Me
I met Bob while I was a senior in high school, and we were married a little over a year after graduation. After the wedding, we took honeymoon trip to Estes Park and the Rocky Mountain National Park. Bob and I had a wonderful honeymoon, and while we were gone, my parents took care of our cat.
When we came home, we opened the front door to find that a few things had changed around our house. Our first clue was when we turned on the light and there was something on the switch…shaving cream. Stepping into the living room, we saw that there were torn newspapers all over the floor…and our cat had been having a great time shredding them. So we cleaned things up, laughing about the trick my parents had pulled off. Both our families are teasers and pranksters, so this was nothing new to us.
Then, I started to make dinner. We were going to have fried chicken…one of my favorite dishes, and as it cooked it smelled wonderful. As I was preparing the side dishes, a found that we had another surprise in store for us. All of the labels on our canned goods had been removed, so the side dishes were going to be a bit of a surprise too. In the end, we had fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, and peaches. Now that doesn’t sound too bad, until you add that fact that I like salt, so I used a generous amount on the chicken, and as we bit into it, we discovered that the salt and sugar had been switched. Bob was such a good sport. He told me it wasn’t so bad, and ate at least two pieces of chicken. Thankfully we had used a packaged gravy, so it was good…of course the potatoes were a little sweet. All in all, it wasn’t too bad, and nothing went to waste. Again, we laughed about the whole thing.
The final prank was discovered when we went to bed that night. There was a cup of rice over our door, so my parents got to throw the final handful of rice to commemorate our marriage. They had also short sheeted the bed…which I’m sure you can figure out, and there were a few crackers in there that needed to be vacuumed out, but the funniest thing was the fact that there were a selection of bells, including a cow bell tied to the bed springs…so I’m sure you get the picture on that one. We were too tired to remove those until the next day, so it wasn’t a quiet night, but we did get…some sleep.
I suppose some people might think our homecoming was a mean trick, but we thought it was totally funny, and it has been a funny memory that we have had for the last 36 years. I wonder how many other people can tell you all of the details of that first day home from their honeymoon.
My dad always loved teaching his family about the history of this great country. He and my mom decided early on that they wanted to show us the country we lived in, and they most certainly did. We traveled from one coast to the other, from the north to the south. Dad would stop at every historical marker he could find along the way. We would get tired of stopping at all the markers, but from that we learned about things like the Oregon Trail…a trail that I’m pretty sure I have seen every marker for…but one that I know all about too.
He took us to Gettysburg, and we walked through the battlefield in hushed silence, because you can almost physically feel that this is hallowed ground…that the men who died there…who shed their blood to 
purchase freedom for all men…changed that place. Once you have been there and walked that place, you can never feel the same about a war that threatened to rip our country apart. And yet we remained, strong and determined.
Dad told us about the old west, and the cost of settling this country. Families that traveled by covered wagon, westward to find a better life for their families, because there was room to grow out in the west. Room to farm and ranch and carve out a living that was unavailable in the east, which was much too crowded. The settlers were people who longed to find out what was over the next mountain top. Adventurers who wanted freedom to make their own rules.
He taught us about the gold rush in the Black Hills, and then showed us how so much 
history still remains in the Black Hills. It became a place our family loved to go, and to this day Bob and I go over every year. It just has a hold on me…a draw that I can’t totally explain. I am always in awe there. The beauty of the hills, memorials, the 1880 train, and the old west shows in Keystone. I never get tired of being there.
Dad and Mom took us and later our kids to so many places and showed us so many things. It is something we will always be grateful for, and that we can never thank them enough for. They gave us something no teacher or classroom could have taught us…they gave us a little piece of history.
I came across an old friend on Facebook today…one for whom I had been searching a very long time. It was a relief really, to finally find her. Even though I am still waiting for her to respond to my friend request, I feel like I have to write a little bit about what a wonderful person she was…and what a great family she had. Very rarely could a friend spend the night and have the sisters and the friends get along too, but that is what Gale, her sisters, Lynne, Lea Ann, Michelle, and I did. When I would spend the night at her house, Gale, her sisters and I would have so much fun. They lived out in the country, and actually had two houses. The main house, and the little house where all the girls slept. It was an unusual arrangement, I know, but the girls were all old enough for it to work, and all were good girls.
