Last Monday, the littles all decided Mama needed some new bouquets, although she has so many pretty flowers in her room there is hardly room for another. They took her bouquets in little glasses ...crepe myrtle, petunias, wild sunflowers, moss rose, and purple coneflowers.
Tuesday when I was cleaning Joseph’s room, I asked Caleb to crawl under the bed (it’s a captain’s bed, and there are big storage cupboards underneath) and get all the jeans out so I could sort them. I had been getting out what I could reach, and had not noticed any dusty smell, so I didn’t even think of it--but it was not five minutes before that poor little boy was wheezing and telling me he could hardly breathe. I quickly gave him a couple of puffs from his inhaler, and a spoonful of Albuterol syrup. He didn’t feel well, the rest of the day. I must never do that again. Asthma frightens me... and I felt so bad that I had caused his breathing distress.
One day I got a ‘message bottle’ in the mail from a friend of mine, complete with a message from her, sand, and a rubber baby alligator.
Victoria saw that his mouth was open...and he was wiggling... “Oh, take the lid off quick,” she exclaimed, “He can’t get any oxygen!”
Larry got off work early, so I asked him if we could go fishing. After all!--we had not gotten to do a very good job of it, at Chadron State Park. He thought that would be a marvelous plan, and headed out to get the fishing poles. When he hadn’t come back in for a long time, I went to see what he was doing...
Lo and behold, he and Teddy were collecting life vests, Teddy’s new inflatable raft, and oars--because they were going swimming! And Joseph was going too. No girls allowed.
“But we’ll be back in an hour or less!” Larry assured me.
Mmm-hmm.
I went back to washing clothes. After a little while, I went to visit Mama. In telling her all about the day’s activities, I mentioned that Larry, Teddy, and Joseph had gone swimming, which was probably not the thing to tell her, until I could also tell her that they had come safely home again.
Meanwhile, Dorcas decided to make her favorite vegetable dish: green beans mixed with cream of mushroom soup, with french-fried onions on top. We ate...and about the time I decided that something dreadful really had happened to the swimmers, they came home.
Have you ever experienced that phenomenon, wherein you stand beside a pond and watch someone of whom you are considerably fond dive in, then swim underwater ...and not resurface for what seems an eon, until you are positively certain he has drowned, and you have no idea what to do about it, because you cannot swim--and then he pops up on the other side of the pond, hale and hearty, grinning at you ......... and you wish you were close enough to dunk him till he is spluttering, just for doing that to you? Or perhaps, like Bill Cosby, you wait...and wait...and wait for your child to come home...and he’s later than you thought he would be, and you finally decide he has had a bad accident, and is in a hospital somewhere breathing his last gasp--and then he pulls into the drive ......... and, just like Mr. Cosby, you run out to the car to meet him, and you say, “So glad you’re home. Now come stand in front of the car, son, because I’m going to run over you.”
At 9:30, Larry decided we should go fishing.
“It’s too late,” I said.
But by 9:45 he had the fishing poles in the Suburban and was rounding up the littles (the bigs were already heading for bed).
Victoria, upon being told where we were going, said excitedly, “I know exactly how to go fishing! I just turn the thing round and round, and pretty soon, there’s a fish splatting around in the water, and he’s fastened on my hook!”
I started to laugh, and she laughed too and said, “Isn’t that funny, that little kids like me can fish so well?!” She giggled. “I just let Daddy throw my hook in the water, and when he lets me wind it up, I catch fish!”
At 10:04 we pulled up to Lake Stop, the convenience store by Lake North that sells worms and minnows and all sorts of other bait and flies--and they had just closed, four minutes earlier. Dumb people! With all the campers and fisherpeople at the lake, they ought to know they would be doing a brisk business till much later than 10:00! We drove to the nearest 24-hour convenience store, Corner Stop, and Larry went in and bought a can of corn and a small can of Vienna sausages. I drooled over those sausages all the way back out to Lake North.
