Grandma Nora's Basement Apartment

February 2006

My dad's parents (Grandma Nora and Gramp Hill, as we called them) divorced in about 1947. During my childhood, Grandma lived mostly in Ainsworth, Nebraska, but Gramp Hill lived in Missouri and then in Kansas.

Grandma Nora and Gramp Hill had a house in town, and it became Grandma Nora's after their divorce. She made it into two apartments. She rented out the ground floor, and she lived in the basement apartment. It was interesting, even exciting, to visit there because we didn't have a basement and besides, it was Grandma's house!

Looking back, I realize that the decor was very 1950's. Grandma had a dining table and chairs, a china cabinet, and a little writing desk that were all made of blonde maple. In her living room, she had cowboy lamps. The lamp base was shaped like a wagon wheel, and the lampshades had photographs on them of cowboys on horseback tending their cattle under a bright blue sky. Grandma had a matched set of smaller lamps, as I recall, and a larger lamp with a two tiered shade. All three of them had the western lampshades.

Grandma also had a gumdrop tree made of clear plastic. It had a gumdrop on the tip of every branch and extra gumdrops in the tray under the tree.

Grandma's renters had some things in the basement storeroom, including a big stack of MAD magazines. I read them every time we visited, taking great pains not to bend the pages. That was my introduction to Alfred E. Neuman.

One time, my little sister Charlotte and I spent the night at Grandma's basement apartment. Grandma tucked us into the twin beds in her guest bedroom -- one little girl in each bed. During the night, Charlotte woke up and became frightened. She cried, " I want my daddy, I want my daddy!" and soon Grandma came and took her to sleep in the big bed. In her later years, Grandma liked to tell that story. It pleased her that Charlotte had cried for her daddy -- he was Grandma's son, of course.

Kids and Kittens

February 2006

I spent many happy hours with kittens when I was a little girl. We had a huge barn that had eight or ten big stalls for workhorses in the south part of it. We didn't use workhorses anymore on the ranch, so most of the time, the stalls were empty. The mama cats always had their kittens in the hay mangers at the ends of the stalls where the horses were fed.

The mangers were big enough that a little girl, (or even two little girls) could climb in and help a mama cat take care of her babies. When we were there to assist, no little kitten ever crawled about blindly, searching for milk and crying.

A mama cat broke the rules one spring. She had her kittens beneath the underslung, a big trailer that was used for hauling haystacks to feed the cattle. The underslung was parked for the summer and there happened to be a small pile of hay under it. There, the mama made her nest.

To visit those kittens, we had to scoot on our stomachs under the bed and framework of the trailer. When the nest was finally reached, we had to remain lying down, either on our backs or stomachs. It was a difficult situation, but we made occasional visits.

I crawled under there one day and forgot what a tight space I was in. I raised up too far, too fast, and struck my head sharply against a metal beam. It nearly knocked me out, and I lay there for a while moaning, with strange colors dancing in front of my eyes, until I could gather my wits and pull myself out of there. That was the last time I visited those kittens.

One time my sister and I were exploring a blowout where trash had been dumped many years ago. (This was in the Nebraska Sandhills, and people used blowouts as landfills back in those days.) There happened to be an old wood cookstove thrown into this blowout, and we were investigating it. Much to our surprise, there were a half-dozen little wild kittens living in and about it. They were terribly emaciated.

We went back to the house and rounded up some food for them, and when we took it to them, they climbed our pants legs to get to it. They were terribly hungry. Apparently their mother had abandoned them, or perhaps a coyote had got her. Anyway, it was a lucky day for those kittens. We caught them all and took them home with us.

My mother had a sweet story about a kitten experience when she was young. She dressed a cooperative cat in a doll dress and laid her in a nice doll bed she had created in a wooden box. Then Mama went to eat lunch. When she came back, she found that the cat (still dressed) had given birth to a kitten in her doll bed -- just one tiny brand-new kitten. What an exciting and wonderful surprise that must have been!

The kitten in the photos below (taken in 1994) is one we raised on a bottle. His name is Happy, and we still have him. He's a spoiled old rascal. He learned at an early age that he could get almost anything he wanted if he insisted. 

My kids could tell their own stories about spending time with kittens. One thing that just doesn't change much is the special bond kids can make with kittens.

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.