What a difference a day makes.

"Twenty four little hours.  Now there is sun and floweres, where there used to be you."  Those are words to a song.  Seems like that was a song that fit a lot of  situations back in days gone by.  It also fits a lot of situations today.  We are all given our lives and we set out on paths to either spend them wisely or fritter them away by doing nothing.

Sometimes we set off in one direction and then do a complete turn around and head some where  totally opposite of what we wanted to do.  Sometimes we end up doing things we never dreamed we wanted to do and it is a good thing.  Sometimes it is not.  

There is also the "random factor" that comes into play from time to time.  A train can pass harmlessly through a crossing every day at the same time for years and no one notices, but on the one day that  Mr.  Brown leaves his house 10 minutes late he arrives at the crossing at exactly the same time as the train and if he is slow to apply his brakes, it may very well be the end of Mr. Brown.  Some might call it "fate".  But is it?

Some speak of a thing called "pre-destination".   Do we come into this world at a predetermined time and exit at a predetermined time or is it all completely random?  Or is it a combination of both?  Have you ever experienced de javu? This may or may not be the proper spelling, but de javue is that moment in time where something is happening (or has happened) and you are thinking, "I have been here before!  I know what will happen next."  Maybe you can change the outcome and maybe it just plays out to a predetermined ending.

I like to think that I was placed here by a God who watches over me and keeps me pretty much in line.  You know, a God who loves me and wants only the best for me and I will live happily until one day when he gently reaches down, smiles at me and takes me by the hand to live in glory forever.  That is a very pretty picture and while I believe this to be mostly true, I do know he made one mistake with mankind.  He gave us free will.  And there, my friend, is my downfall!  Not only my downfall, but the undoing of every man, woman, and child on this earth!

I started out well with dreams of becoming a missionary and saving the lives and souls of the wretched natives in the wilds of Africa.  Had I clung to that goal, would I have succeeded or would I have ended up in a pot over a fire and become a meal for a bunch of naked natives in the outback?  What this all boils down to is this: CHOICES. Some of my choices have been made with no thought at all as to the eventual outcome.

Momma always said, "Hindsight is 20/20 looking back."  What this means is simply that I can now see what I should have done and the choice I should have made when Mr. Earl Duane Seeger asked me to dance that night at the Crow Bar.  But then, had I declined I would not have my little family of Debbie, Patty, Dona, Sam and Susie, would I?  I would not have my grandchildren nor my great grandchildren.  

While I do not see my kids very often during this Covid business, it does not mean I love them any less.  My choices now cover children in 3 states; Kansas, Colorado and Texas.  This past week my middle daughter lost a son.  This means I lost my first grandchild.  He made the choice to jump in the car and "run into town."  He had probably done this a hundred times before, but this time he did not come back.

While we will miss him we will remember the free spirit that was our little Joey.  With a heart full of love we will bid farewell to the life of a young man will never reach his full potential and will always be remembered as just Joe.  But then again, maybe he did fulfill his mission in life!  He taught us that love knows no bounds and that the mold was not built for everyone to fit inside.  

I will always remember the last time I saw him.  I was ready to leave and return to Colorado.  He was fiddling with his phone, but we have the understanding that when parting there has to be a hug, and an "I love you " said.  Even if we are in a hurry, or upset, or whatever.  Amicable partings are a part of life and always accompanied by a hug and an "I love you."  And I had that with Joey that day.

So RIP Joey.  Go fly free knowing that you were loved while here on this earth and will be remembered always in a special corner of my heart.

Grandma.

https://youtu.be/OQxRiv0jqmM

Facebook asked me and I said...

 Question on facebook this morning was "What is the one smell you can not stand to smell cooking?"  My answer was immediate, "Apples."  That is always my answer.  I can still smell the apples cooking in my mind.  My poor little Kenny never quite understood my aversion to the smell, but he learned to live with it.  When his mom was still alive and his sister Martha lived with her they would bake apple pies and invite us over.  Kenny usually went alone on those visits.

While he accepted that this would never be an apple pie house, I do not think he ever understood my reasoning.  It is not that I chose to hate cooked apples.  In fact I am alive today because of the apples that were gathered, stored in the root cellar, and cooked through the cold winter months to keep us fed.  I shall try to explain this to you so I can understand it myself.