While waiting for Larry (it took him precisely 17 minutes to decide what the fish of Lake North would like for their midnight snack), Victoria sang. To the tune of ‘The Farmer In The Dell’, she sang, “The farmer’s on the goat, the farmer’s on the goat; Hi-Ho, the Dairy-O! The lamb’s on the farmer.”
We found a good spot along the Lake and set about fishing in earnest. When Victoria scrambled out of the Suburban, she knocked into Caleb’s knee.
“Aaaaa!” howled Caleb, “My knee just got tortured!”--and then he wondered why everyone laughed.
I, having left behind my sweater because I’d been so hot all day I really suspected I’d never be cold again in my entire life, was cold. Not having a fishing license anyway, I took a few pictures, videoed the big orange moon rising behind the pine trees across the water, and then found myself a cozy little nook amongst the rocks at the water’s edge, and did my best to squeeze all the way into it. The rocks were still warm from the heat of the day, and I might have gotten warm, if I wouldn’t have had to keep scrambling back out of the nook in order to help Victoria scramble either up or down the rocks.
In the first fifteen minutes alone, I saw at least half a dozen falling stars, and they kept right on flying across the sky the rest of the time we were there. Several planes flew overhead, so high we could not hear the engines. Fish jumped, far out on the water, and Hester managed to catch two large grasshoppers for her bug collection.
And that’s all we caught.
When we prepared to leave, we shared what remained of the Vienna sausages.
Canned Vienna sausage is not as good as it looks. Gerber meat sticks are just as good.
Maybe even better.
Wednesday I finished getting all the rest of the clothes out of Joseph’s room--out of the drawers, and off the floor. Now that was more work than you’d suspect.
When I went to see Mama, she was in the dining room. She said she was done eating--but her plates and dishes were still nearly full, it looked like. She said the nurses had helped her walk all the way down the hallway from her room to the dining room. The nurse Julie wheeled her back to her room, then helped her walk from her wheelchair in the hallway to the chair in the far corner of her room. She was a bit out of breath after all that, but she does want to be strong enough to walk again.
Caleb was still having troubles with asthma, so Larry stayed home from church with him. It was just as well, because Larry has needed a haircut for a couple of months, and his little trim jobs are just not doing the trick. Every time he asks me to do it, it is either so late I can’t see straight, or I have recently tried to chop off a finger. And every time I remember and could do it, he is busy or falling asleep; and it is mighty hard to cut the hair on a bobbing head. (I’ve tried.)
Caleb was looking at a picture of Ottawa’s Parliament Building, showing the Changing of the Guard. There was a close-up of a Foot Guard, all decked out in his scarlet tunic and towering black bearskin fez (that’s not right; what are they called?).
“Why do they wear those things?!” asked Caleb.
“So that the enemy will think it’s their hair and shoot too high,” explained Hester.
Thursday evening, we went to Stanton to go fishing at Maskenthine Lake. There was a beautiful sunset, and the robins and the kingbirds were singing like everything. The fish were jumping all over the lake, but none wanted our bait, thank you. After a short while of fishing, the children went to play at the playground nearby.
Before long, they came running back, telling me about somebody who had shined a bright light in their faces and threatened to call the sheriff if they didn’t go away right that minute. I took Victoria and Caleb by the hands, Lydia came too, and we walked back to see what was the trouble. They hadn’t been able to tell who the person was, because she (they thought it was an old lady) kept the light trained right in their faces. I no sooner stepped onto the lawn across the parking lot than the light was shined into my face, and there it stayed. I looked at the ground and kept right on walking.
“Who goes there!?” squawked a cantankerous old voice.
Sir Lancelot of the Round Table, I thought, but I didn’t answer, and kept walking.
It was an old lady in a ruffled night cap. A man from another camper had come out, too. The old lady told me the children had been making an unearthly lot of noise, and it was quiet time after 10:00!!!
As it turned out, it was probably a group of foul-mouthed teenagers at the fishing dock who were causing the commotion. The man had heard older voices, and obscenity, too. The four children had been sitting quietly on the swings, and the only one who was saying anything when the woman came out with her light was Victoria.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“It’s at least ten after ten!” huffed the woman.
