The Challenger Space Shuttle has exploded.

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the disaster aboard the Challenger.  What were you doing that day?  I remember very clearly, I was cleaning house.  Now I do not remember because I never clean house and this was special, but there are somethings you remember because something else happened to remind you.  On the day JFK was shot, I made cinnamon rolls and cleaned a goose.  So January 28, 1986, I was cleaning house.

Kenneth had left about 8:00 AM to go out to the Eden yard with his cutting torches intent on cutting a railroad tank car in half lengthwise so he could make it into a rock trailer for hauling.  Daughter Debbie had come from town to help me clean house, more for company than actual work.  We got our coffee and then she remarked that the Challenger with the teacher was being launched and she would like to watch that before we fired up the vacuum.  So we set down to watch.

The astronauts filed by and waved to us and I remember feeling a sort of pride that America could do this and school kids all over our nation were watching the teacher lift off and fly into space.  The rocket raising over the cape was a beautiful sight, but then something did not look right.  There was absolute silence on the television and in my front room.  Then Debbie said, "Is it supposed to do that?" and I replied,  "Nah, I don't think so."  It was a life time before the man (Was it Walter Cronkite?) on the telly noted that something appeared to have gone wrong.

Thirty minutes later Kenneth came in the back door.  Of course we were still watching the reruns over and over, hope against hope that we would catch a glimpse of the Challenger emerging in one piece on the other side of the smoke.  Never happened.  Kenneth never went back and cut that tank that day.  He thought that might have been an omen, so he stayed home.  Deb and I rather lost our zest for cleaning house that day, also.

America took a giant step backwards in the space program that day.  Two years would pass before we tried again.  We had been kicked in the pants by a leaky "o" ring.  Ever see one of those?  The ones we used on the truck was about the size of a dime and just a very thin piece of rubber, open in the middle.  Ours cost about 7 cents.  Probably that was the most inexpensive piece on that whole rocket and for want of that tiny item, seven lives were lost.  Seven bright eyed pioneers of the great beyond that we call "space".

Some where in the back of my tiny mind, I am remembering a quotation.  Help me out here if you remember it correctly.  "For want of a horse, the rider was lost.  For want of a rider the country was lost."  Now, I know that is not right.  It may actually be a poem.  Bet my Sammy can come up with it for momma!

But you get the idea.  Another one Momma used to say was, "A stitch in time saves nine."  It all boils down to the same thing.  Make sure when you do it, you do it well and it will hold up for you.  If you do not mend your clothes at the first sign of a tear, you will end up having to do a real repair job on it later.

So there you have it.  Just some short musings of where I was 25 years ago.  How time flies!

What contitutes friendship?

Isn't this picture pretty?  It was taken at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  I was there with over 200 acquaintances.  Imagine not being able to say 200 of my friends.  I once told my mother that I had lots of friends.  My mother, a very wise woman,  told me "If you reach the end of your life and you can count your true friends on the fingers of one hand, consider yourself blessed."

Well, here I am with more road behind me than I see in front and those words echo in my mind.  Mother has been gone for too many years now and I find myself more often thinking like she talked.  So, I got to thinking about how many friends I have actually had and are they still around.  For the first eight years of school I had a very best friend.  Her name was Barbara and I spent one night a week at her house.  Never saw her after grade school.

High school is a blur.  Then I married and moved around a lot so friends were hard to come by.  After the divorce I moved back home to Hutch.  There I became best friends with a waitress named Vi.  She had a daughter the same age as my son.  That one stuck through thick and thin and still exists to this very day.  She is a better friend then I am.  She writes, I read.  She calls, I talk.  I moved to Colorado and she moved to Missouri.  We have both buried our husbands.  I got to go see that girl this spring!

The next lasting friend I made was Frank.  We were in business with him and I liked his honesty and all his family.  He is still in business and lives in this town and I have not seen him for several years, but I still count him as friend.  If I called he would be here in a flash and vice versa.

Then came Renate.  Renate listens when I talk and I listen to her.  She is bluntly honest with me when I am wrong.  She and I use each other as sounding boards. We both work with AIDS clients so we have that to commiserate over; that and attending funerals together.

Then along came Kay, who winters in Texas, but we keep in touch and have breakfast every Wednesday when she is here.  We have in depth conversations and do a lot of gossiping.

So you see there is four friends, each perched on a finger.  I only have room for one more!  You know, either my mother was wrong or I am blessed beyond measure because I have a lot of people that I consider very dear friends.  Back home is Evelyn and Kay, Karen, and my sisters.  Shirley in Kansas City.  Amy in Florida. My dear friend Jade.  And all my Internet friends and that is before I start naming the ones here in Pueblo.   I am not even going to go there because someone will get their feelings hurt.

