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It is now very late, long past time for bed, and I have dawdled away the time, reading a book by a preacher from China, Watchman Nee, one of my favorite authors; and when I was done with that, I accidentally spotted the new Reader’s Digest, which I hadn’t had the opportunity to read yet, because one of the kids confiscated it before I even knew it had arrived, and I read several articles and ‘Laughter, the Best Medicine’ before I could get stopped.
But Larry is sawing logs on the couch beside my desk, and my coffee mug is steaming with gourmet chocolate/raspberry coffee, and I’m ready to type!
We still haven’t recovered from whatever this bug is that we’ve been passing around among us; most of us have earaches, swollen glands, sinus infection, bad coughs, headaches, purple skin leprosy, ear lobe, and toe jam. Or various combinations of the above.
Tonight I came home from church early with Caleb, who kept coughing. I’d been holding Victoria on my lap, and she was well entertained with a felt book my sister had made one of the older children. It has little pockets on the back of each page, in which are little felt figures which go with the picture on the following page. I took the figure of Jonah out of the pocket and stuck it into the whale’s mouth. This struck Victoria’s funny bone, and she, who generally never makes a peep during church, snickered.
After the song service was over and the sermon had begun, we realized Caleb needed to be taken home, and I decided to bring him, because my ears and head and tonsils and nose and toenails hurt, too.
I whispered in Victoria’s ear, “You can sit on Daddy’s lap,” then handed her to Larry.
She beamed. She hastily gathered together all her little felt pieces, and I handed the book to Larry.
She was so excited about sitting on her Daddy’s lap and looking at this wonderful book, that she whispered rather loudly, “Buh-wooon!!”, showing him a figure of a little girl holding a balloon.
I tapped her on the head to remind her to be quiet, and she looked back at me with big eyes and went back to playing soundlessly with her book, looking up momentarily to give me a big smile as I got up to exit with Caleb. She’s a sweetheart, she really is.
Several nights this week Caleb has come upstairs, nearly in tears, to tell me his ears were hurting. When Caleb is about to cry over something, you can be sure it hurts.
Hannah crocheted a cute little sailor outfit for a little bear. It fits in the palm of your hand, and its little white ‘buttons’ are no bigger than pinheads. It’s for my niece Susan’s little boy Matthew’s first birthday. Hannah is now working on another one, which she will put a ruffly skirt on, for another little cousin, Jamie, born on the same day as Matthew.
An unknown flower came up in the middle of my carpet bugles, just as if it knew it matched them. Until afternoon, its petals are closed, and it looks just like a tulip--except for its center. From afternoon on, it opens up and spreads out. Perhaps it’s an anemone? The columbine are blooming. They’re one of my favorite flowers—probably because they remind me of the mountains.
Friday morning and afternoon, the entire eastern half of Nebraska fell victim to severe weather, including thunderstorms, hail, lightning, and tornadoes. My mother called about noon to tell us there was a tornado on the ground north of York, about 45 miles south of Columbus, and it was moving north at 40 miles per hour.
“Dear me!” I says to meself, “I mustn’t get caught in a tornado with me hair mussed!”
So I went off to wash it. The tub looked inviting, so I decided to take a bath, too.
I was just rinsing the shampoo out of my hair and preparing to put on the conditioner, when - - - The tornado sirens went off.
“Yipe!” says me. “I mustn’t get caught in the tub in a tornado!”
I rinsed faster. Finishing in just under 45 seconds, I jerked on my clothes and rushed to the door to see if there was anything out there worth all the fuss. Rain was blowing so hard, it didn’t seem to be falling at all--just driving straight from the south, horizontally to the north. I could only just make out the church and school directly across the street, and my mother’s house, across the street and slightly to the north, was nearly invisible. Our trees were folded right over, and the sky was a dark, gunmetal gray.
I ordered the children to the basement. “You might as well clean your rooms while you’re down there,” I told them.
While listening to the radio and the police scanner, I poured myself a cup of coffee and watched the sky. There were several funnel clouds on the outskirts of town, and at least three tornadoes within ten miles. I didn’t used to know that a funnel cloud is not a tornado until it touches the ground.
The sky began to lighten, and the vague shapes of neighbors’ houses were once again discernible, so I went to blow-dry and curl my hair. The school’s Spring Program was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. that evening, and, as the mother of one of the graduates, I knew I would be in line for plenty of camera fire.
We learned from the radio that Columbus had sustained winds of 125 miles per hour! Trees were blown down, a roof was blown off, and other damage was reported; but, actually, we got off better than you might’ve imagined. By late afternoon, the sky was clear.
The Spring Program was enjoyable, with the music being particularly wonderful and inspiring.
You’d never guess how well Caleb likes the music, by his comments shortly beforehand: “Are we going to have a lunch downstairs afterward?”
