horses
The other day as I was driving to work, I noticed a bird in flight, and how it had to quickly change direction to avoid the car in front of me. Funny as it seems, a thought came to me that if this bird had lived in a different time in history, it would never have had to watch out for the car. in times past, there may have been a wagon or a horse, but if you go back far enough, people had to walk, and so even if they were running, they could not have gone as fast as the car in front of me that was in all reality going pretty slow, by today’s standards. Even the light poles we all take for granted wouldn’t have existed back then. Now lights and wires seem normal to the birds. They land on them as if they were a tree or a rock…or as if they were put there just for them. Often, we think about what life might have been like if we had lived in a different time in history, but rarely do we think of what the animals might have thought as the times changed.
Consider the horses at the time in history when the car was developed. They would often turn away, rear up, or run in the opposite direction when cars first appeared on the road. Then as time passed, the cars seemed no more strange that the person riding on the horses back or the wagon the horse was harnessed to. They were simply another object that the horse now lives in the same world with. And so it was with the bird. Granted the bird had to swiftly make a course change, but that did not mean the bird feared the car. The two of them were just traveling in a direction that put them in the same space at the same time, much like a car accident would.
Animals even get used to the people who share the same space. Take, for instance, the deer that many people…at least in Wyoming, have in our yards, and while they may not let us walk all the way up to them, they do not get up and run out of our yard in fear, but rather, watch us cautiously. Even the squirrels in my yard don’t necessarily run from us. As Bob and I walked out to our garage this morning to go the breakfast, 
a squirrel playing near the garage stopped and looked at us. I talked to it, and still it stood there…not five feet from me. The fear of people had long since let this squirrel, possibly because of the fact that it has lived in this area all of its life, but more likely that my neighbors have long had a habit of feeding the squirrels. I suppose many people would not like the idea of feeding the squirrels, but the ones in our neighborhood don’t seem to damage the trees like the ones in other neighborhoods. Maybe because the neighbors feed them…who knows. Whatever the case may be, I can say that much has changed in the things the animals have seen as time has gone by. Like humans, they have adapted to it…getting used to the changes and seeing them as normal now. Maybe they even think, as I do, “Look how far we have come.”
When my nephew, Eric Parmely was born, my daughter, Amy Royce was babysitting for his mom, my sister-in-law, Jennifer Parmely. It was not uncommon for Eric to go to church with us on Sunday mornings. Once there, in true baby fashion, he would snuggle up in my arms and go right to sleep. It was such a sweet time. It had been a while since I had a baby, and the hour or so that I held Eric while Amy took care of his older brother, JD was very special to me, as I know it was to Amy. There is nothing quite like holding a sleeping baby.
Babies grow up so fast, and before you know it these babies have babies of their own. Eric is no different. Over the past few years, he has married his beautiful wife, Ashley, and the have welcomed two little daughters…Reagan Kaylynn in 2012 and Hattie Joy in 2014. Eric’s family is truly his life. He is a very dedicated husband and father, who works hard and then comes home to spend time with his girls. Eric always wanted daughters, so he is really on cloud nine.
When he isn’t spending time with them, he is spending it working on remodeling their home. Anyone who has ever done that before, knows he has a big job to finish. The home was purchased as a fixer-upper, and since the purchase, they have been working with her dad to make some major changes in the house. It is growing more and more beautiful every day. I had never been in it until this past summer when they held a baby shower in anticipation of Hattie Joy’s arrival, but I had seen pictures before the changes, and I was impressed. They also showed pictures during the renovations, and the transformation was stunning. This will truly be a home they can live in for the rest of their lives, and it’s next door to her parents and their horses, which they love.
