Racoons are for petting, or eating depending upon your need at the time!

Well, Raccoons are not really for petting, but I just thought I would say that!  Those suckers have some very sharp teeth and can pretty much take care of themselves.  I am remembering back to 1962 when Earl and I were living in Glasco, Kansas in a farm house on the edge of town.  Debbie was a very tiny baby and Patty was conceived but not hatched yet.
 
We were itinerant tree trimmers which meant we moved into an area and trimmed trees until the work ran out and then we moved to the next town.  That was easier than actually building a business and establishing a home.  Most tree trimmers at that time were known as "fly by night", but not us.  The fly by night guys would come into a town for a few days and do a couple high dollar jobs and then move on to the next likely looking place.  We actually had an address and lived in the community.  Well, for 30 days or whenever the rent came due anyway.  But back to the story.

Glasco is straight up US 81 out of Hutchinson, close to Concordia and about 60 miles from Nebraska.  I looked that up on the Atlas, so I know that is right.  I do not know how long we lived there, but some of my memories are pretty vivid.  One of our workers killed a rattlesnake on the back porch right by the door.  It was night and had I opened the door he would have been inside.  Never knew snakes traveled at night, but very glad it was Pete that found him and not me!

The compound consisted of Earl, Debbie and me.  Earl's brother Larry, his wife and daughter.  Two more brother's, Delvin and Virgil.  And lastly Pete somebody and his wife whose name I forget and a couple of thier kids.  I have no idea where we all slept, but as I recall there were a couple mobile homes or campers involved.  And dogs!  Actually they were " 'Coon dogs".  The guys had struck up a friendship with a couple in another town who raised and hunted with them.  Ah!  The thrill of the hunt!

For those of you who have never been exposed to that element of life, you are in for a surprise!  Any extra money we came across was spent to buy the best dogs that Bill and Dorothy had to offer.  There were a couple Black and Tans,  a couple Blue ticks, a  Redbone and a Blood hound.  It was Virgil's job to care for the dogs and it was a full time job.  Ah, but night was hunting time.

Once they brought home enough honey to sink a battle ship.  Every deal with raw honey?  Now there is a blog unto itself.  It had to be heated very slowly and then strained into containers of which we had none and then given away because one human can only hold so much honey!  Fortuneately there were grapes on the river about that time so of course making wine was also on the agenda.  That was set in the cellar which was located in the yard in the vicinity of the back door.  We were not allowed to go down there, but being the free spirit's we were, I gathered up the sisters in law and we ventured into the forbidden territory.  We tasted the fruits of the boys labor and pronounced them "horrible."

That night we could not find my little dog.  We searched every where and had given up the doggie as lost when Earl decided to check on the wine process.  Lo and behold!  The little doggie was in the cellar.  I am not sure I ever convinced that man that my dog had actually managed to get himself into the cellar, but you must remember my first husband drank a lot and as such had a kind of flawed reasoning.  (That was back in the days when I was not above lying to save my ass!)

Back to the eating of the Racoon.  As with all "hunter-gatherers" since the beginning of time, a racoon was finally captured and brought back to the "cave".  As head woman it was my job to prepare the feast.  Oh, my God!  The sight of the Racoon with no fur and no head, feet and a gaping abdomen was more than I could bear!  I put it in a pan on it's back with it's feet pointing upward, poured is some water, added salt and pepper and shoved it in the oven.  Earl checked it several times and finally pronounced it "ready."  There was no way I could have eaten a bite of that if my life depended on it and at that time it did.   I can still close my eyes and picture that.  I know in parts of the world and this country Racoon is eaten, but not the way I fixed it, I am sure.  I equate all wild animals the same as my kitty cat.

I do, however have good memories of Glasco.  It was a little town and I bought 2 chickens at the feed store and butchered them.  They cost a whole dollar for 2 of them.  Old hens, so they were turned into noodles.

The guys went down on the river and cut down a big Walnut tree and sold it to a buyer for $98 which was a whole lot of money at that time.  We were going to do that for a living, but that was stealing and we were afraid we would get caught.  Fear stopped a lot of our ideas.

Pete caught a fish that was very long, had a snout, and he had never seen one before like it so he beat it to death.  Later we learned it was a Gar.  Live and learn.

