away we went.  I would like to say it was an easy trip, but only 20 miles later I had a flat tire and no jack.  Luckily a boy scout troop happened by and the leader had a jack.  I left the flat laying beside the road and trusted God and the universe to help me reach my destination.  And he did.

I can only imagine the sight when mother opened the door and found me and the kids there and finding out we were there to stay.  She quickly called in a few favors and a babysitter was lined up for the next day.  Since I knew nothing about making a living, I started at the Blue Grill as a dish washer.  There I met a man who was wiser in the ways of the world and making a living then I was.  His advice was to bluff my way into a job as a waitress.  Lie on my resume: they would not check.  And he was right. 

 Mother waited tables at the Red Rooster and soon I had a job waiting tables at the Red Rooster.  There I met Gibby, who told me the cook was the highest paid employee in a restaurant.  So I applied for a cooking job at the Red Carpet.  I kept the dishwashing job and the waitress job and worked as night cook at the Red Carpet. Frank and I remained friends of sorts until he went to work at the radio station.  Gibby and I were like brother and sister until the day he died in California. 

Finding babysitters was sometimes a challenge and more than once I was ready to throw my hands in the air and give up, but give up to what?  Or who?  The kids dad was quick to point out that he would not pay child support.  His reasoning was that he did not want a divorce and that I had the kids and he had nothing so I should just figure it out.  After time I would take the kids to him for a few weeks and then go get them.  I saved babysitting money that way.  It worked out and over the years we could actually be in the same room with out screaming at each other.

To make a long story short, time marches on.  Today my first husband and the father of my children settled down and we shared custody.  I moved to Colorado and he lived in Western Kansas on 20 acres.  The kids stayed with him to attend school in a small town.  Between us we got the kids all raised and out into the world before he passed to whatever reward he had earned.  

I am a stronger person then I was 50 years ago.  Three of the kids still live in Kansas, one in Texas and one here in Pueblo.  My last husband and I adopted one of the grandkids.  I was married to him for 20 years, and he has now been deceased for 20 years. Apparently my mind is still pretty well intact.  Dates are a little fuzzy, but mother always had a way to explain that.  She said, "As life goes by you get more memories in your head.  As you get more memories they are harder to find in your brain.  They are there, it just takes time to get to them through all the other memories."

So there you have it for this morning.  If you get confused reading this, think about how I feel!  Some where I have it all written down and documented, but I do not know where that is.  So just know, I am here now.  Then I was there.  And never the twain shall meet!

Thanks, mom!

There used to be two of me!

 Many years ago when I married my first husband I weighed in at 92 pounds.  Five kids later I weighed in at 103.  When Kenneth passed in 2003, I was a hefty 180.  Same bones, same skin, same everything, just more compacted.  He used to say, "You's not fat, you's fluffy." And for a lot of years that is where I stayed, just a fluffy woman who liked to eat. 

Of course I still had Bret at home and had to cook for him, so I pretty much maintained that weight.  Then he fell in love and left me so there went the reason for cooking.  My weight went down to 165 or so and my doctor was pleased that I was finally doing something about my obesity.  Now granted, I was overweight, I still looked good, because I was compact, but as for "doing something about being overweight" he was dead wrong.  I had not been "doing something" about the problem, but I do think my body seeks its own weight.  Happy I eat and gain weight, sad I go the other way.    

It was not until this past year that the scales began to go the other way.  When one lives alone eating is not a high priority.  Before Covid 19 I was eating out occasionally and having friends over occasionally, but, then safety became paramount.  No more meeting for lunch.  No more stopping for takeout.  Life just pretty much became a solitary existence.   Consequently, since eating alone is not a lot of fun, I now top the scales at 139.  According to all the charts I see I am still considered obese.  

So here is the deal: I am going to set here and be obese.  Hell with it.  I am old with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel and something is eventually going to kill me!  I like cookies.  I really like homemade cookies and I just baked up a batch of white chocolate macadamia and there is no one here to eat them except me!  If I get so big that they have to take me out the big window in the front room, I will surely die a happy woman.  At least I will be full of cookies and at my age, that is about the best I can hope for. 

