Last Monday was a beautiful day, so that evening Larry, Hester, Lydia, Caleb, Victoria and I went to Pawnee Park to try out my new tennis racquet. It is so much easier to smack the ball back, I knocked it clear out of the court the first two returns. And my wrist didn’t even hurt. (But Larry got the points, of course.)
“Hey,” grinned Larry, loping after the ball, “I like that racquet!”
A boy came to the courts to practice his serves. He stared in amazement at the girls’ underhanded swats of the ball, sending it soaring straight up into the stratosphere--and then back down into the very court from which it was hit. Then, if they can hit the ball again, they do so. Nobody worries about the number of times the ball bounces before they get it hit.
“We play a combination of volleyball and tennis,” I explained, and he laughed.
Afterwards, we stopped at the Dairy Queen--it’s conveniently located just across the highway from the park--for twists and blizzards. We ordered some for Dorcas, Teddy, and Joseph, too, and took it home to them.
It was Columbus Day that day, so there were flags flying all over town, even more than there had already been. It was also Thanksgiving Day in Canada. What, exactly, do the Canadians celebrate, I wonder, and is it similar to our commemoration?
Tuesday, Lydia’s class went to the home of some friends of ours, where the man, who is the son of Lydia’s teacher, showed the students an old apple press. They each received a bottle of apple juice; and if they brought their own apples, they could have more. We sent four big bags of apples. Lydia brought one bag home again, along with a gallon of juice. It was scrumptious. No apple juice or apple cider from the grocery store ever tastes like that fresh-pressed apple juice!--partly because that old-time machine removes the core before it presses the apples.
These friends of ours also raise bees (is that what you do with bees?), and every year for Christmas they give us some of their delicious spun honey.
That afternoon, I went to the Optimetric Center so the eye doctor could remove a boulder from under my eyelid. How is it that one must use a microscope to see a boulder? It appeared to be more of a mote than a boulder, but I know what it felt like. Anyway, in ten minutes or less I was back to rights. Now, why didn’t I go the day before, instead of suffering all that time??
Tuesday evening was not at all like Monday evening; we had very bad weather that night. There were tornadoes all over the state, and in Oklahoma, too. Somewhere near Polk, about thirty miles southwest of Columbus, fifteen homes were demolished or severely damaged. Dorcas was at her piano teacher’s house when the tornado sirens went off the first time; she called to say she was in the basement, and would stay there till it was safe.
Actually, it was plenty safe right then; the tornado was a good distance away, and she would have had more than enough time to get home. Then, when the sirens went off a little later, she came home! And the tornado was much closer! They have to turn the sirens off periodically, so they don’t overheat. It is expected that the good citizens of Columbus would listen to their radios. Aaarrrggghhh... that girl.
Before long, we were informed that tornadoes had been spotted this side of Monroe and this side of the car races, which meant that, in addition to the other tornadoes a little farther away that had been reported earlier, we were surrounded.
We went to the basement.
Several times during the evening, there were tornadoes all around us--north, east, south, and west. Several farm places were damaged, and towns were without electricity.
Lydia was disappointed because her Jr. Fire Patrol meeting at the High School auditorium was canceled on account of the weather.
Anyway, I got the clothes all washed--about six loads--and put away the mending I’d done, and there was quite a pile.
I reached down to pick up some clothes--and a cricket the size of a Buick was rambling across the floor on a direct line with my bare foot. Eewwwww.
“You’ve had it!” I told him, grabbing the nearest flat object.
But no matter how many times I tried squishing him, he continued to stroll along with debonair hauteur.
“Na na na-NA-na,” replied the cricket, not even bothering to accelerate his velocity.
Na-na, indeed. He was soon residing in the freezer, mastering the art of modeling, which is what he would be doing the following Monday, along with voluminous other variants of the insect variety that would be included in Hester’s bug collection.
In the meanwhile, Larry fixed a door on the foot of Dorcas’ bed. Later, when we went back upstairs after the tornadoes had gone back home to Twisterland, he put together part of Victoria’s new bookcase/dresser.
Kitty got herself in trouble one day for being nasty to Tabby. Tabby, emboldened and encouraged after witnessing Kitty’s dressing down, immediately began asserting himself with Socks, which in turn got him in hot water. Socks, upon observing Tabby’s chastisement, purred loudly and wrapped himself around our ankles.
Cats.
Wednesday, partly because I wanted to use it, but mainly because I wanted to surprise Larry, I finished Victoria’s bookcase/dresser. I put the drawers together, along with the rails, the handles, latches, and shelves.
Yep; he was surprised.
I was surprised.