I have friends who have become lovers and lovers who have become friends.  (I like the latter better.)  I am truly blessed in that I can walk into any place in this town and there is someone I know who is very happy to see me, so I am not alone long.  More often than not their name escapes me, but they don't seem to mind.  This impresses me.  Most people want their name remembered, but my friends do not care.  They love me for who I am, not if I remember their name.

I have few rules that my friends must adhere to and failure to do so gets you off my list of friends and you then become a "this is".  So watch out for that one.  If you are still with me here you are my friend, or my dear friend, or my very dear friend. 

The first rule of friendship is to always be honest.  I gave up lying because I could not keep my stories straight.  So honesty is paramount.  The truth is what it is and should never be altered.  I respect the truth.  Lie even once and we are done.  The omission of a relevant fact is also a lie or at least it is in my book.  You are my friend because I judged you by your words and actions from the first day I met you.  If you neglected to mention that you are a serial killer in your spare time, don't you think I would want to know that?

I am loyal to my friends and I expect loyalty in return.  If you have something bad to say to me, say it to me, not someone else.  We can work out our differences if we know what they are and we face them head on.  Love has to come naturally, but a friendship is worth working to save.

You must respect that I am a Bleeding Heart Liberal.  You do not have to like it when I work with the AIDS clients, or the battered women, or the illegal immigrants, or pile my car with recyclable crap, or stop and give that homeless woman the money in my pocket, or stand nose to nose with a homophobe in the middle of the library and we get thrown out.  You don't have to  like it but you do have to accept it and if my actions embarrass you are free to just walk away.  Just do not attempt stop me or try to correct me.  I am on a roll!  You are free to voice your opinions and I will respect them, but they are yours and part of your conservatism.  It is best we not discuss politics.  LOL

For the most part I try to adhere to the 10 Commandments and so do my friends.  It is nothing we think about, just sort of comes naturally.  So once more I have digressed from the point of this blog entry.  I came on here to decide who to put  on that last finger to fill out my friend list and discovered that I am going to need a lot more fingers!  I love every body and they love me.  It is called making the world go round.  I can not limit my friends, nor would my dear mother expect me to.  So I will just hang on to what I have when the road comes to an end, I will just look back and see who all is still there!

Do we ever forget? I mean completely?

Kansas is a very flat state as you enter from the West.  You can see for miles.  Even a Prairie Dog will catch your eye.  So sometimes the foot tends to get a tad bit heavy on the gas pedal.  I know it does for me, especially when I am driving West and headed for my home in Colorado.  I had spotted these two roadside markers on my way down, so I was watching on my way back. 

The stretch of road between Syracuse and Lakin is as straight as a laser beam.  There are a few rolling hills, but if you have ever driven Kansas, you know just how little those rolls are!  The distance is about 35 miles.  That is why I was a little surprised to spot these and the sad part is, they are just a few yards apart and they are very new.

I could have researched this and found out all the details of who, what, when, where and why, as good reporters do, but I did not.  By being on the side of a highway, they by virtue of the location become public.  The details matter, but are of little relevance in this piece.   They can only serve as a reminder and memorial to the  people who placed them there for that purpose. 

I must confess that as I passed the first one, the blue cross, my foot came off the gas just a little.  The second one, brought it up a little more and by that point I was probably obeying the speed limit.  

I know these little markers can be found all along every highway in this proud land.  As we speed past a little beacon flashes on and makes us aware that some one died on that precise spot.  This has been marked by friends or family of the deceased and thereby committed forever to memory.  Or so it seems.  But years will come and go and the memorials will become faded and then turn to dust.  They will be replaced by newer ones with a different name and date.  That is just the way it goes.

My brother Jake was an enigma.  He was my only brother and I loved him dearly.  After I married and left home we sort of drifted apart, but not really.  I knew he was there.  I knew if I needed him he would be where I was, somehow.  His name was Delbert Leroy, but we never called him that.  We called him Jake.  Mostly Shakey Jake.  He made people laugh, and everyone loved him.  He had a scar that ran  from the bottom of his eye, across his cheek and down and back up.  A horrible looking thing that came from a horse kicking him in the face, but nobody ever noticed it.  He was that kind of guy!

My brother was killed in 1964 at an intersection some where near Inman, Kansas, I think.  Or maybe it was McPherson.  I know he had just gotten off work and he and his friend, John Rogers were heading for home.  Probably they were in a hurry.  Jake had only recently discovered the Lord and I think he was hurrying home to go to church.  He was not driving, but that is not important.  What matters is that there on a very lonely stretch of road, my brother and his friend went through a stop sign and into the side of a loaded gravel truck.  Clearly they were at fault.