Her pudgy grandson raised his arm and held it in front of her light. “It’s 10:01,” he knowledgeably informed us.
“So it was probably ten till ten when this happened,” I said.
The woman got huffier than ever. “Well, I’m sure his watch is off; it’s just a toy clock.”
The boy took offense. “No, it’s not!” He puffed out his chest. (Puffiness and huffiness ran in the family, it seemed.) “It’s real, and it’s not a clock, it’s a watch!”
The man then proceeded to give me many long drawn-out horror stories about bogeymen--usually those ‘south of the border ruffians’--who could come sneaking into the park from all angles and make off with one of the children before I ‘d know anything happened. “I have 400 kids under me, and we have to watch out for their welfare all the time!”
The woman added to his squib at intervals.
“If your primary concern was the children’s welfare,” I said to her, “Then why were you so rude and unkind to them as to shine your light right in their faces, so they couldn’t see where they were going, and threaten to call the sheriff?”
“I only shined the light at them for a moment, to see who they were,” she said snippily.
“No, that’s not true,” I said. “And you did the same thing to me.”
“Well, I didn’t know who you were!” she snipped. “Someone could have been coming behind you with a gun!”
“You could see perfectly well I was just a lady with small children,” I answered. “You aren’t nice.”
The woman snorted, “The superintendent will tell you, he has more trouble with forty-year-old women than with anyone else, and he has 400 kids under him.” (How did she know how old I was?)
“Well, I don’t know about that,” allowed the man, not quite willing to carry things that far.
“You know,” I said to the woman, “I came here with the purpose of apologizing for disturbing you, if that was what happened; but you have wiped away all my desire to do so. I’m not about to, now. You are the one who owes the children an apology.” I turned to the man and asked, “Are you a superintendent?”
He looked down his nose at me. “I’m in administration,” he said snootily. “I have 400 kids under me.”
Hmmm.
After listening to yet another alarming yarn, I asked, “Are you a principal?”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “Yes. I have 400 kids under me.”
“Are you the principal of a high school?” I questioned further, wondering why he thought his job so declasse and lacking in high station.
He wiggled around. “No,” he answered briefly.
“Grade school?” I pressed.
“Um, yes,” he responded reluctantly. “I have 400 kids under me.”
The old woman made a couple of derogatory remarks about children in general, and children on playgrounds in particular, and I reiterated, “You’re not nice,” and then “You’re not nice at all.”
She finally had enough of being told that, and went stalking (or waddling, as the case may be) off to her camper, throwing back over her shoulder, “Well, it's quiet time.”
The man then quit trying to act like he was on her side, and said to me in a chummy, conspiratorial tone, “I don’t like what she did with that flashlight; I don’t agree with that sort of thing.”
He then told a variety of anecdotes about this and that, and when I tried creeping away without his noticing, he came too, still talking.
I was getting sick to death of one especially lengthy and Herculean saga, so I suddenly pointed over his head and said, “There’s a falling star!”, hoping to run like crazy as soon as he looked--but that only started him on a tale about stars and constellations and light pollution, along with the pros and cons of campground lighting.
All of a sudden a woman pulled a curtain away from a window of his nearby tent camper and announced stridently, “Bedtime!”
“What do you want?!” retorted The Principal.
“Bedtime!” repeated The Fishwife. “I want to go to bed!”
“Well, go ahead and go, then!” answered her husband. “Nobody’s keeping you from it!”
I hastily took my leave from Mr. and Mrs. Harpy Principal Shrew Fishwife.
Friday I finally finished Joseph and Caleb’s room. From now on, if I find Joseph’s suit slung over the corner piece, I shall confiscate it and make him pay me to get it back again. How much shall I charge? (evil chuckle) There are still piles and piles of clothes in the shelf room that must be sorted, however.