I nodded. “Yes, we are.”
He contemplated. “How long do the kids hafta sing?” he asked, with some measure of concern.
“Caleb!” I remonstrated. “You sound like you think the eating is more important than the singing and playing!”
He looked a bit abashed. “Well, I really like songs and singing and horns blowing,” he hastened to assure me.
All of the teachers, and my sister, Lura Kay, the principal, were given framed certificates of appreciation for their years of teaching. Somebody asked Hannah, who, from her vantage point on the platform, had a clear view of Lura Kay, what her face looked like when my brother, Loren, called her name.
“Well,” said Hannah, “she looked as surprised as a person can look without changing their expression!”
Saturday we went to Ansley for more parts for the six-door crewcab, which has actually been taken out on the road near Larry’s shop and put through its gears, although it doesn’t yet have its throttle cable hooked up. It chuckled along merrily in fifth gear, not quite 25 miles per hour, not even worried about ‘lugging’, and such like, which the Ford power-stroke would’ve found distressingly troublesome.
Since May 16 was Go-To-Any-State-Park-Free Day and Kids-Fish-Free Day, we took advantage of the occasion by stopping at Sherman Reservoir, where we fished and ate supper. Larry caught a large-mouth bass.
Then Dorcas called, “Daddy, my lure is caught on something.”
“Wiggle it back and forth,” instructed Larry, “and then reel it in a little bit.”
Dorcas wiggled and reeled.
Reclaiming a little bit of line, she frowned in consternation when she lost what she’d recovered and a little bit more besides. She wiggled it. She reeled it. And then suddenly a large fish shot straight out of the water and arched gracefully into the air before diving back in and making like a submarine.
Dorcas gasped. “DADDY!!” she cried in startled astonishment, her voice echoing clearly across the lake, “I’ve got a fish!”
Larry quickly abandoned his pole and came to offer advice and assistance. Dorcas reeled the line in rapidly, then flipped that big fish up onto the rocks along the shore. It was a walleye, a big walleye.
That was all we caught; but we brought them home, Larry cleaned them, and they are now residing in the freezer, awaiting a few more of their cousins to join them, until we accumulate enough to make a worthy supper. Mmmmm! I like to broil them with lots of butter and diced green peppers.
Out on the water were many boats, jet skis, and even a sailboat, although I thought it was much too windy for that latter vessel. Several times I thought they were goners, but the little craft righted itself and sailed valiantly on. An old blue fishing boat anchored a short way out, and the two men aboard cast their lines into the water. The littles thought the boat was backing up, because of the motion of the waves from the wind. The men caught several fish, just in the length of time it took us to eat supper.
Some people came along, about dusk, with a little dog.
“Oh, brother,” I muttered to Hannah, “just look what they’ve done to that poor little Chihuahua—they’ve clipped his ears and tail to make him look like a miniature Doberman Pinscher!”
We tut-tutted.
Guess what. It was a miniature Doberman Pinscher. A ‘Mini-Pin’, they call them. Her name was ‘Jamaica’, and she was eight months old.
(Yes, I did notice that the little dog stepped along smartly just like a Doberman, and not like a Chihuahua, but how was I to know they could shrink Pinschers??)
Guess what we saw at Butch’s Auto Repair and Salvage in Sumner the last time we were there? Our poor old blue crewcab, in decidedly worse shape than it had been in when we sold it.
Leaving Sherman Reservoir, we continued on to Ansley, picked up the parts we needed, and then headed for home. By that time, it was nearly dark. Some twenty miles to the southeast, we passed a sign which said, “Bowman Reservoir State Recreation Area.”
“Next time, let’s check that one out,” I said.
Caleb gazed out the window at the rolling hills and trees, trying to see the lake. “Are there still fishermen out there?” he asked.
“Sure are,” answered Larry. “Some of them will be out there all night!”
Caleb nodded. “Especially that blue boat,” he noted. “’Cuz he was going really slow!”
Today it was so windy that a good portion of the area farmland was flying about in the stratosphere, I think.
Victoria declared, “Is whewy!”
Hannah and Hester were invited to Bobby’s house for dinner.
As Hannah blew in the door, along with a mighty gust of wind, she exclaimed, “Whew! My hair’s a mess!”
Bobby replied loyally, “Your hair always looks nice.” He turned his head and looked at her. “Except now,” he added.
And now I really must go to bed, and take Larry with me. He’s going to have a severe crick in his neck, I’m afraid, from the angle at which his pillow is reclining on the arm of the couch. Aleutia must be having nightmares about giant rabbits eating her milkbones, or something; she’s yowling and garrumphing and snarling in her sleep, and her toenails are clickety-clacking on the floor.
Now, if I can just get my wits about me enough to press the ‘File’ button on this word processor before I hit the ‘Off’ button, like I did last week, losing several pages of type!
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