Ruffles and Pleats

27 Jan 2006 

I bought a curious book at a thrift shop yesterday. It is the 1954 edition of Ladies' Home Journal: Book of Interior Decoration by Elizabeth T. Halsey. It's a large book, similar in size to what Life and Look magazines used to be.

When I opened the book and looked through the pages, I knew I had to buy it and preserve it as a historic document. The photographs give me a sense of déjà vu. Specifically, the book reminded me of a childhood visit to the Arthur and Mary Mallory home, somewhere in Iowa, in the late 1950s.

The Mallory Brothers (I think they were Arthur and Dwight) raised and sold Black Angus breeding stock. We were at their Iowa farm to buy bulls, and we spent the night with Arthur and Mary-- a most uncomfortable night, in my opinion. Mary Mallory's home seemed so elegant to me, a country child, that I was afraid to speak beyond a whisper. It was not a place where I felt I could relax. If Mary had ever had children, her house showed no sign of it.

The photographs in this LHJ decorating book are a visit to Mary Mallory's house, all over again. The slipcovered armchairs are color coordinated to the floor-length pinch-pleated draperies. Ruffled bedskirts match the ruffled pillowcases, and the bedspreads match the ruffled skirts of the vanity tables. The floors are carpeted wall-to-wall. If anything is homemade, it is the lace tablecloth on the dining room table. There's not a quilt or ragrug in sight.

I don't know the name of this decor style, but it wasn't the "mid-century modern," streamlined look that's often associated with the 1950s. This country child would still feel uncomfortable in it.

Senior Moments

January 2006

 I sometimes joke about having senior moments, but today, I had a real one.

I walked in town yesterday morning, and before I came home, I went into Arby's to get a soda. The lady at the cash register said it would be 53¢ and I thought, "Wow, that's pretty cheap."

So this morning after I walked, I stopped at Arby's again to get a drink. I took a dollar bill with me and left my purse in the car. I told the girl at the register that I wanted a medium soda. I was surprised when she said that it would be $1.58.

"I didn't bring in that much money," I said. "How much would a small drink be?"

"$1.26," she told me.

I started to go after more money but she stopped me. "No, wait! I'll give you a senior drink, and it will be just 53¢!"

Ugh. Yesterday, I was pleased about my cheap drink, and today, I found out that I'm a senior citizen. 

It reminds me of the first time I ever had a clerk refer to me as a lady -- as in, "This lady needs help with ..." That was a shocking experience, too.

My Mother-In-Law's 89th Birthday

January 2006

Tomorrow, January 25, is my mother-in-law Elizabeth's 89th birthday. I hope she has a great day. I sent her a little package which will arrive by UPS tomorrow afternoon. I will call her, Isaac will call her, Dennis will call her, and I reminded Keely to call her. That's about all we can do from this distance.

The last few years have been hard for Mama Netz. She broke her hip in August of 2004, and recovery has been difficult and slow. It was complicated by gall bladder problems, persistent infections, and more. When she finally got out of the hospital and rehab center, she could no longer live alone, so she had to move to an assisted living facility and sell her house. The loss of her home of 60 years has been a great grief for her.

 Elizabeth, in about 1945 or 1946,
with Donna, Charles Jr., Bonnie, and Willadene.

Elizabeth has lived in or near Independence, Missouri, since she was a child. In 1936, she graduated from William Crisman High School in Independence and married Charles Netz. They bought a few acres on the outskirts of Independence, and Elizabeth moved out there with four little children while Charles was gone to World War II. 

She lived in the same house for the next six decades. She and Charles raised six children there. They had milkcows and big gardens, and she did a lot of canning and freezing every summer. The kids grew up and got married, and Elizabeth became a grandmother. Charles passed away in 1984, and Elizabeth lived in her home alone for another 20 years after that, until the day she broke her hip.

Elizabeth was a member of the Reformed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS, headquartered in Independence) from her childhood until about 1990. Then the RLDS church began to change what it believed, so now she belongs to a "Restoration Branch" that holds to the traditional RLDS teachings.