When you think of your kids, grandkids, and even nieces and nephews, growing up and becoming responsible 
adults, it is really hard to picture. So often, it seems impossible to think that they would be capable of doing all the normal adult responsible things that they are suddenly doing, like raising a family, and remodeling a house. They will always seem like little kids in your mind, which usually refuses to allow the thought of moving from that little baby that you remember to the man you see before now. Nevertheless, my nephew, Eric Parmely is no longer a baby or even a little boy, but rather a man with two babies of his own. Time waits for no man, and if you blink, much will change…as if you have suddenly gone through a time portal. I guess that is just how it goes when you are looking at the changes from a boy to a man. Today is Eric’s birthday. Happy birthday Eric!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
The other day, I was talking with my cousin, Shirley Cameron on instant message through Facebook, when she brought up an old memory…a blast from our past. Shirley’s mom, Ruth Wolfe was my dad, Allen Spencer’s younger sister, and our families were very close…especially when the Wolfe family still lived in Casper, and we were all little kids. Shirley was the oldest of the three Wolfe siblings, with two younger brothers, Larry and Terry. My older sister, Cheryl Masterson fell in between Larry and Terry, and I was four months younger than Terry. Our three younger sisters, Caryl Reed, Alena Stevens, and Allyn Hadlock were the youngest ones. Back in those days, the fun you had depended on your imagination. I guess we all had imagination, but Shirley really seemed to be able to come up with great ideas. And she was able to carry them out too.
We started talking about the games we played when we were out at their place, like wagon train. Of course, we didn’t have a real covered wagon or a team of horses, but that didn’t mean that we would have to be the 
horses for our pull type wagons, because My aunt and uncle had a tractor, and Shirley knew how to drive it. So we hooked the wagons to the tractor, and headed down the road near their place. Oh sure, sometimes the whole thing would break down, but then what would a wagon train be without a breakdown. Even in the pioneer days, the wagons broke down…right?
Shirley had a set of dishes, and like the wagon trains of the wild west, we brought our own food the long trip…usually. Of course, sometimes we had to improvise. Since we didn’t really have a way to go hunting, we had to make due with what was available to us, and the best cooking we did was when we made mud pies. They probably didn’t taste good, and I’ll never know, because I never tasted them, but we could make them look pretty good…in a hamburger sort of way. I’m sure there were other things like vegetables picked out of Aunt Ruth’s garden, and maybe apples or berries that we came across, whether they were edible or not. No matter what we came up with, real or imagined, we always had a lot of fun playing wagon train or any other game we came up with to play. It was always interesting, but I think in reality it was Shirley who had all the great 
ideas…maybe with a little help from Cheryl.
We were all as close as sisters or best friends, but we were more than that…we were cousins, and that is a forever friend…kind of like a sister is a forever friend. For Shirley, we were like the sisters she never had. Of course, we didn’t really understand what a big deal that was, because we were five sisters. We had never really known a time without our sisters, but Shirley had two brothers, and even though they were close, they weren’t like sisters. Boys think differently than girls. They like to do different things than girls. It just wasn’t the same. Yes, we played the games the boys wanted to play too sometimes, but we sure had a good time playing wagon train with Shirley.
Opinions vary on the matter of child labor, and who can legally have their child work and at what kind of job. Some people take it to the point of saying that children shouldn’t even do chores around the home, which is, in my opinion, silly. It is my thought that children need to be helping out around the house, but beyond that I suppose the water gets a little bit murky. In the distant past, children were farmed out to spend their days working at a job that should have been done by an adult, and the kids really had no childhood to speak of. That is cruel treatment, and the current child labor laws prevent that from happening…unless people are so illegal that they do it without the knowledge of the government.
That said, there is a group of kids…even today that do work every day, and it is not illegal at all. These are the children of farmers and ranchers. I don’t know of any of those kids who don’t help out around the farm or ranch. There are stables to be cleaned, and cows to be milked, and animals to feed. There are also crops to be cared for and planted. These kids work and there is nothing illegal about it. Of course, their parents do have to 
be careful on a few matters. The children must get their schooling, and they have to be working on the parents farm or ranch.
Such was the case for my husband’s great uncles and his grandfather. Many people owned farms when those boys were young, and the kids helped out with just about everything. Most families back then really couldn’t afford to hire the amount of workers that it would take to run the place, so they hired what they had to, and the kids learned to work. I really can’t say that I think this is a bad thing. The kids often like the work…especially taking care of horses…since they often get to ride them too.