In my little mind, I was happy in Glasco.  In my little mind I have been happy most of my life.  Sadly the happiness did not always coincide with the time I was living through it, but that is alright.  My mother always had sayings for me.

"Hind sight is 20/20 looking back."

 "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  

And my favorite "Time is the greatest healer."

My life is good.  God Bless!

I hope I do not get deported!

123 years ago a man named Johann Jakob Haas and his second wife, Maria Dorathea (Schrade) landed at Ellis Island Immigration Center.  They came from Dettingen Wrtt, Germany.  Those 2 people were my  great grandfather and step great grandmother. He had 9 children with this second wife.  This was called his second family.

 (Great grandfather had been married before and fathered 7 children with his first wife, Elizabeth Beck.  My grandfather was in his first family.)

At the time I was born, Jakob and Maria had been in the United States of America 47 years.  I guess that makes me a third generation immigrant!  Not sure how that works, but it seems my kids would then be fourth generation immigrants.

How sad it is that I woke up this morning with this on my mind.  And that my second thought was that I am a child of white privilege was even sadder.  My grand children are a mix of races.  I have one black,  2 Indians, one mexican and then then token white boy.  The great grandkids are a hodge podge and we no longer see color at my house.

I know that our government is "cracking down on the illegals" and this breaks my heart.  To see a mother torn from her children and sent back to Mexico because a paper is not in her possession that gives her the rights I have makes me sick.  She raised her kids by working and spending her money in the local market place.  Her kids went to the local school not just for a day or two, but for years.  Years.  She wanted to be here or she would have gone back to Mexico a long time ago.

Does anyone except me remember when the government cracked down on the illegals because they were taking work from the local people by working in the fields?  Seems the migrant farm workers did not come and the crops rotted in the fields because that was work our local people who were legal did not want to do.  Hot out there in the broiling sun .

Our government has never made it easy to get citizenship and it has never been cheap.  Lawyers and paperswork and courts do not make it conducive for people who work very cheap to afford the help they need.  So punish them.  I was born into my citizenship, but many were not.

I know of one man who is 3 semesters short of getting his degree in business management.  He has worked hard to pay tuition and buy books by working in the fields, but he is not a citizen.  He will be sent back to Mexico under the current regieme.  His father was granted his citizenship, but has not received the final paper.  It is lost out there somewhere, so all he has done has been in vain.

Somewhere along the rocky road to today, this freedom train went off the tracks.  The government is fighting the Indians because the pipeline wants to go across thier land and water and do we remember who was here first?  Hell no we don't!  We took thier land.  Then we decided we didn't want them to be there and we took that land and gave them different land and now we change our minds again!  I bet the Indians are wondering why they invited us to that first Thanksgiving!

It would be nice to build a big rocket ship and put all the elitist ignoramuses on it and ship them to the moon and leave us peace loving people here to drink out of the same water faucets and play on the same beaches.  Remember the hippies?  Remember the love generation?  Remember the Viet Nam war?  Remember Stonewall? We are afraid of immigrants.  They might do us harm.  Remember Timothy McVey?  American born.  Remember Columbine?  American born!  Where is our rationale?

It is going to be a long day.  I wish I had a bright spot to give you, but this morning I do not.  This morning my heart is bleeding for my America.  The one we had before someone decided to make it great again.

Oh where have you gone, Martha Knoblock?

