No Training Wheels

Last evening about suppertime, the phone rang. When I answered, I heard Boston's voice. "Hi Grandma. Are you at your computer?" When I told her that I could be in a minute, she told me to check my email. "We sent you pictures."

As soon as I found my email, she said, "Look, Grandma. Daddy took the training wheels off my bike and I can ride. All the way to the end of the block. And back."

I told her how proud of her I was. What a milestone for a little girl. I think that most of us can remember the day the training wheels came off. I know that I can. And the look of pride on her face is wonderful. And she should be proud of herself and her accomplishment. Way to go, Boston. This one's for you.

Maddie, your day is coming soon. I'll be waiting for your phone call.

http://www.4shared.com/file/42407219/272aba82/No_Training_Wheels.html

Love, Grandma

Easter Bunny

My grandchildren are lucky enough to have a set of grandparents who know the Easter Bunny personally. The went to see this rather large rabbit with their Mom and Dad and Staci's parents. The looks on the faces and the sparkle in the eyes of children young enough to still Believe is priceless.

This picture of Boston and Maddie coloring their Easter Eggs brought back memories of my own childhood. We didn't do the egg hunt thing, but we always colored eggs for the holiday. It was a great production of boiling eggs and of cups in a row on the kitchen table to hold the dye. I don't know what the coloring kits are like now, but ours had different colored tablets that looked like Sweet Tart candy. These were dissolved in hot water and vinegar, the vinegar being the catalyst that adhered the dye to the egg. There were wax pencils to draw a design on the egg, and when dyed, the design remained white. This was probably pretty primitive compared to what the grandkids did.

And there was always an Easter Basket full of goodies for us on Easter morning before we went to church. The chocolate bunnies were my favorite. Although we were supposed to leave the candy alone until after Easter dinner, the bunnies seemed to lose their ears before we left for Easter Services. Dad would tease us about the deaf bunnies in our baskets.

It is nice to see traditions carried on by the youngest generation.

http://www.4shared.com/file/42341850/fae38b50/29_mar_2008.html

New Rain Boots

Sometimes a picture comes my way that just makes me smile. This is one of them.

http://www.4shared.com/file/42239743/cd658bcc/28_mar_2008.html

Day by Day

When I first started making digital scrapbook pages, I looked through all of my collected photos, searching for those of special events, of old photos of family...those photos that held a specific memory for me of days gone by. I looked for photos that reminded me of places I had been and things that I had done, or relatives from my past. It is good to have a keepsake to help remember these events and people.

But then, as I looked at other photos in my collection, I found that there were many that I had of kids and grandkids that showed them just living day by day. I didn't necessarily have to have been there to take the photos. I enjoyed seeing what they do when I am not there. I think this is why I so love to find photos in my Email. They make me feel a part of my family, even though we are not always together.

David and Staci brought Jacob to see me at my workplace yesterday. It was near the end of my work day, and I was able to spend some time holding Jacob, and showing him off to my boss and friend, Starla. We called Poppa, and he came down to the shop to get in on the holding and showing off thing. What a lovely way to end a particularly hard day at work.

While they were there, I asked if Boston and Maddie still considered Jacob their personal play toy. David had told me earlier that the girls acted like he and Staci had brought them a living dolly to play with. Staci said that Maddie still wanted to play with him allot, but Boston, being the older of the two, was now more into "helping." She has gotten good at feeding him, and Staci said that this does help when she is busy doing other things. I had already made this page showing Boston feeding Jacob, and that bit of information added to my enjoyment of this photo.

I was not present when these photos of Jacob and his Dad were taken. But it gives me all sorts of warm fuzzy feelings to see photos of my adult children with their children. Makes me believe that in a world of chaos and troubling headlines, there are still pockets of peace and calm, where a Dad can take a nap on the couch with his baby son.

http://www.4shared.com/file/42012687/87761f84/26_mar_2008.html

Photos In My Mailbox

We all lead such busy lives these days. We don't get together as a family very often. Once in a while I gripe because I don't see my grandkids as often as I would like. Everyone is so busy. But I am just as guilty as everyone else.