If you look back on the lives of our parents and grandparents, you will find that many of them grew up on a farm or ranch, and most of them were working to help out on the place at a very young age. Really, what a wonderful way to bond with the parents. Running a ranch or farm is a big job, and most kids like to do the things their parents are doing, because they want to be just like their parents. If a child is interested in doing the same kind of work their parents do, or take over the family farm, they need to know how to do this from the bottom up. What better way could there be, than to help out as a child.
Of course, not every family owns a farm or ranch, and while they may live in the country, they don’t have that kind of work to do. Still, the kids can and should help out with things. My nephew, Barry Schulenberg, loved helping his grandpa split firewood. He ran the splitter while his grandpa loaded the wood into it. Barry was about 4 years old, but you couldn’t have pulled him away from that job for anything. He was the one who did that, and that was all there was to it. Maybe some people would think he was a bit young, but there was never a single accident when he worked the splitter. I think sometimes we don’t give these kids enough credt. They can often do more than we think they can. They just need to be given a chance.
Long before our nation would find itself fighting to keep the right to bear arms, and long before people felt a serious need to teach their kids about guns at an early age, my Uncle Jim Wolfe was teaching his then two year old daughter, my cousin Shirley how to handle a gun. Much of her memory of that early time came from pictures of the process, but sadly those pictures were lost in a fire, and so live only in Shirley’s memory now. She remembers the picture showing a two year old Shirley standing in front of her dad, who squatted down to better match her size, and he was helping her hold the gun. I’m sure he began teaching her to shoot it then or very shortly thereafter, because from her earliest memory clear through adulthood, she remembers guns being a part of her life. By the time Shirley was old enough to hunt, she was an excellent shot, and the two of them very much enjoyed hunting together.
Hunting was not the only sport they enjoyed together though. Uncle Jim loved to fish, and taught Shirley to fish, build a campfire, and keep it going. Cooking those fish was a skill learned from her mother, however. Aunt Ruth had a way of cooking fish that was a family favorite, and if you wanted the whole family to like the fish, that was how you cooked them.
Shirley tells me that her dad taught her how to ride a horse, which surprised me a little, because her mom was an excellent horsewoman, who had even raced some. The she said that her mom helped with that, and it all made sense. If Shirley is anything like me, and most kids for that matter, she tended to learn easier from one parent than from the other. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love them the same, but your learning style just seems to fit better with one than it does the other. As for Shirley, she got the best training that both could give and ended up being a pretty good horsewoman herself.
Uncle Jim and Shirley were in many ways, inseparable. She would do whatever he was doing, just to spend more time with her dad. That is the way many girls are…daddy’s girls, and since I was much the same myself, I can totally understand. They worked on cars together, much like my daughter, Amy Royce, but the big difference there is that Shirley really got into it and loved doing it, while Amy just loved to watch her daddy.
Uncle Jim told Shirley that he knew the girl he would marry, long before he met her, because he kept dreaming of her. He just couldn’t see her face. When he came home from the war, he went to Twin Falls, Idaho, because 
he knew some people there. It so happened that the people he knew were Aunt Ruth’s cousins, who introduced them. He recognized Aunt Ruth before she even turned around. She was the woman in his dreams. It was love at first sight, and the rest is history. They were married for 46½ years before she passed away. Their love was meant to be.
Uncle Jim taught Shirley to dance by letting her stand on his feet, something I remember doing with my dad, although not to learn to dance. For Shirley though, the love of dancing continued all her life. She even danced on his feet while he was dancing with her mom…now that is a sight I would like to have seen. Shirley’s memories of her dad could go on and on, because they are far too numerous to name here, but suffice it to say that he was in every way, her hero. He made her life and the lives of the family, mine included, loads of fun. As his life wound down, I know it was hard for Shirley to see him in the weakened, forgetful state he was in, but she can always take comfort in the fact that his was a life well lived, and he is now in Heaven dancing with the girl of his dreams again…but waiting for that little one who likes to dance on his feet.