Everyone talks about what a good cook Elizabeth was. Besides cooking every day for her own family and frequently for her extended family, she was a volunteer cook for years with the RLDS Laurel Club. She also served as Laurel Club president. The Laurel Club runs the kitchen at the RLDS Auditorium and serves thousands of people in church and civic events every year. I'd guess that Mama worked there at least 25 years, before she left the RLDS church. After that, she volunteered regularly in a soup kitchen that her current church runs in downtown Independence. There isn't much about a kitchen and cooking for a crowd that Mama Netz doesn't know.

Mama's always been a seamstress, and not having a sewing machine anymore hasn't stopped her. She quilts by hand, nowadays. She also volunteers as a "caller" on her church's prayer chain. Dennis's oldest sister, Willadene, takes Mama out for the day, on Wednesday or Thursday of most weeks. They go to Mama's doctor appointments and over to Willadene's house, where they have an ongoing project of sorting pictures. Donna, another of Dennis's sisters, takes her to church a couple of times a month. That is about as much going as Mama can withstand. She takes her walker with her when she goes out.

It is hard to believe that she is 89 years old. She was only a few years older than I am now when I first met her. Time goes too quickly.

The photo below was taken about 1996. We were visiting Elizabeth in Independence, and I made everyone stop playing and pose for me. Grandma's miniature schnauzer was Molly, her beloved little friend. You can see a bit of attitude in all of them. They were trying to be patient, but they wished I would hurry up.

Elizabeth Alice Lloyd Netz was born on 25 Jan 1917 in Davenport, Scott County, Iowa. She married Charles Ernest Netz on 26 Nov 1936. She passed away on 5 Dec 2011 in Raytown, Jackson County, Missouri. 

The Peterbang Kids

January 2006

Isaac and I were talking about the Peterbang Kids on the way home from town tonight. I don't know where my mother got their name. I don't know if the Peterbang story was a product of her imagination, or if it was something she remembered from her own childhood.

When I first learned about the Peterbang Kids, my family lived south of Johnstown, Nebraska. We had a blowout that we used as a landfill (as folks did in those days), and Mama said that the Peterbang Kids lived there.

The Peterbang Kids matched us exactly. They even had our names (except that their last name was Peterbang), and they looked exactly like us. The one big difference was that they were ornery and naughty, whereas we were sweet and nice. The Peterbangs loved to sneak into our house and do forbidden things and let us suffer the consequences!

When I was six, we moved to a ranch in southern Rock County, Nebraska. The Peterbang Kids slipped onto the very last truckload of stuff that was moved (according to Mama). And of course, they moved right into the junkpile in the blowout at the new place.

Even though I knew that the Peterbangs were imaginary, it was easy to imagine them living in the blowout. Many interesting pieces of junk had been thrown into the blowout over the years -- old cookstoves and broken chairs, rusted out pans and leaky chamber pots, bottles of all sorts, broken dishes, old magazines, snarls of wire, odd bits of broken machinery and every other thing you could imagine. There was plenty of everything that a Peterbang might need.

It was handy that they did make the move with us. When we did something naughty but not too serious, sometimes Mama laughed and said that she guessed the Peterbangs had been visiting again.

The years went by, and I became a teenager and then a grown-up, and finally, I almost forgot the Peterbangs. But when I had children, one of the Peterbangs found me again. It was the Peterbang girl who looks just like me. She was grown-up too, and she had a little girl and boy who looked exactly like my little girl and boy. Her children even had the very same names as my children (except that their last name was Peterbang, of course.)

The Peterbangs first found us in Berlin, and then they slipped onto the plane when we came to Kentucky. They settled in the gully in Clarence's pasture not far from the house. People had thrown a lot of old junk in the gully over the years, so they felt right at home.  And they certainly have caused a lot of mischief around here. Just ask my kids!

Catalpa, Kutawba, and Kutawa

January 2006

When Keely was doing a leaf collection in high school, we spent a warm September afternoon driving the backroads and gathering leaves. As it happened, we wandered into the little village of Allegre, and there in someone's lawn, we saw a tree whose leaf we didn't have yet.

The residents were sitting on their porch so we pulled over and asked permission to pluck a specimen. They were pleased and excited, and they offered us a leaf from every tree in their yard which we politely accepted. One of the trees, they told us, was a "kutawa" tree. I knew the tree as soon as I saw it -- it was clearly a catalpa tree, no way to mistake it.