Spring has sprung. At least that's the theory. I seriously doubted it as I gazed out my window on Easter to watch the snowflakes falling. But the calendar says it is Spring, so I guess that it must be so. The arrival of spring turns the dog grooming shop where I work into a madhouse. Everybody wants their pets washed, fluffed and buffed to get rid of the winter's grunge. So the hours that I would like to spend on digital scrapbooking are spent on getting customer's pets pretty for Spring. That's my excuse for so many days between entries on my blog, and I am sticking to it.

I understand that it is hard to make time for visiting. There are little things that interfere, like working to pay the mortgage, grandkids involved in activities, and just the daily chore of living in our fast-paced world. So I am happy when photos arrive in my Email Mailbox. I get to see what the kids and grandkids have been doing in their busy lives. I love this computer thing. There was a time when I had to wait several days for photos to arrive in the mail. I would watch for the postman to deliver the day's mail, and try not to be disappointed when the pictures weren't there yet. Now I get a phone call telling me to check my Email, and sure enough...instant gratification. Photos!

These photos were sent to me a week or so ago by David. I just this morning finished scrapping the last one. Every now and then I will sit at the computer and scroll through the pages I have made, just enjoying seeing in each one the faces of those I love best. It isn't quite as good as hugging and kissing those faces, but it will do.

http://www.4shared.com/file/41962217/f57a9b54/25_mar_2008.html

509 West 14th Street

I have no idea why I remember the address of this house. These days I sometimes have to stop and think about my own address or phone number. We lived at this address for a couple of years before moving to the farm. I went to third and fourth grades at Garfield Elementary on the west side of Willmar, and started fifth grade at Sunnyside, so that is the time frame of living in this house.

As Libby and I became older, we outgrew the little apartment on the east side of Willmar. Dad rented this house on the west end. I remember that the siding was a light green color, and that it was absolutely bare of shrubs. Mom and Dad planted some shrubs and flowers in front, and put up some chicken wire on one end of the little front porch that held a climbing vine of some sort. Then they planted a little garden out back of the house. They had a way of making any house seem more homey.

It was while living here that Mom and Dad became friends with Bill and Marie Welker who lived directly across the street. They would remain friends for the rest of their lives, staying in touch even after Mom and Dad moved north. Bill and Marie had three girls, two of whom were near the ages of Libby and me. Two houses down lived Elmer and Olive Butler, who also continued their friendship with Mom and Dad for many years. Their daughter Diane was a playmate of mine. Elmer was a carpenter by trade, and had built a small playhouse in their backyard for Diane. She and I spent many hours playing there.

This was a time when kids could roam their neighborhood without needing their parents in attendance at all times. There were many children in this neighborhood, and we all got together in the evenings and played Hide and Seek, Hopscotch and other children's games. It was more exciting because we could play after dark without the fears that we have today about our children being outside without adult supervision. We all knew when it was time to go home because Larry Carlson's mother, Lucille, would call him to come home first, from their house at the end of the block. Lucille was a cousin of Ronnie Lindblad's. She had a happy disposition and a voice that could call in hogs from the next county over. There was no mistaking when it was time to go home.

Halloween was an especially fun time while we lived in the little green house. The neighborhood kids all dressed up in old clothes of their parents. Nobody had store-bought costumes. We usually carried a pillowcase for our Treats. And away we kids would go throughout the neighborhood, ranging two or three blocks in any direction from our house. We went Trick or Treating until Larry's mother called, and no matter how far away we were, we always heard her and headed for home. We were usually a little bit sick upon arriving home from sampling the goodies from our bags, but I remember how much fun it all was.

http://www.4shared.com/file/41029072/d5406c3a/17_mar_2008.html

School was a five-block walk away, and the neighbor kids walked every day unless the weather was really bad. I remember that there was an old house about halfway to school. It hadn't seen a coat of paint for years, and the yard was overgrown as were the trees and shrubs, making it look spooky. We made up all sorts of stories about who might live there, like a witch that would steal children, ala Hansel and Gretel, or a crazy ax-murderer, or some other horrifying individual. Most of our stories ran to the haunted house theory, with a range of ghosts, goblins and vampires residing there. Truth be known, I never saw anyone there, and would guess that the house was merely abandoned. But it was fodder for fertile imaginations, and I know that we always ran past it so as not to get caught by whatever ghoul we were thinking lived there at any given time.