When we first met my brother-in-law, Mike Reed, I don’t think he was really ready for our family. That phase lasted for just about five minutes…and then Mike was showing off his great sense of humor. He loves to pick on his sisters-in-law, and nobody is safe. Mike is quick witted and funny. Half the time, you have no idea what to expect from Mike, but then maybe his teasing is in self defense. I think my sister, Caryl really enjoys that about Mike. A home that has laughter is definitely a happy home…and they are so happy.
With the purchase of a place in Casper, on Poison Spider Rd, we are looking forward to the day when they will finally live closer to us. Mike and Caryl have been spending a lot of their weekends at their new place, tearing down old buildings, and putting up fencing. It just looks better and better every time they come down. Mike is very talented at most carpentry work, as well as lots of other household repair jobs, so he doesn’t need to hire the work done for very many things. He has become one of our go to people for things around my mom’s house too. It can be a real asset to have people in the family that can take care of the things that need done around a house, because it saves you so much money…and Mike often works for food, hahaha!! I think that is how we get back at him for all the teasing he does to us. Just kidding Mike!!
Mike is a very loving family man…devoted in every way. He has made the transition into a blended family better than most stepfathers would have. That is because he really cares about the kids, and now, grandkids that he and Caryl have been blessed with. Now with the addition of the new place and the future addition of horses, I know the kids and grandkids will all love 
to come to their place. That might just apply to a whole lot of the nieces and nephews too.
Caryl and Mike love to go 4 wheeling and camping, and can sometimes be found doing just that with our sister Allyn, and her husband, Chris Hadlock and their family, and our sister, Alena and her husband Mike Stevens. They enjoy sitting around the fire and just enjoying the evening. Caryl and Mike also love to entertain, and have barbeques and get togethers at their place and at their cabin at Seminole Lake. So, we have all had the chance to enjoy their places. Thanks Mike and Caryl!! Today is Mike’s birthday. Happy birthday Mike!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
When a little girl turns ten, so many things are about to change. Somehow, just hitting those double digit years brings a new maturity that practically happens over night. My grand niece, Jaydn Mortensen, has always been an outdoors girl. She may be just ten years old, but she is not afraid of much. For a while now, she has liked to ride horses and snow ski. She has been a rough and tumble girl who doesn’t mind getting dirty once in a while, but as she heads into her preteen years, I have to wonder how much all that is going to change soon. It seems to be about ten years old, that girls start looking at the world a little differently. They start to think about the kind of girl they want to be…outdoorsy, a girly girl, a sports nut…you name it, the possibilities are endless.
At this point though, Jaydn is still very much in love with horses. In fact her grandma, my sister, Caryl Reed says she is a horse fanatic. She has become so good at her riding skills that she is going to be in an exhibit this coming week at the fair in Rawlins. That’s a pretty impressive thing for a young girl to get to do, and her family is very proud of her and her abilities. She is, of course, the apple of her grandpa, my brother-in-law, Mike Reed’s eye. Those girls just wrap their dads and grandpas around their little fingers right away. She is her daddy, Sean Mortensen’s best helper when it comes to fixing things around their place. And her mom, my niece, Amanda, couldn’t be more proud of her girl.
Jaydn also still loves going to the lake, and at the moment is very much into riding around on their 4 wheeler. I find myself quite impressed with the ability of these kids on 4 wheelers. Having never really ridden them much myself, I am amazed at how a kid who can’t even drive yet, can buzz around on those things like they have been driving for years. Like computers, I guess it’s what the kids grow up with. They don’t have the fears that an adult, stepping into that for the first time, might have. To them, it is almost second nature, and that is certainly how it is for Jaydn. As is her love of her dogs. Jaydn seems to love all animals, so maybe she will choose to be a veterinarian…you just never know.