After we left, I commented to Keely that "kutawa" must be a local corruption of the word "catalpa." But when she started looking up her leaves in the tree book, she read that "kutawba" is a common name for catalpa, and that's pretty close to "kutawa."

Catalpa was an Indian name for the tree. The botanists made it official: catalpa speciosa (the northern or "hardy catalpa") and catalpa bignonioides (the southern catalpa). 

My brother and sister-in-law have catalpa trees in front of their house in southwest Kansas, which is a testament to the catalpa's ability to endure drought, grasshoppers, hot summers, and cold winters.

Catalpas are easy to recognize, summer or winter. They have white blossoms in early summer and large coarse heart-shaped leaves. In the fall, they produce a long thin bean (often over a foot in length) that hangs on through the winter. Their shape is interesting when their leaves have dropped. Their rugged-looking branches suggest that they'd be strong in a storm, but actually the branches are brittle and quite susceptible to wind and ice damage.

The largest catalpa tree that I've ever seen grows on the west lawn of St. John's United Methodist Church in Hopkinsville. Quite a few catalpa trees grow in that part of town -- near the Virginia Street and Country Club Lane intersection.  I've also noticed catalpas along Little River in Hopkinsville.

Second Cousins Reunited

January 2006

Today, I've been going through this year's Christmas cards, checking for new addresses. In doing so, I looked again at the card from my mother's cousin, Nellie Burk who lives in California, and smiled about what she wrote:

You know, the way I remember Doris goes way back to when we were little girls picking wild flowers on the Sees farm.

Nellie means that they were at the Harry Sees farm, which was Mama's home, of course. Mama and Nellie were second cousins, if I am counting correctly. Their maternal grandmothers, Emma (Hart) Eaton and Henrietta (Hart) Barto, were sisters. They had the same maternal great grandparents, Daniel Kennard Hart and Hester (Scotten) Hart.  The mothers of the two little girls were first cousins, and that makes the girls second cousins.

 
Mama and Nellie were good friends when they were little girls, but life separated them. Nellie's family moved to California during the Depression, and after Mama's mother, Violet (Eaton) Sees, died, I don't think Mama had much contact with the extended Hart family.

About 1990, Mama found Nellie's address on one of the Hart family newsletters that Bob Buchan of Rushville, Nebraska, published, and for the last years of Mama's life, these two cousins wrote many, many letters to each other.

Natural Night Owls

January 2006

I like to stay up late. It's my natural time to get things done! I have to force myself to go to bed, or I'll stay up until 2 a.m. 

 I have speculated that this might be an inherited trait, from my mother's maternal line. Her Aunt Letha (Eaton) Blair was a professional night owl. For many years, she was the night operator at the telephone office in Bassett, Nebraska. I remember that my mom used to call Aunt Letha at night and chat with her if she wasn't busy. 

After Letha retired from the telephone company, she found a job being the overnight desk clerk at the Range Hotel in Bassett. She worked there for several years before retiring completely. 

I learned recently that my nephew Ben likes staying up late, also. This new bit of evidence supports my theory that there's a bit of the night owl in the family line. Keely and Isaac definitely have the trait, too.

Hymns on the Piano

January 2006

Today in church we sang a hymn I like a lot -- "Jesus, Priceless Treasure. The melody was written by Johann Sebastian Bach. Some Lutherans complain about the old hymns that we sing, but I like most of them, especially those with gloriously minor melodies. 

 
When I was a teenager, I discovered that I could play on the piano many familiar songs that we sang in church. This worked out well for our little country church as they usually needed somebody to play the piano. Many of the hymns that we sang were written by Fannie Crosby and her contemporaries, roughly between the Civil War and World War I. It was a time when great revivals were sweeping the nation, and new church music was often peppy with easy harmonies. Many of the hymn melodies were written in flats, and I became quite comfortable with that set of chords.

Two decades later in Germany, I started attending Lutheran services and, here in Kentucky, joined the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. In Lutheran services, I heard a familiar hymn only occasionally. Many of the LCMS hymns were written several centuries ago or even earlier.