I stayed with Mama that evening while the rest of the family went to church. She is not at all well. The kidney infection is back, and the antibiotics are again causing bad reactions. She is having troubles breathing, and sometimes her pulse is much too fast. She’s not eating well, and has lost weight again.
I spent the time there wrapping Christmas presents and asking Mama if she wanted a peanut butter sandwich, rather in the same manner she used to continuously ask me if I wanted a banana. She said no every time. But after the girl who was going to stay overnight with Mama arrived, I had not yet departed before Mama was asking her for a peanut butter sandwich.
Perhaps she knows my penchant for coating things three inches deep with peanut butter, and didn’t prefer it so?
Thursday I finished Victoria’s room. There are now stuffed animals and dolls in fetching, winsome groups all over the room, and Victoria is delighted with the looks of things.
Next on the agenda: the front hall coat closet. I started the best way I knew how: I got everything out and piled it all in the living room. The couch was soon buried by four feet of stuff, and there was a five-foot pile in front of the couch, too, about nine feet long. How in the world did all that stuff come out of that one little closet!!!
‘And how in the world,’ I wondered, ‘Am I ever going to get it all back in!’
Thursday night was the Jr. Fire Patrol Parade. People are saying that our float is the best float we’ve ever had, and I agree. Lydia got up on the hay bales on the back of the pickup (David loaned his Walker Construction crewcab for the occasion) along with several cousins and friends. Caleb was told that he could ride, too, and Jason, his cousin, was scooting over fast to make room for him, but Caleb got shuffled over to the other side to sit beside another cousin who is about three times bigger than Caleb. Remember that...
On the float behind the pickup rode several kids, including James, Bobby’s youngest brother, inside a suit made to look like a fire extinguisher and holding a sign saying “KEEP ME HANDY” (although Norma did mistake the extinguisher for a hotdog, which nearly put Larry’s brother Kenny into convulsions). Beside James stood a little girl, throwing candy along with the best of them, and inside the cute wooden house was a boy with his father’s bee smoker. The smoke escaped out the windows and the roof, and there were flames painted above the windows, and there were big pictures of the New York skyline on the skirts of the float, on either side.
Meanwhile, I’d left a note for Larry on the refrigerator, telling him we would be on the corner of First National, and to “COME!” Well, I videoed too long at the start of the parade, and then even though I ran like crazy down an alley and then down Main Street, Victoria flapping in the breeze as I dragged her along behind me (“I’m running as fast as I can, and it’s still not fast enough!” she puffed), I didn’t get to the designated spot before the parade came wheeling around the corner, lights flashing, sirens blaring, horns tooting, bells ringing.
So I wound up on the opposite side of the street, one or two blocks west of First National. Anyway, I got good videos. When the last float went by, I rushed off to First National. Sure enough, there was Larry on the corner, standing by his brother Kenny and his family, and Lawrence and Norma.
“Oh, you finally found me!” I exclaimed as I came dashing up. “Thank goodness your mother was here to console you!”
He made a face at me. Norma snickered.
We then cut through Frankfort Square and over to the block where the parade would end. Soon they all came past again, led by modern firetrucks, rural and urban, then the old antique engines, ‘Old 1911 Seagrave Smokie’ and ‘Seagrave 1923’. The other schools had long since run out of the candy they were tossing to the onlookers, but Bible Baptist Christian School Candy Tossers were still going strong. Once again, we got showered with candy.
At one point, the cousin who was sitting beside Caleb stood up to throw candy, and the momentum of the pickup moved him towards the back, so that when he sat down, he wound up sitting on Caleb--and he didn’t even know it! He wiggled around a bit, doubtless wondering why things weren’t quite as comfortable as they used ta been.
“Henry!” said Caleb more calmly than one would expect in such pressing circumstances, “You’re sitting on me!”
Henry peered around behind himself in surprise, then lumbered to his feet. “Oh!” he said. “Sorry!” And he went on staring at Caleb for a minute or two to determine if he was going to be okay.
“And I,” continued Caleb, “Tried to come unsquished.”
When the parade was over, the children were given cans of pop, and then we trudged off to find our vehicles, which were on the other side of town. Larry walked with us to the Suburban, and then I took him to his Bronco.
Back home to the closet cleaning!
At suppertime one evening, we were eating some of the steak Lawrence and Norma had given us, along with a variety of other kinds of meat, and discussing a very good dinner we’d once had at the Wrights’ house. John, Bobby’s father, fixes excellent steak, and there were baked potatoes, vegetables, jello, and dessert of some sort.
Caleb, looking puzzled, remarked, “All I remember having there is jelly beans.”
He was remembering an occasion that occurred a few years later, when we were invited to Bobby’s birthday party. Of course, we also had ice cream and cake. The jelly beans were in a bowl on the coffee table, free for the taking. You see what makes an impression on him!