I find myself looking back on the ten years since Jaydn’s birth, wondering where the time has gone. It seems like just yesterday that the little bundle that was Jaydn made her debut into our family. Then she proceeded to wiggle her way into our hearts with her precious little smile 
and her excited about life personality. When she found out that we were her family, she got so excited, like she had found some new gift to be opened. We don’t get to see her very much here in Casper, because she lives in Rawlins with her parents, but she holds a special place in our hearts, and I can’t wait to see where her life will take her, as she heads into these double digit years. Today is Jaydn’s 10th birthday. Happy birthday Jaydn!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
On this, the 130th anniversary of the arrival of my great grandfather, Carl Ludwig Theodor Schumacher in the United States, I have been thinking about how it must have felt for him. He had made the most difficult decision to leave his homeland at the very young age of 25, and board the SS Gellert, leaving from Hamburg, Germany on April 6, 1884 to start a new life, far away from his parents and family in the United States of America. He had been reading letters from his uncle and cousins about how wonderful America was, and in particular, how wonderful Minnesota was, since he was 18, and he had made up his mind to go. He would work seven long years taking care of the horses of a wealthy landowner to earn the $50.00 needed to pay his fare. He knew that travel by ship across the Atlantic could be dangerous, and he might be very homesick for his family, but he was determined to go. He knew, also that it would take years of hard work to build the American Dream that he had in mind for his life. My great grandfather would be successful in building his American Dream, but today my thoughts go not to thinking of his dreams, but rather to how he must have felt as he made such a life change.
A young man of 25 years is really not so grown up that a move half a world away doesn’t feel scary. That kind of a move would be a daunting experience for anyone, no matter how 
old they are. And then to arrive at a place like Ellis Island, or in my grandfather’s case, Castle Garden, since the Ellis Island facility wasn’t built until 1892…not really knowing what you would be put through before you would be allowed to enter the United States. Many people were required to Americanize their names, so it would be easier for them to fit in…forever altering their identity. That was the case for my great grandfather, when his name was changed from Schuhmacher to Schumacher. Still, the immigrants felt like this was a small sacrifice to make for the gain of the American Dream, and in fact, many immigrants felt like that name change was like a rite of passage into this great country.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel that my grandfather must have felt some level of sadness at the change of his name, even though he would use it again when he was married. Still, the census records, and other records show it as Schumacher, thus muddying the waters when it comes to genealogy records. I don’t suppose that was the 
thing my great grandfather was thinking about as he waited for his turn at Castle Garden on April 21, 1884, but as my mind looks back in time to that day that would end up being so very important to my life, it is something that definitely occurs to me. My great grandfather had been through so much to come to this new land filled with opportunity, and I’m quite certain that the overwhelming changes must have made him quite weary, but as he arrived in Minnesota and began the work of building that dream, I suppose that all of the uncertainty of the journey to get where he was, became simply a distant memory. He was home…the home of his dreams.
We often think we know everything there is to know about a person, but what we don’t know would really surprise us. Recently while going through some old pictures, I came across my mother-in-law’s high school yearbooks, and her old scrap book. What I found in there surprised me very much, but that is not so surprising, since I first met her when she was 43 years old. Nevertheless, I expect that some of the things I found out about her, will surprise even her children, because I know they don’t know most of what I discovered.
For all the years I have known my mother-in-law, she was a homemaker, and pretty much a home body. She liked knitting and crocheting, and had done quite a bit of sewing in her time. She canned vegetables, and had raised many a cow for beef for the family. She loved horses, and as a girl, she would have rather been on a horse than pretty much anywhere else. That is all things we all did know about her. But…in high school, my mother-in-law was quite the joiner. Now that surprised me very much. 
Her extra curricular activities included things like office aide and library staff, neither of which would be outside the realm of what I would have expected from her, nor would working on the annual staff or even the school paper, called The Shovel. Any of those things might have been something that I could see her being interested in. Really, other than the horse riding, my mother-in-law had always seemed to me like the quiet type, who didn’t like things that were noisy or too strenuous, so any of these things would fit into my idea box for her personality.