So peace to all and bon a petite!!  I am off to the kitchen to use up some more of those Macadamia nuts and Walnuts that my sweet little Irene sent me!  May even send her a couple!

RIP

Naked by any other name is still Naked!

After Kenny passed and I no longer worked as a caregiver for Mark I volunteered at  Sangre de Cristo Hospice.  I was a volunteer in the 11th hour program.  This just means that I would have finished my job when the client passed to the other side.  My job was to set with the client while the caregiver ran errands or just took a break from every day life.  Being the kind, caring person I am, I was sometimes called to the bedside when my client was taking their final breathe. Unlike a lot of people I have an acceptance of dying and a secure knowledge that we are all going to a better place.

In this capacity, my last job with hospice was for a man on the southside who cared for his 90 year old invalid mother.  He had several bad experiences with people he hired to set with her when he needed some one.  Seems he had several bad experiences with ladies taking coffee cups or small items just "walking off".  When he enrolled in the hospice program he was adamant that whoever came had to be honest.  After several volunteers were sent there he had given up on hospice was at the end of his rope as far as strangers in his home.  Hospice threw their hands in the air as it seemed to be a lost cause.  And then they tried one last hurrah, Lou Mercer.

By this time I had mostly given up hospice work, but Jolene asked me if I would just give this guy a break and if it did not work out they would let me leave.  I agreed.  The man called and explained that hospice had given him my name and number and would I just come and meet his mother.  What did I have to lose?  I agreed.  

When I arrived at the chosen day and time, he opened the door and looked me up and down.  He was a regular looking man of Spanish descent and looked fairly harmless, so I went in.  Mom was in the kitchen in a wheel chair and eating her breakfast which consisted of a pop tart and a cup of coffee.  I took a chair at the end of the table and she looked up at me.  She immediately smiled and her face lit up!  "Blue! Blue!"  I should note here that my eyes are blue and they stay that way as long as I am happy.  Sadness causes them to take a hazel hue, but I am rarely sad. So that day they were blue.

The son explained all the problems he had with sticky fingers and I explained that I did not have that problem.  He told me he would pay me to set with mother.  I told him I was a volunteer and did not accept money.  And so it began.  Momma and I were friends and he felt comfortable leaving us alone.  When he returned from whatever errand he had been on, he was surprised to see mother still happy.  

Since I would not take his money, he fell into the habit of buying me fruit juice.  The kind he bought was from Sam's and was called "Naked" because it had no artificial ingredients.  We fell into an easy relationship since his mother liked me and I liked her.  She could be a bit cantankerous at times, but I understood how hard it must be on both her and him.  I was happy to do what I could to ease the burden for both of them.  And the bottle of juice became a joke with us.  

"Hey, Lou!  I got Naked for you!"  "OMG!  I hope that is in a bottle!"

He did not call me to often, because he felt he was imposing on me.  I explained that I had no other clients and I actually had come to love his mother.  I think what we developed was a comradery.  Mutual respect and a genuine caring for each other.  I met and loved his sisters and brother.  I am not sure they knew just what to think of the relationship, but they accepted it at face value.   His sister came in laughing one time because they had been shopping and he had to run to Sam's before they could go home because, "I have to get Naked for Lou!"

I was a part of their life for several years before Momma passed.  She was my comrade.  He was my knight in shining armor.   

It is a part of my life that I shall miss until I take my last breathe.  But that is how grief is, isn't it?  At first it is sharp like a knife and cuts to the quick, but then it begins to become a dull ache, and finally it is just a big, empty hole in your soul.  

I still wait for the phone to ring and the voice on the other end telling me to look at the moon.  

"I see the moon; the moon sees me. The moon sees someone I want to see.                                                  So God bless the moon, and God bless me, and God bless the someone I want to see."