After a time as Lutheran hymns became more familiar to me, I started to play through the Lutheran Hymnal on the piano. Many Lutheran hymns are written in minor keys and/or sharps, so I eventually learned (am still learning) a whole new set of chords. I am not a master by any means, but I'm much more fluent in Lutheran music now than when I started.

When I started practicing the Lutheran hymns, I became obsessed with them, and I abandoned my old favorite hymnbooks for a long time. A couple of years later, I began playing through one of those neglected volumes, page by page whether or not the hymn name was familiar. To my surprise, many of the hymns that I thought I didn't know turned out to be:

1. Hymns I have learned as a Lutheran, or
2. Unfamiliar words with melodies I have learned as a Lutheran.

About a year ago, I read a rave review that a music professor had written about the new Baptist Hymnal. I ordered the hymnal online, and I agree that is a great hymnal. It has a broad selection of Christian music from various genres, it's easy on the eyes, and it contains good indexes and helpful information like, "This melody in a lower key on page --."

I was interested to find many hymns from my Lutheran experience in the new Baptist hymnal. In fact, I find that I know nearly all the hymns in it -- some from my years in church music before I became a Lutheran, and others from my years in Lutheran music.

Cathouse

January 2006

Tonight's rising moon was remarkably big, bright, and orange. The sky is very clear, and the air is still and cold. It's going to get chilly overnight. The half-wild tomcat who lives on the porch will spend the night in his cathouse, if he has any sense.

I built his nice little cathouse. It has a small round door and he can go in and lie down on his blanket on the first floor if he wants. Or, once inside, he can go through another opening to the second floor of his house. All of his house is insulated, but if he goes to the second floor, he will be extra warm because I tacked down a foil emergency blanket covered with a scrap of carpet on the floor and then gave him an old sweatshirt to sleep on. His body heat will be conserved from all directions and he won't feel much cold air from the door.

I do see him lying on his first floor blanket frequently, but I've never had reason to suspect that he has been to the second floor. Maybe it's so well enclosed that it feels like a trap to him.

Skittles, Mouser of Merit

January 2006

Our cat Skittles is a hunter. One morning, I came home from taking Isaac to school and found a long pink tail lying on the front step and a rat head not far away. The body was missing, and I guess she ate it, because the next day, she hacked out a giant hairball. Judging from the size of the tail and head, the rat wasn't much smaller than her. We think she caught it in or around Clarence's barns.

As I was moving stuff around in my little garden shed one day, a mouse skittered across the floor and startled me horribly. Isaac brought Skittles, and we put her in the shed. She had the mouse within a moment, and to this day, she remembers that she caught a mouse there. Whenever the door is open, she goes in and checks to see if she can find another.

Our old tom, Happy, is worthless as far as being a mouser. Actually, he's worthless in most respects, but we like him anyhow.

Poison Ivy

January 2006

I have a small patch of itchy welts between two fingers of my left hand. It looks and feels a lot like poison ivy, so I washed it with Isaac's special poison ivy soap and put some calomine lotion on it. If it is poison ivy, I probably had second-hand contact through the cats or possibly the firewood.

My mom was very sensitive to poison ivy. My sister Charlotte breaks out terribly from it, and Isaac is very allergic to it also. So is Dennis. Keely has had it several times, but I don't think she is quite as sensitive as Isaac.

I wasn't allergic to poison ivy at all during my younger days but I exposed myself to it too many times, and now the allergy has developed. At one time, I could wade knee-deep in poison ivy to go fishing and not even break out. I wouldn't dream of doing that now! "Leaves of three, leave it be!"

I read once that birds will plant a friendly habitat for themselves in your yard, if you will let them. The article said to identify the area and stop mowing it. Then, put up some wires in the area for birds to perch on. In a few years, many seeds in the bird droppings will sprout and grow, and the birds will soon have all their favorite foods growing right in your yard. The article mentioned that poison ivy would probably be one of the plants that springs up.

Mama's Mastoiditis in the 1930s.

January 2006

Until Dennis got mastoiditis, my mother was the only person I had ever known who had suffered this problem. She had mastoiditis when she was about 8 years old. Obviously her ear (or ears) were badly infected because she had surgery on her mastoid bone (or bones.) I think she had some hearing loss from it.