Then, my idea of just who she was, took a major hit. The scrapbook showed pictures of her as a member of the school drill team…the baton twirlers, as many of us would know them. I thought, “Wow!! That just doesn’t seem like her at all!!” To add to my surprise, I found that she was also a member of the pep club!! You can’t even get her interested in 
watching a football game today, so what was this all about? After this, I wasn’t totally surprised to find that she was on the basketball team, but since she as not been very athletic in all the years I have known her…not even wanting to go for a walk, I must say, it was hard to imagine her being out on the basketball court.
By now, my whole view of the person my mother-in-law used to be has been completely shattered, so I began to be prepared for more surprises to come, and she did not let me down in that area either. Since I have never heard my mother-in-law sing, my next big shocker was to find that she was a member of the Glee Club…who would have thought that?? But, it doesn’t stop there. She was also a member of the Dramatics Club. Imagine that, my mother-in-law the actress. I simply cannot imagine her being in a play, but apparently she was. And lest we leave out perhaps one of the most shocking 
things, I was informed that she was into school politics!! In fact, she was it’s leader, being duly elected Senior Class President of the Class of 1949 at Colstrip High School in Colstrip, Montana. She has never been interested in politics that I can recall, and mostly wouldn’t even discuss it much.
I’m sure you think that you have heard all the things about my mother-in-law’s high school years that there could possibly be to tell, but you would be wrong, because the thing that shocked me the most, whether it should have or not, was the fact that while my mother-in-law has never gone by anything but Joann in all the years I have known her, apparently there was a time when she was…Annie. I wouldn’t have believed it myself, but it is there in black and white in her yearbook. Today is my mother-in-law’s 83rd birthday!! Happy birthday…Annie! Have a great day!! We love you!!
I have heard quite often about a trip that my great grandfather, Carl Schumacher took back to the old country…Germany. As far as I know it was the only trip he ever took back there to see his family and also spend some time with my great grandmother, Henriette’s family. The trip was taken in 1907, when my Great Aunt Bertie was just 8 years old. Grandpa wanted to show his family that he was doing well, as was his family, and show them his family, since they had never met them. He had a picture that was taken in front of the house with the women standing there, and the 14 horses they owned at the time along side. The men were holding the horses, and at the end of the line was Albert “trying to hold down” his horse, Beauty, which only he and Mina dared to ride. As it turned out, his family thought that his family must be rich, to own so many horses. They thought it was the right decision to move to America. They must have thought it was easy to get rich in America, when in reality, they weren’t wealthy. The family had what they had because of hard work and a little frugality.
In all, my great grandfather would spend three months in Germany. That is a long time to be away from his family, but it made perfect sense, because getting there was not a quick trip in itself. Traveling by ship both ways was a slow mode of travel, so it made no sense to go if you weren’t going to stay a while. Upon his return, my Great Aunt Bertie went off by herself for a few minutes. She needed to cry a little for the joy of having him back. But while she needed a little cry to release the pent up loneliness she had been feeling, she was also very excited about the things he brought with him. The family back in Germany wanted to send some gifts back for the family with him, and they were magnificent. While Bertie only tells of the things she and Elsa received, I can imagine that the gifts for the rest of the family were equally magnificent.
Nevertheless, everyone was excited about the dolls that were sent for Bertie and Elsa. The dolls were three feet tall with human hair. They were beautifully dressed in pale blue dresses made by a dressmaker in Germany. They had little cloth bracelets of lace at their wrists, and their hands moved separately from the arms. The dresses were trimmed everywhere with tucks and lace of pale blue. On their feet were baby stockings and real leather slippers. The dolls were so big that Bertie and Elsa really couldn’t easily play with them, so they were given 
a special place in the parlor, where everyone could see and enjoy their beauty. When Bertie and Elsa moved to Colorado, many years later, they were unable to take the dolls with them, so they donated the dolls to a Crippled Children’s Home near Jamestown, North Dakota. The dolls were completely renovated and beautifully dressed, and were locked in a glass case for viewing only.
I have to wonder if my great aunts were a little sad when the donated their dolls, for while they were children anymore, the dolls were such a special gift, and had come from so far and with so much love that it must have been like leaving a little bit of their hearts behind too. Still, they must have brought much joy and happiness to the children who got to look at them.