Victoria was playing with her Li’l Tykes van and Li’l Tykes dolls. It crashed into another vehicle. She jerked out the driver and looked him straight in the face.
“Even when you are twenty,” she lectured him sternly, “You need to be careful when you drive a car. The reason is because cars are dangerous, and if you run into the front of another vehicle, you will sure enough get a damaged car!”
Hester was working on her insects. “I can’t find the beetles!” she cried, a bit distressed.
“It’s no wonder,” I remarked; “They’re from England.”
“Huh?” said Hester blankly.
“And besides,” I continued, “One is dead.”
“Huh?” Hester repeated herself.
She’d never heard of the Beatles. But that’s understandable; even I hardly knew about the Beatles, although I do recall my father’s immense disgust over their ‘mud mushroom’ hairdos, as he called them. I’ve called that hairstyle--and the person under it--a ‘mud mushroom’ ever since.
Saturday, we went to Omaha to Midwest High School to a Health Fair, where I planned to have a bone density test. Once again, it was a fruitless trip, because the people who were conducting the test were not able to do it there at the high school, for reasons I could not entirely understand. Something about somebody else having the same sort of machine, and both of them couldn’t conduct the test at the same time, because they weren’t supposed to be competing, and besides!--if both machines were turned on at the same time, transformers would blow, and half the city of Omaha would quite suddenly find themselves without electricity. They gave me a paper telling me the address of their clinic where I could get the test done Thursday afternoon, October 18th. Bah.
We decided to go to Two Rivers State Park. That is, Larry decided to go to Two Rivers. I was rather leaning toward heading for Desoto National Wildlife Refuge, in the hopes that the geese and ducks have started migrating; but Larry preferred to go fishing in the Trout Ponds at Two Rivers. Why anyone would favor fish over birds, I cannot fathom. Especially in view of their dismal record of actual fish caught.
“Neither do you catch birds,” Larry pointed out.
“No, but at least I can see them!” I retorted, “And hear them! And take pictures of them!”--although my successes at photographing birds are sporadic to uncommon, to say the least.
We listened to the Nebraska/Baylor game on the radio as we drove. We stopped at a convenience store, and that’s when we heard about a bad accident involving a school bus from Seward. It happened on Dodge Street, where there was road construction along curving, narrow lanes. Another bus was coming from the other direction, and the driver of the Seward bus swerved, causing the front tire to go over the low guardrail before the bridge. The bus continued on a ways, unable to get its tire back onto the road. Then it tumbled off the bridge, making a 270° turn and landing 62 feet below on the driver’s side in a ravine with a waist-deep creek running through it. Two boys and a mother of one of the students were killed. About 30 people were injured, some critically.
Dodge Street was closed, so we took the Old Lincoln Highway to work our way past the accident. It is a narrow old brick road, and trees grow right at the edges of it. As we bounced along, trees shooting rapidly past the windows, Victoria sat up and stared out.
Then, obviously thinking that her father must be traveling too fast, she inquired, “What’s the speed lemon on this road?!”
Soon we were on a hill above Dodge, and from there we could see firetrucks and ambulances near the bridge. We drove into a wealthy housing district, parked at a nearby school, and walked toward the site. There we found Red Cross vehicles, TV vans with their satellite dishes extended far into the sky, and dozens of students from the other Seward schoolbuses that had been following the one that crashed. They were band students returning home from a competition in Omaha. Many were crying. In addition to all the ambulances that had been coming and going, a man told us that three LifeFlight helicopters had landed and left not long before. The Red Cross, perhaps thinking we were parents of some of the students, offered us water or juice. We thanked them and declined. Wouldn’t that have been a fine how-do-ya-do, for nothing-but-sightseers to take aid from the Red Cross?
By evening, there was news of the bus wreck on every radio station I tuned in to, no matter what part of the country the broadcast came from.
At Two Rivers, everything was so pretty. This park is located where the Elkhorn and the Platte Rivers meet. The trees are changing to gold, the sun was getting lower in the sky, and all that color and brilliance was reflected in the Trout Ponds and the Platte River. I used up two rolls of film and a whole lot of video tape.
Just after the sun rolled behind the hills across the river, we packed up and headed for home--fishless, as usual.
That night, while I worked my head off and only made the smallest dent in the huge pile of coats, hats, mittens, scarves, leg warmers, muffs, earmuffs (‘earmuffins’, according to Keith when he was about two), sweaters, sweatshirts, and jackets piled in the living room, Larry went to the grocery store for comestibles for dinner the next day. I finally gave up and went to bed at an outrageous hour of the morning. The family would just have to put up with the mound of things heaped in the living room.