In the early 1930's, money was tight. I imagine that Mama got pretty sick, and home remedies were attempted, before she finally saw a doctor. Her mom had passed away recently, and I don't think that Grandpa Harry Sees had remarried yet.

The doctor drove Mama in his car from Gordon, Nebraska, to the Mary Lanning Hospital in Hastings, Nebraska, for the surgery. It was a long trip -- over 200 miles -- and it must have been an exhausting and scary experience for a sick little girl. I am not sure how long she had to stay at the hospital, but surely they kept her for a few days.

Mama said that they stopped on the way home and had ice cream. I'm glad she had at least that one happy memory of the whole ordeal.

Infection-fighting antibiotics did not yet exist in the 1930s.

Keely Has Taught Herself To Sew

January 2006

Keely spent the day at home. She is now driving back to Murray, and she should call soon to say that she has arrived safe and sound. As moms do, I worry about her being on the roads after dark.

While she was here, she got out some of her old piano books and tried the freshly-tuned piano. I remembered some of the songs she played from her years of taking piano lessons. She doesn't have a piano to play at school so she's a little rusty, but it will all come back to her when she has a piano of her own someday.

This afternoon Keely and I drove over to Clarksville where Hancock Fabrics was having a sale on Butterick patterns -- $1.00 each, limit 5. We got some patterns for "garb"(costumes for Keely's medieval reenactment group, a college chapter of SCA -- Society for Creative Anachronism.)

Keely was excited when she read the flyer for next week's sale at Hancock. She has a list of McCalls patterns that she likes, and next week, McCalls patterns will be $1.00 each, limit 5. Also, dress trim (lace, braid, rick-rack, etc.) will be 40% off. She announced that she'd be coming home next weekend, and we'd be going back to Clarksville, because she wasn't going to miss this sale.

I'm amused, but pleased to see her become interested in sewing. When she was about 13 or 14, I forced her to make a pillowcase. Not long after that, I bought her a sewing machine, an older Singer that does straight and zigzag stitches only. 

For several years, Keely didn't have much interest in using her machine, but then she got involved with SCA. She took her sewing machine to college and became a seamstress. She sews garb for a number of people in her group, some of whom even pay her money. She has taught herself, and ultimately that's the only way to learn to sew-- by sewing.

She made the suede-y, floppy hat she's wearing in the photo. It's garb, but she was wearing it out and about today. It looked cute on her.

Ear Problems and a Katrina Injury

January 2006

Dennis has been having trouble with his neck and ear, and it's been dragging on and on. To quickly summarize part of the story, he's had a bad ear infection. I theorize that he got it in Kuwait.

The doctor has been a little slow figuring out exactly what's going on. Early in the fall just after his first Hurricane Katrina relief trip to Gulfport, Dennis went to the doctor. He complained that his ear hurt and had pressure in it, that he had headaches that seemed to come up from the back of his head, and that he had a little lump in his neck. Also, he told the doctor that he had been wearing earplugs to sleep at night and that he had seen blood on the earplugs one morning. The doctor looked at his ears, saw nothing wrong, and told him to stop using the earplugs. (Good advice, but there was much more wrong than that.)

Then Dennis went on another Hurricane Katrina relief trip, this time to New Orleans. While he was there, he had a bad fall off the back of the semi-trailer they were using for storage. (You grab the rope and step off the trailer, and the rope pulls the door down as you ride to the ground. Well, Dennis missed the rope.) He landed on his neck and shoulder and jammed them severely. The sports medicine specialist who treated Dennis in New Orleans said that the lump in his neck might be a pulled muscle which could explain the headaches, and that anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxers might help it. (This diagnosis was wrong.)

Soon after that, Dennis came home and went back to our doctor to have his neck and shoulder checked. He also pointed out to the doctor that he still had the lump in his neck and was suffering a lot of discomfort. This time the doctor said the lump was a swollen lymph gland and it wasn't going to get well until Dennis quit feeling it all the time. (Once again, good advice, but the serious underlying problem remained undiagnosed.)

A couple of weeks ago, Dennis went back and said, "Look, there's something wrong with my neck and head and ears and you have to figure out what it is." So that day, the doctor ordered a CT scan, and lo and behold, they discovered that Dennis had an ear infection that had developed into mastoiditis. The doctor prescribed a round of antibiotics and then a round of anti-inflamatory meds. Now the lump is a little less swollen and the pain in Dennis's neck is better -- but still not gone. (Finally, a diagnosis and some semi-effective treatment.)