The older I get the more I remember when I was young and foolish, but mostly young and taken care of by some one other than myself.  I remember my classmates so clearly.  Now let me go on record right here as saying, I have my memories and thiers may be entirely different.  Like Martha Knobloch.  She played the piano and I recall her piano recital.  She lived near us, but up on the highway closer to the sand pit.  Her mother set up a recital in her home and several of us kids were there.  It seems like maybe only 4 or 5.  We set on a couch,  all us little girls in a row with our feet straight out in front of us.  I am sure her mom made some sort of refreshments, probably to entice us into setting still!  I recall being very proud that I knew someone who could play the piano.  I bragged about that for years, and look here, I still am!
Irene Reinke,  Beth McGonigle and Nancy Cuthbertson grew up to be cheerleaders.   They were the cool kids.  David Sjoberg,  Owen Lentz and  Gary Battey were the smart ones.  Kenny Fenton,  Jim Redford, and Larry Collee were the jocks.  Oh, and David Sjoberg was also a jock.  A smart jock, if you can imagine that.   Earl Kelley, Loren McQueen, Jay Moore, Joyce Pedersen, Barbara Hawk, Sherry Stires, Joan Moore, Eleanor Kirkpatrick, Eveline Piper, Barbara Massey, and Martha Knobloch.  I am drawing a blank on the rest of them.  I am sure when I hang up the blog, I will remember the rest of them.  But this was the core group.  Others came and went, but these were the ones I went to school with for 8 years and then into high school. 
I was not a very good girl in high school, so I lost track of them. The bus brought in kids from Hutch and the outlying areas and I just went to hell in a handcart mostly.  All through grade school Barbara had been my very best friend.  Mother cleaned house for them and I spent lots of nights at her house.  Remember the sleeping arrangements at my house made it impossible to squeeze in another kid.  She had her own room!  It had a bed in an alcove and a settee, a fireplace, a chair with a lamp to see by, a desk and everything I could ever dream of for comfort.  And her mother kept ice cream in the freezer and her day would make us a sundae with a cherry on top!  Her dad was the local dentist, so they had lots of money. She had a brother named Bert who always called me "mudpie" because making mudpies was always a pastime in my world.  One thing we always had was dirt and water.  Had I made bricks instead of pies I could have built a house.
I remember 3rd grade when hygiene became important.  The teacher's name was Miss Holmes.  The first thing every morning she would ask, "Did you brush your teeth this morning?"  We had to hold up our hand as a yes answer.  "Did you comb your hair?"  Another yes was expected.  "Did you wash your face?"  Yes.  Then she would walk around and physically inspect our hands to be sure they were clean.  I rarely passed.  I had answered yes to all the above questions, but only because everyone else did.  I am not sure I even owned a toothbrush back in those days.  I never had a cavity in my life until I married my first husband.  He gave me the cavity germ along with the nest full of babies! 
One of the really nice things about school was the bathrooms.  I never knew why they were called that because there was no where to take a bath, but they were nice.  All that tile and running water was more then I could ever dream for at home.  And hot water came out of the faucet!  In the 4th grade I went into the  bathroom one time at the same time as Beth McGonigle.  She had a popcorn ball tired up in a scarf.  It was uneventful until a few minutes later when Mrs. Howe grabbed me by the ear and took me to the office.  There the story was told by Beth that I had grabbed her popcorn ball and thrown it in the toilet!  I had not even touched her damn popcorn ball, but that was the story.  Mother had to come to school and hear what an evil child I was.  On the report card every nine weeks there was an area for teacher comments.  "Louella is mean to her classmates".  "Louella teases the other kids."  "Louella does not play well with others".  That continued until the last 9 weeks when there was no comment written because Mrs. Howe had been taken to hospital because she had a thorn in her lower intestine and needed surgery.  It was iffy whether she would make it or not.  Talk about Karma! 
In 5th grade I had Miss Swenson.  I loved that woman.  She found potential in me and entered one of my poems to a magazine and it was accepted.  Had I stayed in 5th grade forever, my life would have been so different.  But life went on and I am here today to tell you that Karma is good.  Well, Karma is good unless it is bad.  I like to stay on the good side of that bitch!  
I wonder where all the kids have gone.  I wonder if they had good lives.  One of the kids that wandered through my world in the 4th grade was a girl named Mavis Reed.  She had a brother named Jerry.  They lived outside of town and sometimes I would ride the bus to her house and then her brother would take me home on the handlebars of his bike.  Wonder what ever became of them?  Wonder why I thought of that?
Well, the world of church, geese, dog food, and all that calls to me, so I am out of here.  Just in case someone whose name of have mentioned above reads this, I would like to know.  Or if you know what became of the kids in the class of 1959 in Nickerson, Kansas, give me a shout out.  email is loumercer3@aol.com  Just copy and paste in your browser.  I try every day to be a better person just to make up for whatever I did back then.  I keep searching because if we do not learn from our history, we tend to repeat out mistakes and it is the same in the growing up world of skinny little girls!