That afternoon, I visited Mama with Caleb and Victoria. I thought if I arrived at 4:30, I wouldn’t be interrupting her dinner--now that they take her to the dining room every day, I try not to arrive at that time. But evidently the nurses were all having Big Important Weekends and wanted to leave early, so they had patients in the dining room when I arrived, and were just getting Mama ready to take there, too. When they saw that we were there, one nurse went to inquire from a Consequential SomebodyOrOther if Mama could eat in her room so long as I was going to be there. Permission was granted, so Mama got to stay put, which she prefers anyway.
Ever since she said to one of the nurses when they brought her a large plate of food, “I just can’t swallow all of that,” they’ve acted like she meant she can’t swallow things properly, to her consternation. It has been since then that they have thickened all her drinks, including her water. They thicken it with lemon-flavored gelatin of some sort. She is awfully tired of it, and wishes for a cold glass of plain old water.
That night, we packed and got ready to go to Ponca State Park
, in the very northeast corner of the state. It was much better camping weather than it was last week. Dorcas and Teddy didn’t go; their jobs usually prevent their coming with us.
, in the very northeast corner of the state. It was much better camping weather than it was last week. Dorcas and Teddy didn’t go; their jobs usually prevent their coming with us.While Larry was loading the bikes onto our trailer, Victoria suddenly said, “0oooo! Look! There’s a hopping fly!”
“That’s just an icky ol’ cricket,” Caleb informed her.
She stared at it, rumpled her nose, and backed up fast. “Ewww, yuck,” said she.
Keith and a friend stopped by to show us the fish they’d caught at Kluever Lake. He had seven big largemouth bass, and offered to give them to us.
“Sure!” I said. “But I can’t clean them now; if you’ll clean them and freeze them, I’ll fix them for dinner Sunday.”
Keith made a face.
“Oh, all right,” I said, laughing, “You like to go fishing, but you don’t like to eat fish. I’ll eat them for you, and fix something else for dinner Sunday.”
“Yes, that sounds better!” said Keith.
I drove most of the way. When Larry pulled to the side of the road so that we could switch places, Caleb popped up and said, “Is this where we’re going to stay?”
We got there at midnight, and wound up pitching our tents in between several steep hills, the steepest of which we had to traverse to get to the restrooms and shower rooms. Ah, well...we doubtless needed the exercise. It was rather chilly that night, and, wouldn’t you know, I’d forgotten my sweater. But I don’t have that smidgen of Sioux in me for nothin’! I got out the blanket my Uncle Don wove with red yarn, wrapped it around me Indian style, and there I was then, snug as a bug in a rug. Larry lit the lanterns. I like lanterns; they are so bright, and even provide a bit of warmth, into the bargain.
Something large came flying with a rush to one of the lanterns, circling around it and flapping noisily.
“Look, there’s a bat!” I said, thinking it was after the few bugs that were braving the coolness and fluttering around the light. Then, “No, it’s a moth! Get it, quick, for Hester’s collection!”
Larry rushed over and snatched it, while I grabbed a bag from the Suburban. I wonder what kind of a moth it is? It has big, light-green wings, with variegated brown spots on the upper and lower wings, and curved tails on the wings.
Oooh! I found it in my Insect Directory! It’s a Luna Moth.
The kids were all intrigued (and didn’t like) the multitudes of granddaddy longlegs (aka harvestmen) that crawled all over the place. Joseph thinks spiders are horrible, hideous, poison-fanged, cannibalistic beasts of the phylum Arthropoda, class Arachnida, order Araneae, suborder Labidognatha (he had to learn all that in science class) that would eat a small person for breakfast at the drop of a hat.
We trekked off to the showers in the pitch blackness, with only a dim flashlight for illumination. Joseph went ahead of us on his bike, and I fully expected to hear a loud crash any time, because he was carrying his bulky dufflebag on one shoulder, a flashlight in one hand, and the road was steep and curved and bumpy. And it was dark. But Joseph saved the crash for the next day.
We all had a big handful of wheat thins for our midnight (or after) snack.
“Me mores?” asked Hester upon finishing hers, which is what she used to say when she was only one year old and wanted more of whatever it happened to be.