They had, as I recall, chickens, pigs, cows, and horses on their little farm, and I would help out with the chores when I was there…something I found fun and interesting, but I’m sure that Gale and her sisters would disagree with me on that one. We would ride horses, and lots of other fun things that I couldn’t do living in town, so going to Gale’s family’s place was always a favorite thing to do in my book. I do remember a couple of bad things too…well not real bad, but I remember a time that Gale was riding a horse, and she was heading back into the coral, and the horse was in a hurry I guess, so he got a little too close to the fence, and ran Gale’s leg into the fence. I don’t recall if it bled or not, but it wasn’t broken. I just remember being real scared for my friend right then. Another thing that happened was that one of the cows was in a hurry to eat, and he stepped on my foot trying to get into the barn. Good thing it was a calf and the area was a little muddy. My foot sank into the mud and wasn’t hurt to badly. I don’t even think I ever told Gale that it happened, but I sure remember it. Not my last encounter with a hungry cow, as those who have read my blog for a while can attest. I seem to have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time where cows are concerned. It’s probably best that I don’t spend time around them anymore, lol.
The evenings in the little house were probably the most fun, however. We would watch movies and eat popcorn, and when we would hear the phone ring, then the real fun would begin. You see they had a party line. Now I’m sure most of you don’t even know what that is, but they were somewhat common back then. A party line is when several families share the same line. The odd thing about this is that you can pick up the phone during a conversation…provided you can do it quietly…and listen in on the conversation. And that is exactly what we did. Sometimes it was pretty boring, but sometimes you would hear a boyfriend/girlfriend conversation, and then…well, it could get interesting. After a while, we couldn’t stop laughing, and that would end the eavesdropping for that call. The people talking would start yelling at us to get off…right now!!! And so we did, but we laughed about it the rest of the night. I’ll never forget the great fun I had with Gale and I can’t wait to re-connect with her and her family again…hopefully soon.
My grandchildren have gotten to the age where teasing their grandma is considered a sport. Words spoken in irritation…provided they were not aimed at that grandchild…are suddenly the funniest thing they have ever heard. They love to bring up past irritated sayings and then ask me to repeat the saying…hopefully using the same tone I used at the time they first heard the remark. The problem is that often what struck them as funny is something I gave very little thought to, and therefore barely recall saying, much less the proper tone to use in the repeat performance. Consequently, they ask me to try again using the right tone, and when I don’t know the right tone, they try to re-create the tone for me, so I can then repeat it for them, so they can laugh about it. Mostly, they end up laughing at my feeble attempts to re-create the tone to match their tone.
It’s a good thing that I’m a good sport too, because anything is fair game here. A broken heel and the consequent limping walk…along with the ensuing irritated grumbling, makes for the perfect pick on Grandma item. As does my irritation at the radio speakers in my car when they were going out, and the sound would “get really low, and then BLAST out at you!” And, let’s not forget that my grandsons are now all taller than me, so they think it is pretty funny to manhandle Grandma, because she isn’t strong enough to push them out of the way…much less get away from them. I have been relegated to the basement, as it were, in that all three of the boys are taller, so I have become Little Grandma, which takes me back some to when all of my cousins and I called my great grandmother, Little Great Grandma, a name she didn’t seem to mind either, and now I understand why she didn’t.
There is just something about having your grandchildren lovingly teasing you that has a pleasure all it’s own. You realize that while your children, at this age, were totally embarrassed at the un-coolness of their parents, your grandchildren have no such inhibitions where you are concerned. Somehow in your old age…not that I’m old, mind you…but somewhere in what seems to your grandchildren to be your old age, you have somehow managed to retain or maybe recover your coolness!! And the truly amazing thing is that all you had to do to achieve such a great accomplishment was say something silly in the middle of an argument like, “We are sooooooo done here!”
Bob and I walk 2 hours a day about 5 days a week. In the winter, we walk at the mall because it is too cold and windy outside. But in the summer, we walk on the trails around town…with our main weekday trail being the one we can access by walking a block down our street. Walking on that trail as often and as long as we do, we have had a chance to get to know the people that are on the trail daily like we are. We have built a friendship with them. If we don’t see them for a while, we wonder where they are, and even ask about them to others who also know them. When we were absent from the trail for a time, many people wondered about us too. One friend even drove by our house to see if we had moved or something. It is comforting to know that people notice your absence and try to check it out. The absences had always been simple to explain, and nothing serious…until now.
When Bob and I were at Walmart on Sunday doing our grocery shopping, we ran into a friend, Tina from the trail. She always walked the trail with her dog…Toby. When we told her we hadn’t seen her in a while, she told us that her Toby Dog had died, and she had not felt up to walking much without him. I couldn’t believe my ears. Her dog was so sweet. I felt such a loss…and Toby wasn’t even my dog, so what must she be feeling.