When I smell apples cooking I smell poverty.  I smell a 2 bedroom house that was home for 8 people.  I relive itchy wool blankets that kept us from freezing.  I remember trips to the outhouse in the middle of the night and fearing I would be eaten by wolves or kidnapped by Gypsy's.  I remember heating water on a wood stove so we could wash dishes or take a bath in a tin tub.  Apples and Carp.  Foods that kept us alive.

But I do have good memories.  Those memories are triggered by crisp, cool air and a moon high above on Saturday nights listening to "The Grand Ole' Opry" with my brother on a car radio in the front yard of 709 Strong Street.  I love the twang of a flat top guitar and the mournful sounds of Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and all the old singers.  My world almost ended when Hank Williams died in the back of a car on the way to the Grand Ole Opry.  

The feel of sand between my toes takes me back to running along the road to the Vincent Sand Pit to watch my brother fish or swim in the murky water.  I never learned to swim, but I could bait a hook and catch a big old catfish!  Mostly it was Carp, but it was food for our bodies and nourishment for our souls.  The smell of the Lilac bush takes me to my Grandma Haas and Great Grandma Hatfield.

There were 8 of us back then.  Now there are 2.  I think back to the bygone days and while they make me nostalgic, they are also my salvation.  It was the ramshackle house and the poverty that shaped me into the woman I am today.  I like the think I am compassionate and caring.  When I see the poverty and homelessness of today  it makes me appreciate how much my mother sacrificed for us kids.  Not just me; all of us.  We got an education and learned humility and responsibility.  Mother gave us our basics and then pushed us off the branch like the momma bird does with her fledglings.  We all flew!

I like to think that my kids learned something from me.  They all seem to be responsible.  They are hard working.  I have never known them to take anything that was not theirs.  They give an honest days work for a days pay.  And the one thing I know and hope they learned also is that if God brings you to it, he will bring you through it.

Amen!

If I had known then what I know now.....

 

I met Earl Duane Seeger shortly after my birthday in October of 1960.  My brother Jake introduced us in a bar up the street from the house. I think it was the Crow Bar.  They used to have a thriving business and I remember once they had a Calypso band and I fell madly in lust with the little guy who played the Bongo drum.  Sadly, I could not hold my liquor very well and a bad case of "Four Roses Flu" hit me suddenly and I retreated up the street to the safety of the of my home where I worshipped at the feet of the porcelain throne.

Oh, but the night I met his friend, I managed to sip demurely on a coke laced with absolutely nothing but a couple ice cubes.  That man was drop dead gorgeous with a full head of blonde hair and the most beautiful blue eyes I had ever had the pleasure to gaze into.  And gaze I did!  He was freshly home from the Army and I was freshly out of high school.  His name was Earl Duane Seeger.

(Short note here: I was out of high school because I dropped out the beginning of my Senior year to devote more time to drinking and partying.  That was one endeavor in my life that I succeeded very well at.)  The match made in heaven ended in marriage 3 weeks later and we set up housekeeping in a one bedroom 3rd floor walkup.  

Needless to say, my party days were over.  Earl ,who I called Duane because that was his middle name  worked as a tree trimmer for a guy whose last name was Bean.  He had 2 brothers who also worked for Mr. Bean.  ( They called him "Navy Bean" but I am pretty sure that was not his name.)  They would go to his house every morning, go do their job for the day, and then come home.  Life was good.

The only thing that would have made it better was if I could have had a baby.  (Eventually that happened 5 times.)  Duane and his brothers left Mr. Bean and branched out on their own.  Life went on and 10 years later I returned to Hutchinson with my babies in tow.  Duane ended up buying land in Lakin, Kansas and making that his "base of operations."  We shared custody of the kids without benefit of lawyers and such, but it worked for us.

At one point he had a cafe in Deerfield where he lived upstairs and I had taken the kids to see him.  We had a relationship that while not cordial worked for us.  I remarried a couple times and he had girlfriends.  It was during his Deerfield days that I found that plaque above and thought how appropriate that was for him.  He hung it where he spent time in the  kitchen of his cafe.  It was not a working cafe, but it had lots of rooms upstairs for the kids and the stove and grill worked down stairs.  It worked for him.