Today he went back to the doctor again, and now the doctor thinks that he may have some lingering nerve damage from his fall. He pressed on a nerve ending in his neck and Dennis he nearly went through the ceiling with pain. So now Dennis is taking a round of steroids to reduce inflammation. The first day he takes 6 pills, the second day 5, the third day 4, and so on. 

Dennis asked the doctor if there were any side effects to taking this drug, and the doctor said he should expect to be quite irritable. "Don't fire anybody," the doctor said. I told Dennis that if he gets any customer complaints at work, he'd better let his boss handle them. Dennis on steroids -- oh, brother!

The doctor has been documenting the Workmen's Comp aspects of this so Dennis can get any benefits he might be entitled to, but I really hope that he's going to get over all this and feels OK again one of these days.

Concerns about the lump on Dennis's neck (thought to be a lymph gland) were not resolved until 2018 when an ear, nose, and throat specialist determined that it was a lipoma (a fatty benign tumor.) He removed it at the same time that he operated on Dennis's sinuses.

Memories of a Moon Lake Childhood

January 2006

Aunt Cleona mentioned a coconut peanut brittle in her 2005 Christmas card, and I asked her to send me her recipe. When she sent it, she included several other favorite holiday recipes and a long letter too. Here is an excerpt (and my comments in brackets.)

One thing I remember your Dad talking about is how Freddie Wales came one time and how he [your Dad] liked his [Freddie's] cowboy boots. He asked Mom and Dad for a pair, but guess they didn't approve. Anyway, he said he saved up his money and got him a pair as soon as he could. Never wore anything else after that. Also remember your dad having a pair of black leather chaps.

One time I remember I guess he went to get on his horse or off. Anyway somehow he got his foot caught in the stirrup and the horse was dragging him and someone managed to grab the reins as the horse went to go out the gate or your Dad probably would have been drug to death.

Then he asked me one time when he was here if I remembered Mom frying our pet rabbit for supper and none of us kids would eat any of it. I can't stand rabbit to this day. [This was during the Depression. Cleona continues with a memory of another unhappy childhood event.]

I remember one other time I had an accordion type valentine and I'd got it from my teacher. I'd left it in the window standing up. I came home from school and asked Mom where it was and she'd burnt it.

All them good old days riding horseback to school facing that old northwest wind and so cold you could hear the screech of horse hooves on the snow. Them are some of my memories. Don't regret any, just the way it was.

We were fortunate to have the artesian wells and a tank with a house over it to keep our cream and milk, etc., cold. It would make your arm ache to reach down in that water. It was that cold. We could put a gallon syrup pail of milk in there when we first started to milk and it would be cold by the time supper was ready. Them syrup pails also was our dinner buckets when we went to school.

I remember Dad putting a fence on top of a fence because snow drifted clear over the fence and sheep were walking out of the pen on the drifts. Then it was my job to stay on a horse all day in summer time herding them sheep. One evening I was bringing them in and a coyote came out of the swamp and grabbed a lamb. I got it run off but that lamb always had a big knot on his neck but it lived.

It was also Charlie's [my dad's] job when I was little to keep me in the yard. Of course I'd find a hole and crawl out.

One time I remember all three of us getting spanked. Guess we'd had some spring rain and we all played in the water.

Also remember Charlie getting on his ice skates when the lake [Moon Lake, south of Johnstown, Nebraska] was frozen in the wintertime. We'd probably be going to Grandpa Clark's and Dad would drive on around the end of the fence out onto the lake. I was always afraid the ice would break through. You'd hear it crack. Then we'd pick up Charlie down on the other end of the lake. He'd skate that far.

In summertime, turtles would come out and lay their eggs in the sand along the lake. Then when they hatched, they'd go back to the water.

There was springs in that swamp. We used to fill our water jugs when we were going to the hayfield. In the wintertime, the spring water going out into the lake, when it was so cold, there would be like a fog above the water.