Toby was an old dog, and had been the victim of other dogs who wanted to attack him at times, so he was a little nervous around people he didn’t know…especially if they had a dog. We didn’t have a dog, and Tina is the girlfriend of a friend of Bob’s, so we would always stop and talk for a minute when we passed each other. The first time we saw her on the trail, she introduced us to Toby. We petted him and from that day forward, we were accepted by Toby as a friend. The minute Toby would see us on the trail, he would step up his pace a little in anticipation of the coveted petting he was going to receive.
It was just a minute or two several times a week, and yet finding out that I won’t see Toby again, made me very sad. Pets wiggle their way into the hearts of their owners every day, but it is unusual for someone else’s pet to find their way into the heart of someone he only saw for, maybe 15 minutes a week. Nevertheless, that is exactly what happened, and I will miss Tina’s Toby Dog very much.
When your brother-in-law is a cop, and 6’4″ to top it off, you might as well know that you are going to be picked on…a lot! The year was 1993, and the event was my daughter Corrie’s graduation party. The party had progressed to the point of cutting the cake, when Chris decided that this was the perfect moment to pick on me. He grabbed my hands and hand cuffed them behind my back and promptly walked away. Of course, I started trying to convince him to unlock the cuffs, but he told me that he didn’t have the key. The party was put on hold for a few minutes while my sister and I tried to get him to unlock the cuffs. For a while there, I really thought I might have to try to cit the cake with my hands behind my back. Finally, Chris unlocked the cuffs, laughing the whole time at how easily he could overpower me.
Since I am only 5’2″, overpowering me was not too difficult for my brother-in-law whose more that a foot advantage over me in height gave him the clear advantage. This was proven quite effectively when Chris decided to help me out with my height problem…by picking me up and depositing me into a tree in my parents front yard. I’m sure he was trying to be helpful…don’t you think? You don’t? Well, you are probably right.
Through the years Chris has picked me up by my feet and held me upside down, held me in different sorts of police holds for subduing criminals, and put me upside down in a chair, just to name a few different torture methods, all in good clean fun, of course. He would never hurt me or anyone else who happened to be his next victim, but he could definitely show you who was boss. And this was proven quite effectively whenever he decided to pick on me or my sisters. All I can say is, I’m sure glad he was never arresting me for real, because I don’t think I would want to go up against him if he weren’t just teasing.
I remember a visit to my birthplace, Superior, Wisconsin, that my family took when I was a little girl. My Uncle Bill and his family lived up there and still do today. Uncle Bill was and is an interesting sort. He has always liked to collect things. I remember that he had a slot machine in his basement, years ago. Of course, no one was allowed to use it that wasn’t family…a guy could get into trouble otherwise. He collected guns and coins, and he is fanatical about the family history, which I suppose is how I got started writing about the good old days. Uncle Bill got me interested in my past, and my daughters, Corrie and Amy got me into blogging. Writing about the past just seemed to be a good fit for me.
As I said, Uncle Bill liked to do things a little differently. I remember going out to pick blueberries and experiencing the difference you can only get when you eat blueberries that have just been picked. It is hard to describe how amazing that taste is.
Uncle Bill was a history buff too. He has always been interested in the shipwrecks in Lake Superior. He could probably tell you about every one. When Bob and I went up to visit the year after our marriage, he told us about many of those wrecks, and how many were visible from the air. That seems odd to me considering the fact that Lake Superior is the deepest of the Great Lakes.
But, one of the most unusual things that Uncle Bill did was a complete surprise and totally delightful to all of us. We had gone for a visit, and he was going to take us out for dinner. When we got to the restraunt, it was not what we expected. It was an ice cream shop. We looked at him in amazement, and he announced that we were having an Ice Cream Supper. So, we went in and Uncle Bill said to order whatever we wanted. We had a wonderful time and supper was delicious. Uncle Bill insisted on everyone eating their fill of ice cream. So, when we were all full, Uncle Bill said, “Now…what do you want for dessert!!”
If you were ever a kid, you have played this one…the secret clubhouse. Ours was located in the attic of my parents garage. It was enclosed so we could walk around, provided we were careful not to step between the rafters and thereby through the floor. We spent a lot of time up there in the secret clubhouse…friends and sisters alike. It was just a great hangout. Of course, we had to have a president, vice president, and secretary/treasurer. Not that any of these positions really had any kind of an official job, except possibly the secretary part. She had to take the minutes of the meetings. Not that much ever happened at the meetings, besides maybe deciding on the treats for the next meeting. The main thing I remember about the offices of our secret meetings is that the names of the officers were written on the walls of the attic. They are probably still there to this day.