It was during this time that I learned to ice skate. Each winter an area at Garfield School was flooded to form a skating rink. I spent many Saturday afternoons at that rink, pretending to be a great figure skater. In reality, I never was able to master skating backwards or doing spins, but I thoroughly enjoyed the activity all the same.

Mom used to tell this story on Dad. It seems that Dad had feet that were at least two sizes smaller than Mom's. He wore a size 5-1/2 shoe, and had to shop in the Boy's Department to find shoes to fit. So he liked to tease Mom now and then about the size of her feet. He also liked to clown around for the amusement of his children once in a while. On this particular evening, he was teasing Mom about her feet. He rolled up his pant legs to just above his knees, put on a pair of Mom's dress shoes, and proceeded to dance the Charleston in the living room, with her larger shoes dangling whenever he did a kick step. Now, this living room had a large picture window facing the street. And facing the Welker's house across the street. Dad had neglected to close the drapes before giving us this impromptu dance recital, and Bill and Marie were witnesses to it. Of course, they could not resist teasing Dad about his dancing abilities, and Mom didn't let him forget about it for quite some time. She said it served him right for teasing her.

I realize that my life at this time sounds like something out of a TV series - "Leave it to Beaver" or "Ozzie and Harriet." And I guess that it probably was similar. There were no "play dates." Mom's just told their kids to go outside and play. Most Mom's were home all day, and kids were watched by the Mom in whose yard they were playing. We knew that if something bad happened, we could go to the nearest neighbor and find help. Today I live in a secure building and am glad for it. I never visit my neighbors. Nor do they visit me. Rarely do I venture outside after dark unless it is to take the dogs out. I find these facts of life rather sad and totally alien to the way I was raised. So I am glad that I have my memories of a gentler time.

First Home in Willmar

http://www.4shared.com/file/40950685/86615002/16_mar_2008.html

Pictures of houses that I lived in as a child bring back memories. This is the first house my family lived in when we moved to Willmar. To tell of it, I need to go back a few years before.

Mom lived in Blackduck all of her life, and Dad lived on a farm out the Scenic Highway from Blackduck all of his life. When they married in 1945, they rented a little house in Blackduck. But they found that jobs for Dad were scarce, and those that were available didn't pay enough for them to raise their family, so the decision was made to move to St. Paul where job opportunities would be better, and stay with Grandma Paul while Dad looked for work.

Dad found a job working on an assembly line at a factory called Seegers, where refrigerators were made. He hated it. He was a country boy, and although he was never afraid of hard work, he just didn't like living in the city and working in a factory. So he kept at it, but looked for jobs somewhere else where he could raise his family in a smaller town. In 1951, after Libby was born, he found an ad in the Sunday newspaper for a job working for the State of Minnesota taking samples of grain in Willmar.

Now, this was at a time when men wore suits much more often than now. Men wore suits to church, to go to a restaurant or to the movies, and especially when they went to interview for a job. So after consulting a map to find out where Willmar was, Dad set off wearing his best suit, to apply for the job. He thought that perhaps the job was in a lab of some sort, testing grain for whatever they tested for. He was wrong.

After applying for the job, he was put to work immediately. He found himself in the railroad yard at Willmar, climbing into boxcars, wearing his suit pants and starched white shirt. He carried a brass probe that was about 6 ft. long. The probe was made of two brass pipes about 4 inches in diameter, one inside the other. Both had holes on the sides that, when the ball knob at the top of the probe was turned, would line up and allow grain to pour into the inside pipe. The knob was then turned again, trapping a sample of the grain inside the center pipe. He pushed the probe down into the grain and took several samples in each boxcar, and the samples of grain were emptied into a long cloth sack that was then sent off to be tested. Upon arriving back in St. Paul that evening, he first told Mom that they were moving to Willmar. The second thing he did was to go out and buy a couple of pairs of bib overalls. He would work this job until he retired 25 years later.

