Do you recall me saying in last week’s letter that it was 83°, and Victoria was outside playing? Well, by the time I finished typing that page and went off to copy and mail the letter, the temperature had risen to 88°. As we drove to the post office, Victoria wiped her brow and said, “Whew! It’s hot enough to break the rockets today!”
And it was.
Victoria wound up with another sunburn on her arms--but I am finally remembering to put sunblock on the littles, and the next day she played safely without turning into more of an Injun than she already is. It was very windy that day, and my barometer was overflowing, which is usually a sign of a coming storm.
Tuesday afternoon, I went outside to pull more of the mint plants that are trying to take over my flower garden. It wasn’t long before I realized that my barometer knew what it was talking about, because while I was out there, with Victoria helping nearby, it got windier...and windier...and windier...and the dark clouds were rolling in... All of a sudden, a gust that, according to the weather man, could have been up to 60 mph, came whistling down between Lura Kay’s house and ours, and very nearly lifted me right off my feet.
Caleb came out to help Victoria put the plants I’d pulled into bags. They were hanging onto the bags for dear life, running after the plants I was pulling, when another gust blew through, sending those weeds whisking right out to the street, down to the corner, and beyond. Caleb and Victoria stood there on the sidewalk, holding onto both handles of their bags, which were billowing out like helium balloons, and they laughed and laughed.
I got the big clippers and tried to cut a few sugar maple and buckeye shoots, but someone had left the clippers out in the rain, and they were dull as a butter knife. I discovered that the only way I could get some of those little trees out of the ground was to clamp the clippers down on them and then, clasping the clippers’ long handles tightly, twist them round and round till the sprig either broke or came out of the ground along with its roots. Soon it started raining, and we rushed inside. On our scanner, we heard that Platte County was just calling out the spotters. Small pebbles of hail began falling, and lightning came cracking down out of a black sky. We stood in the front hallway and looked out the door, and the rain was blowing sideways so hard, my bare feet got soaked from rain blowing under the door.
It was over in ten minutes. We thought it might hail again, because another front came rolling in a few minutes later, and the underneath side of the big dark cloud overhead looked like cottonballs saturated with water, heavy on the bottom. But it blew over before it let loose its moisture, and someone to our east suffered the blow, instead.
In the meanwhile, out to our west, the wind had pulled top soil off of freshly plowed fields and produced a huge cloud of dust some 100 miles wide. It came blowing from the Colorado border, pushed along like an ocean swell over the Sandhills all the way to middle Nebraska, darkening whole counties till it felt like nighttime, and bringing back fearsome memories of the Great Depression Dust Bowl years. The dust caused an eight-vehicle pileup on Interstate 80, and eight people got hurt.
That evening, Larry, Victoria, and I went to Menards, and we picked out the tile for Hester and Lydia’s bedroom...of course, we would pick the tile that had been discontinued, and there was not a tile to be had. That, because a) it was the prettiest of all the tiles there, and b) it was one of the least costly. A boy called the Menards in Norfolk and Omaha for us. Norfolk only had half the amount we needed, but Omaha had enough--just barely. We needed 225; they had 229. We asked them to reserve them for us till Thursday, and we would come pick them up.
Hannah came that night; she’d been out walking. We went to the store together, and then I came home and washed piles of clothes. It had been three days since I last washed clothes, and it looked like the entire Russian Army had thrown their uniforms down my clothes chute.
Wednesday, it was quite windy out, but not as hot. It would have been a pleasant day, had it not been so dusty. Joseph helped put up fencing down the avenue again, coming home with more dirt than hair atop his head, I think.
Aaron saw me after church Wednesday night, grinned great big...then along came Bethany, Bobby’s mother. Aaron saw her, grinned another great big grin, turned his head, looked at me, grinned, turned back to Bethany, grinned, then abruptly stopped grinning, and looked from one to the other of us, obviously with his little brain doing all sorts of gyrations and gymnastics. He’d never seen both his grandmas side by side before.
“Two grandmas?!” I said. “Look at all the grandmas!” Then, to Bethany, I said, “He thought there was just one grandma, and she lives in one house one day, the other house the next, and she changes faces depending on which house she is in at the moment.” We all laughed. “Our hair is the same color, you know!” I finished.
She looked my hair over, then shook her head. “Nope,” she said, “Yours is way grayer than mine. I’ve got younger hair than you do.”
“Hey!” I protested, and she continued, “But the rest of me is lots more dilapidated.”
“Oh, you,” I laughed.
She told Aaron goodbye, and he waved happily, grinning at her. Obviously, he really loves her. And she loves him. I am pleased to share my little grandson with such a person. She’s been one of my best friends since before I can remember.
Thursday, Victoria and I went to Wal-Mart’s greenhouse, where we purchased lots of flowers. I planted them in the five planters on the porch. I planted verbena, snapdragons, viola, pansies, fire flowers, and a couple of others whose names I don’t remember. I got some bulbs and tubers for the shade garden on the north side of the house, but haven’t planted them yet. They will take the place of the plants that died when we had such a cold winter a year ago: bleeding heart, hosta, lilies of the valley. I’m afraid my Virginia bluebells died out, too. I bought a pair of blue gardening gloves, and Victoria thought they were nifty, with their little rubbery bumps all over them. She sure looked surprised when she found them shortly after I’d finished with the planting, and they were completely covered with mud.