Secret club meetings can be held in a variety of places, because lets face it, not everyone can meet in the attic of their garage. Some are held in bedrooms, some outside…sometimes in a box, and some even in spare bathrooms…anywhere that kids can hide from the rest of the world and spend a little time in a fantasy world. They might pretend to be spies, which I know we did, or they might play school, which always strikes me as funny, since they don’t seem to want to go to school in real life. I’m not sure what makes it different in the world of make believe, except maybe the recess is a lot longer. Or they might even plan a play to be presented to their parents…or the neighborhood…for a fee, of course, since the dues weren’t ever really enough for the treats needed at the meetings. Thank goodness for mom or grandma for providing the necessary treats for the meetings, but our goal was always to be able to make that all important trip to the store to get special treats.
My girls had their secret club meetings, as did my grandchildren. It was always fun to watch them…from a distance, of course…no adults allowed you know, and remember when that was me, my sisters and friends holding our secret meetings and planning whatever it was that was on the agenda that day. I would love to show you pictures of those meetings, but everybody knows that there are no cameras allowed in the secret club meetings!! It just isn’t done. In fact the only evidence of secret club meetings is a few scattered and discarded notes, and maybe some empty dishes to point out the fact that the secret members were here. And once the cleaning lady came through, no evidence at all.
Halloween is here, and all the kids will be out tonight dressed up as whatever their imaginations can come up with. I personally like the cute costumes better than the scary or evil ones. I always have. I was never into horror movies, and I don’t like scary things, so it just stands to reason that I like the cute costumes.
My grandchildren have outgrown…for the most part…the trick or treating part of Halloween, but during their time they have been everything from a pea pod as a baby to a pirate, because it’s not wimpy. Probably my favorite for Chris was the Lion King, for Shai was the Lady Bug, for Josh was Spiderman, and for Caalab was the Pirate. They have been so many things that is really is hard to decide and of course, the years all run together and unless you are looking at the pictures, you may not recall.
One of the cutest costumes I saw that was not my own grandchild, was last year when we had the cutest little pink Lego Block come to our house. She was about 3, and just precious. I had to ask her parents for permission to get her picture. I won’t show it here, because that is not my right, but take my word for it, she was a cutie and her mom had done an excellent job on her costume.
I like talking to the cute little ones and asking who they are…not who they really are, but who they are pretending to be, because sometimes you can’t tell, and sometimes they have an entirely different idea of who they are from what their costume says they are. Halloween can be a fun time for kids to play a little make believe. I hope everyone has a great time this year. As for me…we are going bowling.
When my sister, Cheryl and I were in…oh, probably junior high, she had been up late watching television, when she came in and woke me up, telling me that we were going to watch scary movies. I’m sure it must have been a Friday night, as our parents wouldn’t have allowed us to be up so late on a school night. Of course, gullible me…I got up to watch scary movies with my sister…even though I had to be the biggest chicken on earth at that time in my life.
Little did I know that Cheryl had been up for a while, and apparently something had scared her a little bit too, so she wanted company. Or maybe she just figured she could scare me. I’ve never really decided which it was. That said, we got up and started watching some show…the name of which I don’t recall. After getting to the point of knowing very well, that I would not be able to go back to bed…no matter what, we began to hear some strange sounds.
Cheryl said that she thought Linda Little Trees was outside, because she could hear a voice that sounded like hers, only scary. Now for those of you who don’t know, Linda Little Trees was an Indian squaw on an old Western movie. I’m not sure which one, but I believe it was “Three Guns For Texas” with Shelley Morrison. The parts she played, were in no way scary, but for some reason the lateness of the hour and the show we were watching made whatever it was that we heard seem like some horror version of Linda Little Trees.
In reality, it was a Siamese cat outside that was the real problem. He was making the weird meowing sounds that Siamese cats do, and it sounded like he was saying “Linda Little Trees.” Or at least that was what Cheryl told me, and I was too scared to argue. The next thing we knew someone was walking up on the porch and we heard a thump. Of course, both of us started screaming, and I’m quite sure the paper boy freaked out.
My dad, on the other hand, had had enough. He jumped out of bed, and said, “What is going on out 
here?” After frantically telling Dad about the whole terrible ordeal, he promptly opened the front door and we all trooped outside to see the cat making the very sound we heard, and the newspaper on the porch. Then he told us to shut the TV off and go to bed.
I still don’t know if Cheryl was as scared as I was that night, or if she was making the whole thing up because her little sister was pretty gullible and it was fun to scare her. All I know is that since Dad said we had to go to bed…I was real glad that it was pretty light at 4:00 in the morning. Otherwise, I know I wouldn’t have been able to sleep a wink.