Dad worked with Lowell Ekbom, who was to become Dad's best friend. At that time, Lowell and his wife Ellie ran a small neighborhood grocery store located in an older house on the east end of Willmar. They lived above their store. Lowell told Dad about an apartment for rent in the same block as their store. It was the upper floor of a house owned by a rather large, homely Swedish lady that I knew as Mrs. Larson. She had a heart of pure gold. She helped Mom and Dad furnish the little apartment and was lenient on the rent until Dad was back on his feet.

The apartment had a small living room located at the front of the house, facing the street. There were two small bedrooms, a tiny bathroom and a kitchen. The kitchen was at the rear of the house, and was accessed from the outside by a wooden staircase. I still remember the white painted table and chairs in the kitchen, and mittens drying on the radiator just inside the door.

There was a little girl just my age living in the house next door. Her name was Annie, and we were best of friends. A large hedge separated the two houses. It was not a hedge that was kept trimmed, but one that had branches hanging down, and when the leaves came out in the spring, it made a wonderful place for two little girls to play. We played house, using the branches as the walls of our house. We also played "Indians." Most kids at that time played "Cowboys and Indians." Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey were popular then. The neighbor boys weren't allowed in our make-believe tee-pee under the hedge, and if you played "Cowboys and Indians," you had to shoot people when the Indians attacked the cowboys, and we didn't want to shoot anybody, so we played "Indians." We spent some time feeling sorry for ourselves, as we both had baby sisters who took our parents attention away from us, but mostly we just had fun together. We learned to ride bikes at the same time, and when the training wheels came off, we explored our end of town. I lost touch with Annie when our family moved way across town.

We didn't have a television then. I had seen television. Grandma Paul had one. But we had a marvelous big console radio in the living room. It was a piece of furniture that was about table top high and maybe 2-1/2 feet wide. The radio part was in the top third of the console, and had a dial that lit up and lots of knobs for tuning in stations from all over the country. The speakers were built into the bottom two-thirds. We listened to the radio in the evenings. We heard music from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, and listened to serial stories like "Fibber McGee and Molly." This was a comedy that had a running gag. In each episode, McGee would open his closet door, and everything that was crammed into it would come tumbling out, with appropriate sound effects that seemed to go on forever. Music to a kid's ears. Dad loved cowboy music - Gene Autrey, Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams, and Mom liked the crooners - Frank Sinatra, Frankie Laine and Bing Crosby. I liked the stories. There were detective stories like "Dragnet," and "Johnny Dollar," and the westerns, "Gunsmoke," and "Roy Rogers." We listened to the comedy of George Burns & Gracie Allen and Jack Benny. The first major news event I remember listening to was the election of Dwight Eisenhower as President. Recently I found on the Internet a website where I can listen to radio from the 40's and 50's. It is fun to listen and remember while working on my computer.

One winter while we were living in the apartment, I remember a snowstorm that roared through Willmar. I don't think it was a major blizzard, but it dumped quite a bit of snow and then the winds blew it into big drifts. After the snow stopped and the wind died down, Dad and I bundled up and headed the block down the street to Lowell and Ellie's store for some badly needed supplies. The wind had piled snow in some places so high that a couple of cars were completely covered. Dad let me walk over the drifts right on top of the cars. When we got home, we took Libby out to play with us in the snow. She was just a toddler then, and she managed to toddle right off the edge of the porch. She disappeared from sight in the snow. Dad dug her out and then decided that we'd had enough fun in the snow for one day.

We lived in that apartment about three years before moving to a little house on the west end of Willmar.

Furry Buddies

Animals have always been a big part of my life. Whenever possible, I have always had at least one dog and a couple of cats. Studies have shown that pets can be great for relieving stress, and I tend to think that is true. That is as good an excuse as there is for keeping pets, but I know that stress or not, I would still have pets. I just like them.

Mom used to tell a story on me and my habit of dragging home animals. When we lived on the west end of Willmar, I was about 7 years old. Mom said that she watched me one summer day, walking up the street, dragging a huge collie dog with a rope tied around his neck. She said that the dog weighed more than I did, and he didn't seem overjoyed to be making this journey. But after a struggle, we arrived at our house, and of course I told Mom that he had followed me home, and could I keep him. She said that she thought the owner would probably want him back, and made me take him back to the yard about two blocks down where I had stolen him.