Keith, Esther, Bobby, Hannah, Aaron, and Amy came for dinner Sunday. We had chicken, scalloped potatoes, stuffing, buttermilk biscuits, green beans, and fruit (pineapple, peaches, apricots, pears, bananas, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries).
That evening a little before seven, Lura Kay called for an ambulance to take Mama to the hospital, because she was having so much trouble breathing she could hardly talk, and her heart was racing. I went to the hospital shortly thereafter. Lura Kay was there a while before me, because I first had to help the littles get ready for church. The paramedics had promptly given Mama an IV of some sort to stabilize her heart, and they also gave her oxygen. It was not long before she could breathe considerably better and was not coughing so much. She had not been able to sleep the night before, so as soon as she began feeling better, she found she was quite tired.
But she got left in the emergency room for three hours, from 7:00 p.m. till 10:00 p.m., because the emergency room doctor wanted to complete someone else’s blood tests along with Mama’s, and then call their mutual doctor, so that he would ‘only have to bother the doctor once’. When he called her, he talked to her for half an hour. A little after 10, Mama was finally taken to her room. She will be given antibiotics and Lasix intravenously.
I got home about a quarter till eleven, and launched into a job that had to be done that very night: gluing Hester’s bugs onto the hollow log we’d decided to use for the display. I used hot glue, which is why I wanted to do it, rather than letting Hester do it herself. Hester had done the paperwork, writing the common name, the scientific name, where the insect was found, and who found it. She had 41 insects--or she would have had, if the big water scavenger she found at Two Rivers had not been missing. Where was it??
This morning I asked Hester where it was; I’d saved a special spot for it. But she didn’t know; the last time she’d seen it was when she put it into the freezer Saturday night.
It wasn’t there.
The most likely deduction is that somebody knocked it out of the freezer Sunday and Socks found it and ate it. He eats black beetles and crickets like they’re a choice delicacy.
Botheration! It was Hester’s biggest bug! She is disappointed. I put the following note in the place I’d reserved for the beetle: “Alas, Socks ate this specimen. He says they are particularly tasty with a pinch of catnip.”
It was very windy today, and I knew that the moment Hester stepped out the door with her insect display, the butterflies’ and moths’ wings would sail wildly off to Tahiti, never to be seen again, so we had to hunt up a box to put the log in--and that wasn’t easy. I finally got one out of the garage; it was clear full of dusty toys, having been in the garage for a good long while. Hester and I cleaned the box out. Victoria was tickled pink to find her little fabric mole house in that box; she promptly raced off for the little squeaky mole puppets that go with it.
The log baaaarely fit. But the pretty butterflies made it to school safe and sound without losing their wings. Whew.
The rest of the day was spent collecting Hannah from the Exhaust Shop where she’d left her car to be repaired, entertaining Aaron while Hannah rushed home for some baby food, and then taking Hannah back to the Exhaust Shop to get her car when it was finished. The muffler had gone bad a couple of days earlier, and the car sounded like an old WWI bomber. An old WWI bomber that had been hit, and hit bad.
After that, I trotted down to my blind friend Penny’s house to see what ailed her typewriter (it was just a mild case of typhoid; nothing serious), and then I went off to visit Mama.
She’s not doing as well today as she was last night, I don’t believe. She was very out of breath tonight; even talking spent what little strength she had.
Later, Dorcas, Hester, Lydia, Caleb, and I went to the library. Among other things, we got a very interesting video about the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War. Sometimes we find a video that would be very good, but suddenly somebody uses a bad word. That’s disgusting. I don’t want my children hearing that. Sometimes it’s only one or two words per video--but I still don’t want my children hearing that.
Joseph felt well enough to go to school Friday, and then he even went to work for a few hours. Saturday he was feeling so chipper that he went off and played football with his brothers and a few friends, but it wasn’t long before he felt like a wet noodle. He went to church Sunday, but those three days of trying to act like he was fine and dandy wore him to a frizzle frazzle, and he wasn’t able to go to school today. His stomach still cramps and hurts, but it’s gradually getting better. What a siege he’s had, poor boy.
Dorcas and I went to see my mother this evening, but she was sleeping, and she’d had such a difficult time sleeping lately, I didn’t want to awaken her. She’s still on oxygen, and her breathing is still labored.
Keith and Caleb have just come in the door; they’d been to the new Bradshaw Park, just a few blocks west of our house, to shoot off the rocket set Keith and Esther gave Caleb for his birthday.
“Keith got Caleb the toy he wanted to play with, himself,” laughed Esther, and I think she hit the nail right on the head.
Suppertime! And it’s Philly steak and cheese pockets. Mmmm. Soon the caramel rolls will be done baking. Mmmmmm!!
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