[One day I said to her, “Can you say, ‘May I have some more, please?’“ and she parroted, “May I have some more, please?” and Larry howled, “Oh, no! You ruined it!”]
I took a handful out of the box, closed it, and tucked it into the corner. “That’s enough,” I said, “We’ll save the rest for tomorrow.”
I ate my crackers. It wasn’t nearly enough; I wanted more. I stealthily reached for the box...silently opened the flaps...
The plastic rattled.
Hester popped straight up, and Lydia was not far behind. Victoria giggled and sat up, too. I flung a couple of crackers in Hester’s direction...then Lydia’s ...then Victoria‘s...then Larry’s--and in the melee of everyone giggling (that was the girls, not Larry) and diving after their crackers, I accidentally ate three instead of two.
Larry turned off the lantern, and everyone started drifting off to sleep.
A coyote howled, and an entire band of them launched into song. A more distant pack answered, and they all set to baying and yipping together. What a cacophony!
“What is it?!” hissed Hester.
“Coyotes,” I answered quietly.
“Isn’t that neat?!” she exclaimed.
Very early in the morning I was awakened by three raucous blue jays, one of whom was perched directly over the tent, having an animated argument. Soon a spiral of nuthatches began discussing possible routes of entwining praxis, and a chatter of chickadees fluttered in to offer advice. Not far away, a cardinal whistled and sang his heart out, and yellow-shafted northern flickers and red-headed woodpeckers vigorously remodeled their lofty headquarters, jackhammering like anything. Yellow warblers warbled, as warblers are oft wont to do, and wood thrushes and brown thrashers added their melodious songs to the congregation.
Yes, I like going camping.
I looked around at my sleeping family, peeked out the window to ascertain that Joseph’s tent was still sleeping (if either Joseph or Caleb are not sleeping, neither is the tent), snuggled back into my pillows, and went back to sleep.
The next time I awoke, the sun had topped the bluffs and was shining brightly on the uppermost branches of the trees. I quietly got up, tiptoed to one of the windows, and roused the entire tenthold (similar to a household, but in closer quarters) zipping it down. I pulled down the zipper on the front doors, and then zipped open my bag, searching for toothpaste, toothbrush, curling iron, comb, and hairspray.
Yes, I like going camping, but I intend to be civilized whilst I’m at it, thank you.
Larry got the bikes and Victoria’s scooter off the trailer. We didn’t bring Victoria’s bike, because she’s only recently learned to ride, and the hills in Ponca State Park are very steep. Soon the children were having a marvelous time whizzing up and down the hills. Larry hooked the bike cart to his bike and took Victoria up one of the hills, being obliged to stand up and pedal hard in first gear to make it all the way up.
Then everyone parked their bikes and we drove to the little town of Ponca to get some milk for breakfast. We washed the Suburban and headed back to the park, eating hard-boiled eggs and drinking chocolate milk. Joseph didn’t want any eggs ...but he gladly ate the Rice Krispy bars with chocolate chunks. He thought he would get by without eating any cereal--but his mother vetoed that. He’s a junk food junkie, I tell you. We must get him down and sit on him in order to force him to eat things good for him.
Soon the children were flying down the hills on their bikes again, doing their utmost to make my hair stand up on end. There were corners through thickly wooded areas where I knew they could not see approaching vehicles... and they must’ve gotten up to 35 and 40 mph on the downhill slopes.
“A car is coming,” I warned one. “Here comes a pickup,” I told another. “Slow down,” I instructed Caleb. “Stay on the other side of the road,” I directed Hester. “There’s gravel on the road right there,” I advised Lydia. “There’s a motorhome coming,” I said.
CRRRRRRAAAAASSSSSHHHH! ! ! ! !
I whirled around and looked up the hill just in time to see someone on the scooter having a first-class crackup directly in front of a Suburban.
The scooter skidded along on the pavement before stopping, and the boy who’d been riding it went flying onto the grassy bank, and rolled and tumbled three or four times in rapid succession.
“Oh, Caleb!” I cried, but it was Joseph.