Efforts were made to save Jake and he did in fact live long enough for me to get home from Western Kansas.  He wrecked on my daughters first birthday which was also my 4th anniversary.  He died on Halloween. I never went to see that intersection.  I never went to see the pickup or the gravel truck.  The day we buried him the doctors amputated Johnny's leg.  Four days later we buried him.  That was a bad year.

I did not put up a cross, but I have one in my heart.  I thank God every day from October 31, 1964 to this very day that he found Jake before he became a statistic.  I need no marker and hardly ever visit his grave.  He lives in my heart today bigger and stronger than ever before.  I think of Johnny occasionally and am secure that all the markers in the world would not make a difference.  I think he and Jake were talking about how great life was when the conversation ended abruptly.  I do not think either of them seen it coming.

So, when I came to this particular place on Highway 50, I stopped.  I stood for a while and thought about Jake.  And I thought about Johnny.  I can still see Jake in my minds eye.  Johnny has fade, but Jake remains there still 29 years old and still with his lopsided smile.  He will never grow old.  He will never loose his boyish grin.  His eyes will forever twinkle and I will forever think of him along a lonely stretch of road, or up in the mountains, or down by the river, and I will pray for him every time I pray.  I will never cease to thank God for the chance to know this little fellow that slipped through my life and brought me so much joy!



Dedicated to my brother

Delbert Leroy Bartholomew

October 5, 1939-October 31,1964

Follow the yellow brick road................

Sunday is the day I took sister Mary to meet her girls who will take her to her home.After driving for about 3 hours we are now at the beginning of the Yellow Brick Road.  I have this particular picture in a lot of my albums.  I never fail to honk  when I pass it, but usually stop and take a picture with whoever is with me.  All the husbands are framed by this back drop except #1 and #2. Reason for that being I did not even know Colorado existed until the long, legged guitar picker told me it was here.  He tried to lure me, but I just laughed.

 And here we start the last leg of the trip.  Daughter said we would not miss the truck stop; we would see it!  She was right.  Had she said an ant hill, we would have seen that also!  LOL  I lived many years on this flat land.  Kenny used to call me a Flat Lander.  He was so cute.  No matter which way I point the camera it is pretty much the same view.

 You can drive really fast cause there is not a thing to slow you down.  The highway is as straight as a string and goes for miles without the scenery being broken by a house, field of cattle, damn near anything.  Got the cruise control on and just kicked back coasting.  Probably warbling along with Johnny or Charlie or one of my other boys.  The thrill of the  open road!

 Now, here is the favorite part of the drive, the Welcome to Colorado sign which you can not read because I was too far away and going way to fast to focus!  (Little side note here:  I drive a Ford Focus. Do that cause it gets phenomenal gas mileage.) But the sign is up there....trust me. (snicker)

Before I leave this country I do want to put in a plug for the fair state of Kansas.  I lived many years on these flat plains and there is a lot to be said for the view.  You can look in any direction and see for miles.  You know where the river runs, because there are trees there.  In the summer the wheat fields are spectacular.  Oh, and signs of spring on the way down!  The winter wheat is starting to turn the fields green.  I saw at least 5 separate fields with baby calves.

The sunrise is beautiful and lasts for about 45 minutes as does the sunset.  In the evening the shadows start growing very long and if you are a little kid, you know that it is time to head for home or the dark is going to catch you.  In Colorado, the sun just sort of pops up and then in the evening it falls behind the mountains like that ball at Times Square on New Years Eve.  Those are the two things I miss most about Kansas.  Those and the humidity and the black ice.  (Little sarcasm there.)

Oh, but here is the view I most wanted to see!  Coming up the highway headed West, I noticed the sun was starting to set behind the mountains.  Oh, it was spectacular!  Having been in Colorado for over thirty years, I have learned that this was not going to last long.  I stopped beside the road, pulled out my trusty camera and snapped this picture for posterity.  Thirty minutes later I pulled into my drive in total darkness.  I do not get to see many pretty sunsets out here, but I think this one was well worth the wait.

So here I am in my very quiet house.  Sister Mary is home in hers.  I know you girls are reading this, so I want you to know first of all that one of her pill containers (with 7 boxes) is here on the counter.  I have not been down to her room to do the final shake down, although the Daisy dog is waiting for her to come to bed.  There may be more down there. 