When we moved to the farm, I went to Sunnyside School, about a mile and a half away from home. On warm fall days Mom would let me walk to school. No, there wasn't knee-deep snow, and no, it wasn't uphill both ways. I just enjoyed walking to school. On one of these walks, when I was about halfway to school, I saw in the roadway ditch a small, black and white kitten. I have never been able to resist a kitten, so I went to pick it up, thinking that I would find a way to keep it and take it home after school. When I got close, the kitten turned its back to me, raised its tail and sprayed. Yup...baby skunk. When I walked into school, my teacher, Mrs. Ekdahl, called Mom and said it might be a good idea to come get me, as the smell of skunk was overwhelming. She said this through tears of laughter. Mom wasn't too pleased, however, and my clothes got buried out in the woods, and I spent the rest of the day in the bathtub, trying to get the skunk smell off me. It was a couple of days before I could return to school.

We now have Buster, who is a Bichon Frise-Shih Tzu cross. Starla, my employer, called one day and said she had just the dog for us. Seems his owner was moving and wasn't going to take Buster with him, so he needed a home. He has been with us for about three years now. He is really a good dog, and is very laid-back. To the point of seeming unconscious now and then. Nothing upsets him. He is the perfect couch spud. Likes animal documentaries on PBS.

Mike walks Buster all over town. Everybody knows Buster. Mike says if he doesn't take Buster with him when he goes somewhere, someone is sure to ask him where Buster is. I was walking Buster a few blocks from home last summer, and a guy I didn't know in a pickup stopped, rolled down the window of the truck, and said, "Buster, aren't you quite a ways from home?"

He loves to lay in our living room windowsill and watch the world go by. The neighbors joke about the "doggie in the window." One of the neighbors hadn't seen Buster in the window for a couple of days, and stopped me to ask if Buster was sick. I said, "No, just too lazy to jump up to the windowsill."

We thought that he was just a mutt. The product of an accidental mating of his parents. But then we started to see more of his breed at the grooming shop where I work. The owners of these dogs were talking about their "designer dogs." So I looked on the Internet, and found that we had ourselves a "designer dog." His breed is called a Shichon, better known as a Teddy Bear dog. Puppies are selling for between $600 and $1500. We haven't told Buster. It would just go to his head.

http://www.4shared.com/file/40242885/71516cf0/9_Mar_2008.html

And then there is Rose. She is a Yorkshire Terrier, better known as a Yorkie. I got her from a breeder that Starla knows. This breeder was looking for a good home for a dog that she wasn't going to use for breeding any more. Rose had a calcium deficiency problem when she had her last litter of puppies. The condition only shows up in pregnant female dogs, so she couldn't have any more puppies, as it could be fatal. So she came to live with us.

Rose is a challenge. She had spent the first three years of her life pretty much isolated from other dogs and people. She only knew the lady who fed her and cleaned her kennel. So we set about socializing her. She goes with Mike and Buster for walks, although she is not happy with this, she will do it most times. Other times she goes, but Mike has to carry her part way, as she will stop and refuse to go any further. The traffic noises or crowds of people will scare her sometimes.

At first she would not go to anyone except Mike or me. But now she will let people that we know pet her. For Rose, this is a huge step forward. She had never seen a doggie toy, and now will chase a ball or haul around her favorite little stuffed animal.

Our landlord had come to our apartment one evening to fix something or other. Rose tried to bite him in the ankle. I had to explain to her that if you are going to bite someone, please chose someone other than the landlord. Fortunately, Steve has a good sense of humor. On later visits, she tried the same thing, but we discovered that all she wanted to do was grab onto his pant leg and play.

Rose and Buster are now best buddies. Perhaps I should rephrase that. Buster puts up with Rose's antics. She will bark and growl and sound ferocious...or at least as ferocious as a ten pound dog can sound. She tugs on his ears, grabs his beard and pulls, or runs circles around him trying to get him to play. They will chase each other from one end of the apartment to the other. When Buster has had enough of her, he just puts her on her back on the floor and covers her with a paw and lets her squirm for a while before letting her up.