I’d thought it was Caleb, because he was all curled up, looking smaller than he really was; but I should have known nobody but Joseph could have executed such a spectacular wreck.
To my amazement, he was back up on his feet before he ever stopped rolling. His new white polo shirt would never be the same again, but at least the boy was still in one piece.
He grinned sheepishly at the people in the Suburban, and they started on up the hill, a bit slower than their previous pace, doubtless rather shell-shocked.
“What happened?” I asked, when Joseph arrived back down at our tent.
“I was showing Victoria how to ride her scooter,” he explained, making us laugh in spite of our fright. “I came barreling around the corner, and that lady, who’d seen the other kids riding on the other side of the road, moved over to my side just then. I decided I’d rather tangle with the ground than the Suburban, so I bailed. But I thought I’d be able to stay on my feet and run! I didn’t know I was going that fast.”
“What did that poor lady’s face look like?” I asked, after inquiring into the extent of his injuries, which required a dose of triple-antibiotic salve.
“She looked sort of horror-struck,” said Joseph, and we couldn’t help but laugh again.
Larry and I decided to park all the bikes, collect everybody into the Suburban, and go sight-seeing before anything worse happened. We went up to the point where, standing high on the Nebraska banks of the Missouri River, one can see South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. Colorful blocks of farmland stretched out as far as we could see, and silos and elevators and big red barns glistened in the early sunlight. Twenty miles to the west, the white watertower of Vermilion, South Dakota, gleamed brightly.
“Why aren’t those cows drowning?!” asked Caleb in amazement, pointing out some cattle that were in the water on the other side of the river.
We had told the children that they must stay away from the banks, because the river flows with deceptive swiftness and power, and drops off abruptly close to the water’s edge. The Missouri claims the lives of excellent swimmers every year.
“Cows know just how far they can go--and besides, they are very good swimmers,” I assured him, wondering if cows alongside mighty rivers ever drown.
We drove down near the boat docks and went fishing. As usual, we caught nothing. I spent the time taking videos and pictures of the family, the scenery, and the gazillions of butterflies that were flitting from flower to flower, everywhere we looked. Fat bumblebees buzzed busily about, sharing the blossoms with the butterflies.
After an hour or so of that, we went back to our tents, packed up, and departed. We drove to Dead Timber State Recreation Area south of West Point, where there is a pretty fishing lake supposedly stocked with several different kinds of fish. The belted kingfishers were having a bang-up time of it, but, as always, the Jacksons didn’t catch a thing. So we came home.
After everyone went to bed, Larry and I went to the grocery store for supplies for the next day’s dinner. I then made deep-dish apple crumb pie, putting in a carton of yogurt, sharp cheddar cheese, sliced almonds, and pouring the last of our caramel apple dip over the apples. I put sharp cheddar cheese in the crust, too, and a layer of cornflakes on it before adding the apples. Mmmm…one of the best apple pies I’ve ever made.
Robert has been preaching from the book of Joshua for the last couple of weeks. That’s one of my favorite stories; I really love that book of the Bible.
The whole family came for dinner, and we had stuffed peppers, apple sauce, and apple pie ala mode. Larry, Dorcas, Caleb, Victoria, and I went to the hospital to see Mama, but she was asleep, so we came home again. We were too tired to go back later; we just tumbled into bed for a nap before church.
Afterwards, we were looking at the video I’d taken on our little camping trip when Socks came in the window stinking to high heaven, rather as if he’d been rolling in the nearest feed lot. We waylaid Teddy as he came in the door from his date mere minutes later, and asked him to give the cat a bath.
He did...and soon he was done and had Socks wrapped in a towel, all cuddled up upside-down in his arms--and Socks was mrrrrowwwling mournfully, sounding mighty like the Martyr of Margonham.
Sooo...nighttide finds us with seven clean kids (well, the other two are probably clean, too; but they are in their own houses), three clean rooms in the basement (we will not talk about the upstairs at this time), and two clean cats, one of whom is extra extra clean and slightly perturbed over it.
Bedtime. Further cleaning can wait.
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