After Deerfield he bought land in Lakin and moved onto it.  He moved a trailer house in for him, and then his mother who was a widow by that time.  A couple of the kids also moved trailers in and life went on.  It worked for him and that was the important part.  When he passed in 1994 at the tender age of 53 we were all devastated.  The kids brought this to me explaining that "Daddy read this every day and always kept it in the kitchen where he set." 

Now it sets behind the faucet on the kitchen sink.  It has been in my kitchen since his death.  The kids gave it to me and explained that "Daddy never stopped loving you."  I see it every day.  Earl Duane Seeger was my first real love.  He was the father of my children.   We could not live with each other, but we could also not live without each other.

Funny how that works.

  

1967 in Liberal, Kansas

 My mind seems to remember things that occurred 55 years ago much clearer then the events that transpired yesterday for some odd reason. 

 Duane had met this farmer who owned a house about 3 miles out of Liberal.  The house was vacant and in need of repair and we needed some where to live.  We agreed to clean the place  and paper and paint as needed to make it livable.  The farmer would pay for paint, paper and brushes and such and the deal was made.  We spent the first night on the floor in the front room with all the kids.  Soon we had a bed and a wash machine.  Duane went to work every day and I began scrubbing in the kitchen.  I papered, painted and had that room done the first week.  For the first time in our marriage I actually felt like I had a home.  

The reason I remember the year is because Sam was one year old and had received a blue elephant toy that had wheels and he could set on it and push himself across the floor.  I recall that we also had a gravity flow floor furnace.  In case you do not know what that is I will tell you.  The gas fired furnace was in the basement and heat was transferred to the house by vents that opened in the middle of the front room floor, the bedroom and the bathroom.  It was archaic at best, but was what this house had.  I came in one day after checking the mail find Sam stranded on his elephant on the furnace vent because it was stuck and he could not put his feet on the furnace because it was too hot.  Other than that incident life was pretty good in the heating area. 

And the kids soon learned that they would burn their feet on the gravity floor furnace.  We got chickens.  We got a dog.  As time progressed I finally got the inside of the house all painted and papered. The rose bush bloomed by the back door and life was good.  The farmer came to visit and check out the now refurbished house.  He was impressed.  He brought his wife.  She was impresssed.  They were so impressed they presented the house as a wedding gift to their son and handed us an eviction notice.  Sam was now 2 years old and we were homeless, but you know the old saying, "When God closes a door, he opens a window?"

God opened a window in Garden City, Kansas.  And another window in Hutchinson, Kansas.  Life went on as life will do.  Duane became quite successful as a tree surgeon and an arborists.  I, of course, followed my heart and ended up in Pueblo, Colorado.  And after several changes of heart I am still here.

I think back on my life and have to admit to one thing....If I could live my life over, there is not a thing I would change.  There is a country western song that pretty much sums it all up.  This song is for Pueblo, Colorado.

click here to play

What ever happened to Carol Mason?

 It is amazing how my mind works!  I lay in my little bed at night and think pretty thoughts and drift off to sleep.  Mostly I think about Jesus and contemplate the day I will get to go see him.  So why does my mind that is supposed to be asleep go other places and wake me up at 2:30 AM back at Hutch High?  And why is Carol Mason alive in memory just as clear as the last time I seen her?  Let me give you some back ground on my relationship with Carol.

I met her in her Senior year.  I was in my Junior year.  That was back in my "cool days."  I think she was in my Stenography class.  That is the one where we learned to take shorthand.  Not sure that subject is still taught at all.  Kind of like typing.  And cooking and sewing.  Those all used to be "life skills."

Carol lived with her Grandma on 9th Street (I think).  She was of Indian descent.  She had coal black hair and coal black eyes.  Her eye teeth were prominent and in this day and age an Orthodontist would have been all over her, but back then it was just cool.  Carol never got flustered.  She never hurried.  She never got flustered when boys looked her way.  She was just so damn cool!  She did not smoke and I never lit up near her.