What else you need to know, is that we may not have done a lot while she was here, but what we did, we did well!  I enjoyed my visit with your mother, my sister, and we laughed about some of the things of which you know nothing!  We had a life before all you little kids cropped up and both of us still remember that time.  Some memories never fade.  So enjoy my sister while you can and remember,  we are all traveling the same road and headed the same place.  North, South, East or West.  I still think, Heaven is best.

Aunt Lou

Sister Mary at the half way point on the journey home!

Well, here goes Mary with her two daughters!  She has more than this, but the other one is in North Carolina.  She also has a son, but he is home in Hutch.  This is Tina on the left and Dorothy on the right.  Mary is in the middle. 

 I do think she is most happy to be going home, although I did tell her I will not be there to cook and she could very well starve to death.  At least she will not have the chicken and home made noodles, Black Walnut Ice Cream, home made cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip cookies and that stuff.  When she started crying, I told her I was teasing!  I am a good sister!

 Now here we are in front of the Truck Plaza outside Garden City, Kansas.  Left to right is Tina, Mary, Me , and Dorothy.  Let me digress here for just a moment.  We tend to get a name in this family and then wear it completely out using it.  Tina is named after mother and Mary.  Dorothy is named after Mary's mother in law, but we also have a sister Dorothy.  I had a sister in law Dorothy.  I have a daughter Dona, a sister Donna, and a sister in law Dona.  You get the picture?

Oh, speaking of Dona, here is my daughter Patty on the left and Dona on the right.  Behind Patty is her daughter (my grand daughter) September, who was born in November.

So here you have pictures from the mini reunion at the Truck Plaza.  Mary should be waking up in her little house this morning.  She is gonna miss me, but such is life.  We had a very good time while she was here.  The girls asked what we did and we said, "Nothing!"  I do, however think we did something.  I know we went to Beulah which Mary likes to do.  We had lunch at the airport with Tim a couple times.  Lyn brought a grand baby by a couple times for us to play with.  It snowed and Mary slipped and kind of busted her butt.  I hit her in the head with the car door.  We went to church.  Had company several times for supper  or dessert.  We went out to eat.  Yeah, I think nothing may have been an inadequate answer!

So here I set all alone with no Mary.  Guess I will put my new to me Charlie Pride on the turntable and hop on the tread mill and go for a little walk before I have to do the chores.  Tomorrow I am going to take you on the drive to Garden City and back.  You will love those miles and miles of flat country!  Gonna do it anyway!

Miss you, sister Mary!  Remember if you get hungry, lonely or just need a change of scenery, I am still here in Colorado and if I keep up the house payments I will still have your bed!   Good Night, John Boy!  Good night, Mary Belle!  (click)

I have a place for you to go!  Have fun there.          My really big store!

50 years ago or was it yesterday?

Yesterday  marked the 50 year anniversary of John Fitzgerald Kennedy being inaugurated as the 35th president of our fair land.  The newscaster noted that only 30% of the people alive today would remember that event.  I am among the chosen few!  I realize this dates me, but oh, well.  Facts are facts.

I remember so clearly that period of time.  It was amazing that a Roman Catholic of Irish descent was elected to the highest office of the land.  If I recall, he is the only Roman Catholic to ever hold the Presidency.  Correct me if I am wrong.

He was the most drop dead gorgeous thing and his wife was beautiful and every inch a lady.  Caroline was cute as a button and rode a horse named Macaroni.  As I recall, son John was born after the election and prior to the inauguration.  "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!"  " The torch is passed to a new generation."  "Tear down this wall!"  "I am a Berliner!"  Every word the man uttered was carved in stone!

He was a family man all the way and every day.  I stood with millions of other young women with our noses pressed to the window watching the whirling couples dip and sway in a land called Camelot.  We all knew what and where Camelot was because John and Jackie taught us.  We learned about touch football from the Kennedy's on vacation in Hyannis Port.   From 1959 to 1963 we dreamed a dream and we loved our government!

We loved our government and tried to be good people.  We could envision a future for our children that had not been dreamed of before JFK threw down the gauntlet and his beautiful wife cheered him on to victory.  In that short period of time, I married and had two children.  I prayed as John and Jackie stood vigil over the crib of their premature son in 1963 and wept as they buried the tiny coffin. 

And I stood with my second child in my arms as I watched the motorcade wind through the streets of Dallas.  I watched as Jackie in her pink dress splattered with blood tried to help her fallen hero.  I flinched as Jack Ruby fired a point blank shot into the stomach of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who had taken our dream away.