There was flowers that looked like your tiger lilies. In the spring of the year, the carp would come up the creek and you could catch them with your hands. Lots of times we'd see an old mother duck with her little ones swimming in all that water.

It was also Charlie's [my dad's] job when I was little to keep me in the yard. Of course I'd find a hole and crawl out.

One time I remember all three of us getting spanked. Guess we'd had some spring rain and we all played in the water.

Also remember Charlie getting on his ice skates when the lake [Moon Lake, south of Johnstown, Nebraska] was frozen in the wintertime. We'd probably be going to Grandpa Clark's and Dad would drive on around the end of the fence out onto the lake. I was always afraid the ice would break through. You'd hear it crack. Then we'd pick up Charlie down on the other end of the lake. He'd skate that far.

In summertime, turtles would come out and lay their eggs in the sand along the lake. Then when they hatched, they'd go back to the water.

There was springs in that swamp. We used to fill our water jugs when we were going to the hayfield. In the wintertime, the spring water going out into the lake, when it was so cold, there would be like a fog above the water.

There was flowers that looked like your tiger lilies. In the spring of the year, the carp would come up the creek and you could catch them with your hands. Lots of times we'd see an old mother duck with her little ones swimming in all that water.

Cleona also wrote in her letter that her son Lonnie's favorite pie is coconut. Coconut pie was my dad's favorite cream pie, too. On a bread recipe, she noted that it made a good dough to fry and powder up with sugar. This reminded me that my mom sometimes fried bread dough, as a fast way to have hot bread for dinner even though the dough wasn't ready to bake. We all loved it.

Cleona's comments about baking made me think that Grandma Nora (mother of my dad, Uncle Harold, and Aunt Cleona) was probably a baker of coconut pies and a fryer of bread dough, too.

Cleona Mae (Hill) Allen was born on 12 May 1929 in Wood Lake Township, Cherry County, Nebraska and passed away on 10 Jul 2009 at Independence, Montgomery County, Kansas.

In the comments to this post, David Netz, a cousin, asked if Dennis remembered eating rabbit as a child. Dennis answered that he remembered it being on the table, but that he had not eaten any of it if he could help it!

My Emerson Upright Piano

January 2006

Yesterday, on the 11th day of Christmas, I received one last Christmas gift, something I had specifically asked for. A piano tuner came to our house and tuned my piano. 

He also fixed two small things that were wrong with it -- a key on the far right that didn't make a sound and also the C key, an octave above Middle C, that didn't hold its sound. The damper on the C was broken, so he removed the damper from the highest of notes that have dampers and moved it down to that C. He will try to order a replacement damper from his catalogs of old piano parts. 

 Isaac felt vindicated and outraged when I told him the piano tuner had found the missing ivory key-cover inside the piano. For years, I thought that the kids had lost that piece of ivory, and Isaac remembers that I expressed my suspicion quite a few times.

As all piano tuners do when they work on this piano, he commented that it was in very good condition and had a nice sound for the age of the instrument. It's probably over 100 years old. The most recent patent date inside the piano is 1893. 

My mother bought this piano from a newspaper ad when it became apparent that I was practicing my piano lessons willingly and learning to read music. We had another piano before this one. My mother had tried to refinish it, and it hadn't gone well. When she moved in the new piano, my dad took the old piano to the blowout* and dumped it. I remember it lying on its back with its face to the sky. 

Over the years, this piano went from Nebraska to Missouri to Kansas with my mother and father, and after they passed away, I moved it to Kentucky. The kids and I had a memorable trip! We drove an excessively large U-Haul truck that was nearly empty except for the piano, dragging our car behind for 750 miles.We made the trip without serious incident, and the day that the piano took up residence in my living room, I know that my mother smiled. She bought the piano for me, and at last it was in my home. She would be glad that I got it tuned again at last, and she'd be pleased at how nice it sounds. *

In the Nebraska Sandhills, a region of grassed-over sand dunes, where I grew up, a blowout is a sandy depression or hole caused by wind erosion. Rightly or wrongly, Sandhill ranchers discarded their trash in blowouts. Trash in a blowout was a ranch history of sorts, with an odd assortment of well-weathered objects such as old cast iron cook-stoves, tangles of antique barbed wire, old bottles and cans, and skeletons of dead cattle. And a piano, in this case.