She never walked fast.  Her eyes never seemed to leave the ground in front of her wherever she was going.  There was no world outside of her and I.  Looking back I can see that she was an introvert.  She never told me why she lived with her grandma, only that when she graduated she would go back to California.  I wanted to go with her, but she was adamant that I stay in school and graduate and that when I was through with school she would send me a train ticket and I would join her in California.  My life was planned.  I think her dad was in the service out there.

As we grew closer I learned more about her.  She had a boyfriend named Lee and they were to be married when she graduated and moved back to California.  As the day grew closer she became more nervous about the wedding.  One day she decided she should cook me a meal, much like the first meal she would serve to her soon to be new husband.  Life was so simple back then!

I arrived at grandma's house on the appointed day of the "first meal after the wedding day."  The table was set for two.  No grandma in sight.  Come to think of it, I only saw the grandma one time and that was just a fleeting moment.  

I was served my meal.  It quickly became apparent that Carol was not real domesticated in the kitchen department and that poor Lee was going to starve.  I looked at the fare and knew I could not survive on this and it was not going to suffice for a full grown working man.  It was a hot dog along side a spoonful of macaroni and cheese.  I looked at that miserable fare and then at Carol's expectant face.

"Well, what do you think?"  

I wanted to say something nice, but I was way to honest for that.  

"That poor man is going to starve to death!"  So we ate our humble fare amid bouts of laughter.  There was not even a second hot dog and dessert was non-existent.  But Carol was cool and I was sure Lee knew that.

She moved back to California after graduation.  We kept in touch and she sent me pictures of the wedding.  She still planned on buying me a train ticket for my graduation.  We wrote back and forth.  She got pregnant and gave birth to a still born baby boy.  I dropped out of school.  I married and had a daughter.  My dreams of California died easily, but the memory of Carol Mason, not so much.

I still think of her now and then and can picture her in my mind.  She was a loner.  I was probably her closest and maybe only friend.  I never knew why she was here, maybe to be company for grandma.  I don't think she had any brothers or sisters.  Who knows?

I saw her once when my youngest was about two months old.  She came to town probably for her grandma's funeral.  It was awkward since I had a living child and I knew she had lost her only baby.  I never met Lee.  I never went to California.  Probably never will.  Can not think why I would want to go there.  When I think of Carol, she is 18 years old.  I remember her voice as very soft.  She never stood out, she just was.  She was Carol Mason, my friend.

Some memories live forever.  This is one of them.

The potato bug saga.

 It took lo! these many years for me to figure myself out!  Being born into and going up in poverty was not the cause of anything.  It was just the catalyst that propelled me into being the person I am today.  I recall the first nickel I ever made.  I do not remember the man's name, but he lived in a ramshackle house on the corner of the street we walked up to get to "down town."  He had his whole yard planted to potatoes.  The rows were even and ditches clean for water to run down to irrigate his crop.

He was setting on his front porch and wearing the uniform of the day; overalls.  I stopped to look at his potato crop.  It was green and tiny white blossoms topped each plant.  The porch was about 40 feet from where I stood. 

"Whatcha' lookin' at little girl? "

"Just looking at your potatoes.  They sure are pretty."

"Do you want a job?"  

"Sure."

He then came down to where I stood and explained that "potato bugs" were decimating his crop.  (Side note here:  I am sure he did not use the word "decimating"  because I am pretty sure neither he nor I would have used that word, but 70 odd years later it seems to fit.)  He further went on to explain that he would give me a pint jar containing gasoline and I would go through and pick the bugs off and drop them in the jar.  For each jar I filled he would give me a whole nickel.  I ,of course, jumped right on that offer.

The sun was hot as I worked my way down the first row.  The jar took a very long time to show any signs of ever getting full, but I persevered.  I gave no thought of hurrying home because I could only see the reward of the big shiny nickel when the jar was full.  I do not know how many potato bugs I picked that hot afternoon, nor is it important at this late date.  What is important is that about the time I got the jar full my brother showed up.  Momma had sent him to find me.  He went with me to deliver the jar to the man.  He was pleased and gave me my shiny nickel.  I promised I would come the next day to finish the field. 