It was a magical time.  It was a time of hope and aspirations that had never been seen before and will never be seen again.  Who knows what the future would have been for this man with the funny accent and his perfect family, so clouded with tragedy and triumph?  I do not know.  What I do know is I am so blessed that I am part of this 30%.  It is a period of my life that gave me hope to make it to this point in my life.

I look at our government now and I look at how little respect we have for our chosen officials.  Fresh after the mess in Tuscon I look back at how we treat our heroes.  One person, whether it be Lee Harvey Oswald,  James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, or the guy in Tuscon, can wreak so much havoc and destroy so many dreams.  I do not know the solution, well I do, but no one wants to hear it.  It is in a song that goes like this...."What the world needs now, is love, sweet love!  That's the only thing we have too little of." 

That is all I know.  The Camelot years are gone, but not forgotten by 30% of the nation today.   I only hope I never forget the euphoria that gripped our nation at that time!  I hope I never quit clinging to the dream of a better life and time.  I do not want to ever give up the optimism that I cultivated at that time.  Camelot will always live in this woman's mind!

Martin Luther King Jr. day.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  There will be no mail.  Banks are probably closed.  School is out.  But how many of you reading this know or care what went on in connection with Martin Luther King Jr.    I  do. Do I remember the dates?  No, I do not.  Do I remember specific incidents?  No I do not.  I remember in generalities.  Selma, as a fleeting memory.  The 3 civil rights workers that were murdered and buried in a dam or something.  As an injustice.  The integration of Little Rock, Arkansas as something I was glad was not happening here.  Man's inhumanity to man was at that point in history at the pinnacle of injustice, hatred, and every vile word that comes to the front of my mind.

I remember being incensed, but I do not recall feeling empathy.  They were, after all,  only niggers.  They had been born as niggers and they still were, only now they were different.  I remember thinking, somewhere in the recesses of my mind that these people (?) could have feelings.  For many, many years, I had been aware of their existence, but they were not a part of my life.  I did not interact with them at all, because there were none in my small town.  But now here they were, angry and wanting civil rights.  What was civil rights?  Hell, I had no idea, nor did I care.  I just knew that black people were acting up and it was affecting the whole world.  My world.

Then at some point in time I had a thought.  What if that were me?  What if I was black?  Would my friends spit on me?  Sure they would.  Could I go to school?  No I could not.  I watched the kids going to Little Rock and wondered why they were doing that.  I watched the white kids throwing rocks and bottles at them.  I could not understand that either.  I listened to Martin Luther King Jr. speeches and they made sense to me.  I was not raised in a racist home.  Mom and dad were more concerned with putting food on the table then who went to school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

I remember.  I remember the White Only signs in restaurants and on bathroom doors.  I remember Medgar Evers, the Black Panthers, Rosa Parks and I tremble with shame and rage at the whole thing.  We, proud citizens of the United States of America, brought black people to the shores of this great country in chains and yokes and forced them to labor in the hot sun in fields and kitchens of the aristocrats.  They were niggers.  They were not allowed to marry, they were sold and families broken and shattered.  What were we thinking?  What justification did our forefathers offer as a reason for this?  We killed a man who tried to set them free.

For years they suffered in silence and then came another saviour.  John Kennedy strove for civil rights and we killed him. Martin Luther King Jr.  He did it.  He freed them.  And again we killed him.  Our answer to everything is to kill some body.  We now have Civil Rights laws in place and the second class citizens that suffered so many years are treated as equal.  Not separate but equal, as once was proposed.  This is a lot like don't ask don't tell.  Who will we kill when that one is repealed?

I am not a very smart woman, but I do know right from wrong.  We have done lots of things in this country to make me scratch my head and wonder, but you know what?  Back in that era there was a lot of hate.  Two sides and both thinking that their side was right.  Emotions ran high.  But it all worked out.  I am a quilt maker.  Sometimes a piece does not want to go in where it is supposed to and I have found if I tug a little here and a little more there, pretty soon it is in there right where it goes and it looks very good.  Same thing happened in the civil rights movement.  I watch Oprah.  I saw some of the white kids who were there in Little Rock and some of the black kids.  It is many years later and they have come to terms and faced their demons. 

That is what life is all about.  Just like the first time they flipped the switch and a light came on.  Bet that scared hell out of some one.  I think humans by very nature of being human want to do what is right.  We just have a hard time figuring out what right is, but when we get the big picture we are the best in the world at enforcing it.  Lincoln did not die in vain.  Nor did JFK, or Martin Luther King Jr.  We have come full circle, but there are more circles ahead of us. 

My favorite quote of Martin Luther King Jr. is not from the I Have a Dream Speech, but this one:

"In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."    Martin Luther King Jr.