Yorkies are known to be an intelligent breed of dog. Therefore, they are also a pain in the whatever. They are easily taught to do something, like go outside to do their business, but will do so only if they feel like it. We discovered that she is a reasonably intelligent dog one afternoon when Mike took her with him to a convenience store a couple of blocks west of home. He slipped the end of her leash over one of those tall containers for dropping cigarette butts into, and went inside just long enough to buy a gallon of milk. When he came out, he found that she had pulled the container over and slipped the leash off of it. She was gone. A guy across the street saw Mike frantically looking for her and calling her. He told Mike that she had headed north...across four lanes of traffic, run down the block and turned east. Mike took off after her. Another lady at the end of the block told Mike that Rose was heading east and had turned the corner back south again. He thanked her, saying that if he lost that dog, his wife was gonna kill him. A couple of other people entered the chase, but they couldn't find her. They lost her when she crossed the highway again. When Mike arrived home, she was sitting by the back door of our building, waiting to be let in. Now granted, crossing a busy four-lane highway was not the smartest thing she ever did - twice! But she found her way home. I was impressed. And grateful that I didn't have to murder Mike for losing my dog.

Bottom line is, I love animals. They love you no matter what. And they make me laugh.

Dad's Garden

http://www.4shared.com/file/40145310/c7ef86c0/8_mar_2008.html

Dad loved to garden. When we lived at the farm, he had a large garden south of the house. Every year he planted the regular garden vegetables; peas, green and yellow beans, beets, carrots, onions, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, squash and pumpkins. One year he added a strawberry bed, and the next year he put in rows of raspberry bushes. He planted rows of potatoes and set out tomato, cabbage and green pepper plants.

Dad could grow the best tomatoes I have ever tasted. I wish I could remember what variety he planted, as I have not tasted any better since. Sometimes I would grab the salt shaker from the kitchen, go down to the garden, and just sit there eating tomatoes from the vine. He would join me now and then, and we would eat tomatoes and talk. He always said that he had to plant twice as many tomato plants as anyone else so he would have enough left to can in the fall.

And every year he tried something new. When the catalogues from garden seed companies arrived in the wintertime, he would pour over them, looking for something interesting to try in his garden the following spring. One year he added a couple of rows of Indian corn. Another year it was popcorn. When the stalks had dried, he harvested his ears of popcorn, and we shelled them. Then he set several old window screens on sawhorses on the front porch and spread out the popcorn kernels to dry. Finally we tested the popcorn, and it was really good.

Other experiments weren't so successful. He tried several varieties of watermelon and muskmelon to find some that would ripen in our short growing season. We had a couple of years of melons the size of a softball that stayed too green to eat before he found watermelons that grew to basketball size and ripened before the first frost in the fall. He never did find a good muskmelon variety.

And then there was the year of the blue potatoes. He found these seed potatoes in one of his catalogs and ordered some. When fall came, he dug up his blue potatoes and when cut open, they were indeed blue on the inside. However, when boiled like a regular potato, they became a mass of something gray and sticky. Looked kind of like gray oatmeal. Nobody would touch this mess. Not even the dog. But Dad still had fun trying new things in his garden.

Dad's love of growing things wasn't limited to vegetable gardening. He loved all sorts of plants. One year he ordered what he called a "sensitive plant." It was a houseplant that, when a leaf was touched, all of the leaves would close up tight. Left alone for about a half hour, the leaves would gradually open up again until someone touched a leaf, and the whole process began again.

He put up a trellis on the front of the house and planted clematis and morning glories that climbed the trellis as they grew. He always planted gladiola bulbs in one corner of the garden on the farm. He enjoyed planting new colors each year just to see what they would look like. When he and Mom lived in Funkley, he grew some of the most beautiful dahlias I have ever seen.

I think Dad's love of growing things came from being raised on a farm in Beltrami County. He used to tell me about helping his mother with her large garden that she planted every year to help feed their family of nine kids. Dad was the youngest child, so when the older boys were out in the fields working with their Dad, he would be helping his Mother with her garden. He once told me that she taught him to have an appreciation for all growing things and for the land. He came to enjoy working in the garden and he said that the added bonus was being able to spend time with his Mother.