But when I got home and showed my mother my new nickel, she frowned at me.  "Do you know that old man is not well?  His wife is an invalid.  He has to take care of her.  You march right back over there and give him his money back!  You know better than taking his money."

Mother explained to me that we were put on this earth to help those less fortunate and we were not to do it for rewards except the one reward we  would receive when our time on earth is done.  And I did as I was told.  The old man was dumbfounded when I gave him his nickel and explained that I would come back tomorrow and finish the job.  He took me inside to meet his wife the next day.  She lay almost comatose in a small bed and I do not think she even knew I was there.   I finished the field and never saw the old man again.  I assume he and his wife went to their reward because that is how life works.

The point to this is that any time I come across some one less fortunate then myself, I want to help them.  I do not mean financially, but physically.  I guess that is why I worked so tirelessly during the AIDS epidemic.  That is why I labored for the homeless teenagers.  Not sure they appreciated it, but I knew I was doing the right thing.  Migrant workers hold a place in my heart.  But times have changed and I am becoming one of the vulnerable.  I was going to town up South Road and saw a young woman beside the road with a suitcase and bag containing clothes.  I almost stopped, but I did not.  I know she has a story, but I do not want to be a statistic.  

I do very little charity work any more.  What I do is in a controlled environment and when I finish, I walk away.  My shelf in the closet is where I keep all my treasures and awards.  No one really needs to know where I have been or what I have done.  That is between me and God.

Dreams of being a missionary in Africa were scrapped for the reality of being a wife and mother in Western Kansas.  Visions of opening a mission were traded for the reality sewing sweat bands for migrant workers.  Woulda', coulda', shoulda'.  

My life goes on.

Close enough to perfect for him

 Click here to listen

40 years ago my late husband and I began "living in sin".  He was fresh out of a divorce from his wife of many years which had produced 4 children.  I was fresh out of divorce from my fourth husband.  To say we were both a little "iffy" on whether or not this was a wise move, would be an understatement,  but what the heck.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  And those 4 words seemed to be the basis of the whole relationship.

My son was still in high school and my youngest daughter was in middle school.  His wife had kept the house and he had money in his pocket to make a down payment on this house.  He had an end dump and I was working for a construction company that he worked for.  Lot of strings there but we seemed to have a lot in common.  I was freshly out of my second marriage to my fourth husband so with 5 divorces on my resume', he proposed.  I accepted with one stipulation: We would live together  (in sin) for one year.  If we survived that year, we would make it legal.  

Now, I never thought of him as a romantic, but being a local gravel/demolition hauler, he spent a lot of time listening to the radio as he drove up and down the road.  He came home one night to announce that he had heard the perfect song for us.  "Close Enough to Perfect" by Alabama.   The lyrics were what he heard and thought it fit me to a "t".  I was touched. Kenny was such a simple, black and white person that I could not have found a better song!

"Some times her morning coffee's way to strong.  And everything she says, she says all wrong."                She's always there beside me, as only a friend would be.  She's close enough to perfect for me!                      Sometimes she gets down and starts to cry, but then again the lady has a right.                                            She's all I ever hoped for, she's all I'll ever need.  She's close enough to perfect for me!"

Now, I ask you, could any woman hope for more in a life partner?  All my life I had searched for a man who would be my partner.  A man who would care for me just like I was with all my faults and phobias.  He was the first man I ever met that accepted me just like I was with all my imperfections.  And I could trust him.

So one year after moving in with him on December 23, 1983 when the temperature was -15 degrees. we hopped in "Fugi" and drove to Canon City, got a license, found a retired minister in a high rise senior housing and took our vows.  We stopped at the donut shop and had a donut and returned home to live happily ever after until death us did part.

So, good morning world.  I have been living alone now for almost 20 years.  Am I happy?  I am not unhappy.  Am I lonely?  I am alone, but not lonely.  I manage to get through the days and sleep through the nights.  Do I date?  Not really.  That would entail dressing up and actually leaving the house.  I would like to spend more time with my kids and grandkids, but they are back in Kansas or down in Texas and I have a neurotic cat that hides when anyone comes.

Mother always said memories are better than the actual living, because we can remember things the way we want.  So, from my perfect world, to your perfect world...

Peace!