I think I get my love of growing things from my Dad. Living in the city, I no longer have a garden. I only have a couple of house plants, kept up high on shelves, away from Chuck the cat, who is apparently an herbivore, and eats any living plant he can get to. But there was a time when I, too, had a large garden that helped to feed my family. I enjoyed planting and watching the vegetables in my garden grow and especially the taste of homegrown produce. There is a certain satisfaction that comes from seeing row after row of homegrown vegetables canned in glass jars, sitting on the basement shelves. Maybe some day I can have growing things around me again. If I can get Chuck the cat to change his evil ways.

Boston's Solo Flight

I received an email with pictures from David a couple of days ago. This picture of Boston was included. It seems that while sledding, she wanted to go down the hill all by herself. After all, she is a big girl now. So away she went. Down the hill. A little too fast. Hit a bump. Flipped over. This is the result. David says that she is just fine, and she had a great time telling her teachers and school friends how very brave she was.

http://www.4shared.com/file/40055320/1afe2f16/7_mar_2008.html

Mom's Daughters

http://www.4shared.com/file/40028405/1da7ab53/6_mar_2008.html

Mom really wanted daughters who never got dirty, who would wear the lacy and ruffled dresses she sewed for them, and who played with dolls and not trucks. It didn't quite work out that way for her.

Libby came much closer to the ideal daughter than I did. Dad built a little playhouse for us when we lived on the farm, and I played in it a little bit for a while, but Libby set up housekeeping in it with her dolls and tea set. Libby was always more comfortable in frills than I was, and when she was grown, retained a much more lady-like appearance than me. But driving the combine on her and Dave's farm and helping Dave in the hog barns didn't quite meet Mom's idea of feminine activities. But Libby came close.

On the other hand, I just couldn't quite manage to be the sweet feminine daughter Mom so wanted. I would wear the pretty dresses that she made for me. I wore them to church and whenever we had an occasion like a family wedding to attend. But as soon as these occasions were over, off came the frills and on came the jeans. I think I nearly drove her mad one summer when all I would wear were cut off jeans and Dad's old shirts. Not quite what she had in mind for me.

I came by this honestly, however. Dad was to blame. He thought that I should know how to do things other than cook and sew. So from the time I was very young, he let me "help" him when he had things to do outside of the house. Although I was too young to remember, he told me of a time when our family still lived in Blackduck and I was about three years old. I was "helping" him work on his car. He had his head under the hood, tinkering with something, when he heard a banging sound coming from the rear of the car. Upon investigating, he found me, rock in hand, bashing out the tail light. I was "helping." He was much more careful to keep an eye on me after that.

Mom said that early on she gave up trying to keep me in girly dresses, as I would go outside and head for the nearest mud puddle to make mud pies, or to the sandbox or some other not so clean place to play, which would result in stains and rips in those pretty little dresses. She said that Dad had the habit of scooping me up when he had to go uptown on some errand, and take me along. It didn't matter to him that I was grubby from playing. Off we would go, many times returning with evidence of a stop at the drug store for an ice cream cone all over my face. Mom said she was mortified just knowing that everyone she knew in Blackduck had seen her daughter looking, in her words, like a ragamuffin.

While living on the farm we were fortunate to have as playmates some of the Eddy children. Robert was just a year younger than me, and once in a while when we were about 10 or 11 years old, he and I would take off on some adventure. I remember one occasion when upon returning home after one of these adventures, my conversation with Mom went something like this:

Mom: "Where were you. I have been calling you for hours."
Me: "Robert and I were out in the pasture catching frogs."
Mom: "Why didn't you answer me?"
Me: "Cuz then we went over to the ditch to catch crayfish. But we didn't catch any."
Mom: "So what is that stuff all over your feet?"
Me: Well, we came back through the cow pasture looking for frogs, but there weren't any, so we were squishing cow pies with our feet."

I recall getting hosed off with the garden hose outside and then a bath, with lots of bubble bath to get rid of the smell. Mom was not pleased. I was forbidden to play with Robert for a while, and was banished from the cow pasture forever after.

Dad continued to teach me things other than household chores. I can paint a house, mow a lawn, wield a screwdriver and hammer, use power tools, and change a tire on a car. All of which have come in handy over the years. Dad also taught me how to fish. Sometimes on a Saturday afternoon he would load his old boat motor in the trunk of the car and off we would go to rent a boat and spend the afternoon fishing. I still love to fish, and enjoy the peacefulness of being out on a lake in the spring or fall. In the spring we would sometimes see mamma ducks with their babies swimming all in a row, and in the fall we listened to the loons and watch them dive to resurface far from their entry point. Once in a while Dad would spot a deer on shore. Life just didn't get much better, fishing with Dad.

Dad also taught me how to shoot a gun. Hunting was second nature to him, as it was one way that his family kept meat on the table. He first showed me how to use his .22 rifle, stressing that I needed to pay attention and know at all times where the bullet was going, preferably not towards anything that might suffer damage, like the house or our neighbors. Often I would take his gun into the woods behind the house on the farm and target shoot tin cans or bottles. Then I decided I wanted to shoot his big 12 gauge shotgun. He didn't think that was such a good idea, as I was only about 12 years old at the time, and not all that big. But I insisted and persisted until he took me back in the woods along with the shotgun. He asked me if I was sure I wanted to shoot it. You see where this is going, don't you. Yes, I shot the gun, and yes, I landed on my backside in the dirt from the recoil. And yes, my shoulder was purple for a few days after. Lesson learned. I never did go hunting. Although I love venison, I just could never stand the thought of killing anything, so my shooting was limited to targets.

While Mom didn't get in me a daughter who enjoyed ruffles and lace, she did get a daughter who still enjoys the things she taught me; sewing, embroidery, cooking and baking. And thanks to Dad, I can fix things that break and have a fondness for a lazy afternoon of fishing. Not too bad for a daughter.

Dad Was Tough

http://www.4shared.com/file/39727034/9cbf0cfe/4_mar_2008.html


I have always loved this picture of Dad. He is the one sitting in the car and three of his friends are sitting on the running board. I am old enough to remember running boards. A couple of Dad's cars had them. Dad told me that he was in his mid-20's when this picture was taken, but he couldn't remember where they were or why someone took the picture. He told me the names of his friends, but none of those names meant anything to me and I have long since forgotten who they were. All I know is they are not relatives.

Dad looks so tough in the picture. He wasn't. Not in the way we think of as tough. He has sort of a rebel James Dean thing going on there. Kelly and I thought that this group looked like they were auditioning for a Bonnie and Clyde type movie.

Dad was tough in other ways. He was not gangster-type tough. He was kind and giving and caring. His toughness was in living. He was tough when it came to taking care of his family. He worked hard all of his life. I remember that when Mom became more seriously ill and required more medical care, he worked two and sometimes three jobs to pay the bills and keep food on the table. He was not an educated man, completing school through the eighth grade, but he was a well-read man, and knew much about many things. His lack of education meant that he worked at menial jobs, many times back-breaking jobs. He was a janitor at the First Baptist Church in Willmar, where we attended church. He also cleaned other buildings at night in Willmar, and then went to work at 6:30 every morning to his main job, climbing into boxcars loaded with grain and taking samples to be tested. He took a job feeding turkeys and cleaning the turkey barns on a farm near Willmar. He took on other part-time jobs over the years.

Taking care of a spouse who is chronically ill is not an easy task. It requires an inner toughness. It means putting that person first and your own wants and needs second. Dad had that kind of toughness. He spent many hours at Mom's hospital bedside over the years when she had to be hospitalized for one problem or another related to her arthritis. He got up an hour earlier each morning to see that her needs were taken care of before leaving for work. He brushed her hair, he bathed her, he helped her use the bathroom. When she couldn't get her hands to work, he fed her. He did many things for her that most of us never dream we could do or would have to do. And he did them without ever complaining. When it finally became too much for any one person to handle and when she required constant medical attention, she went to live in the nursing home. Many people would have been grateful not to have to spend so much time on their ailing spouse, but not Dad. He spent every hour that he could at the home with Mom. They talked. They listed to music. They played Scrabble. When I would call, knowing that Dad was always with Mom in the evenings, I would ask what they were doing. He nearly always answered that they were playing Scrabble, that Mom was winning. And then he would add, "But she cheats!" He always maintained his sense of humor, and I think that was one of the things that helped him keep going as long as he did. I asked him once how he did it...how he could devote his entire married life to taking care of her. His answer was simple logic to him.

"I love your Mother."

Yeah.....Dad was tough.