I went back inside and sewed until suppertime. I spent the last few minutes carefully sewing lace onto the bottom of the three-tiered pink check skirt...only to discover--yes, that’s right--I was out of bobbin thread. But there was no time to redo it, because I had to get the roaster out of the oven and give everyone their food: beef stew with those yummy frozen noodles.
Larry has a sunburn on his arms--except for his hands, because he wears gloves. He says he will go without gloves, so as not to look funny, in spite of the fact that then his hands will be rough. Such a dilemma. He worked near Wisner Thursday till they finished the job, then they worked on a hog barn near the Seven-Mile Inn south of town. He got home around 7:00 p.m., at which time we (Larry, Caleb, Victoria, and I) leaped into the Suburban and raced for Omaha to go to Menards for the girls’ flooring. I drove all the way to the Texaco just this side of Omaha, then Larry drove on to Menards.
We pulled in at 8:46 p.m., thinking we had only fourteen minutes to get in there, find the tiled vinyl, and pay for it before they closed. We leaped out of the Suburban and dashed for the door...but then I noticed the sign: they stay open till 10:00 p.m. All that risking of life, limb, and speeding tickets for nothing.
Well, they’d held the tiles for us, and we’d thought it a bargain at $.69/tile; but we found some tile that was just as pretty, maybe even prettier--for $.29. And there was a grand plenty in supply. So that’s what we got. It has a little cluster of pink flowers and green leaves in the center of each white tile. The total cost: only $65.00! So we also got a door for Joseph’s room (his has sported a gaping hole ever since somebody knocked a picture off the stairwell wall, and it went tumbling down the stairs and whacked corner-first into Joseph’s door), which was only $22.00. Larry got pipe to make a stronger clothes rack downstairs; the enclosed rack that is full of the dresses Lydia has grown out of has collapsed, rumpling all the dresses Victoria will soon grow into.
The cart we were using was extremely gimpy, one of those sorts that is not very deep, and is supported on only side. And the opposite side had a loose nut on the wheel and felt very much as though the slightest tug that way would surely tip the cart right over onto its side. We tiptoed around that cart and tried not to sneeze in its general direction.
As we were going through checkout, I spotted a bag of black licorice, something I haven’t had for years. Black licorice is one kind of candy that is actually good for you, being as it is of molasses and wheat flour and corn syrup. I like black licorice. I tossed a bag into the cart.
Caleb and Victoria were impressed. Candy that is good for you, imagine! They could hardly wait till we got to the Suburban to try it. We drove out to the yards, and while we waited for a man to load the door into the Suburban and then waited for another man, a crabby ol’ Harley Hogger, to make sure we hadn’t stolen something while we were back there, they tried the licorice...and then they tried some more...and then they tried yet more. I tried it even more than the children.
And then Caleb remarked, “I don’t like this kind of candy as much as it seems like I do.”
“That’s because you can tell it’s not really candy,” responded Victoria knowledgeably. She frowned thoughtfully. “It’s probably more like the black bread the Grandmother couldn’t eat in ‘Heidi’,” she said.
The door filled up more of the Suburban than Larry had expected; when the man slid it in from the back, it came all the way up to the back of the front seats. Caleb and Victoria, sitting in the middle seat, cringed against the doors and giggled. As soon as we started driving, Caleb bailed into the third seat, folded up a blanket for use as a pillow, and laid down under the door, stretching out the full length of the seat.
He giggled his funny high-pitched giggle. “This is my log cabin, and I’m going to sleep now,” he told his little sister. And that’s exactly what he did.
She followed suit, curling up with her blanket under the door in the second seat. Soon she, too, was sound asleep. They slept most of the way home.
As we drove, it got windier...and windier...and windier. By the time we got to Waterloo, the wind was creating huge dust clouds of the topsoil from newly plowed fields, and it was sometimes hard to see.
Farmers are being urged, by radio and newspaper, to water their fields before they plow them so this doesn’t happen. But sometimes it hardly helps, for the soil dries out before the young plants ever have a chance to sprout.
It was cloudy and cool Friday. I sewed on the little pink dress; it is nearly done. That afternoon, Hester, Victoria, and I went to the library to find books about a tropical rain forest for Hester’s biome for Biology. She headed upstairs to find a book about it (or so I thought), but instead came down with an armload of reading books--and one of the librarians was locking the door behind her, so it was too late to go back and get the Rain Forest book she needed. Bother! That girl! That’s just the sort of absent-minded things bookworms do. And I hadn’t wanted to go to the library in the first place!
We then went to Wal-Mart, where we got pink shaggy rugs for my bathroom, and soft lavender throw rugs for Hester and Lydia’s room. Now...if the girls will only get their multitude of Stuff and Things picked up off the floor, Larry can put down their flooring!
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At about 1:15 a.m. Saturday morning, I thought I heard the shed door bang...then, a few minutes later, I heard lots of sirens. I turned the scanner back on, and heard the ambulance call the hospital about a patient, then later heard the police giving the dispatcher a license number. At 3:00 a.m., Keith called, and I found out what it was all about.
A drunk driver had hit my nephew David Walker’s house, entering right through the wall of David and Christine’s bedroom, and David was killed.
We are shocked; we can hardly believe it. Their house is far from the road; it is brick; there is a tree straightway between the site where the pickup entered the field and crossed the lawns, and their bedroom...but David--whose name very appropriately means ‘dearly beloved’--is gone.
The man, who is 32, ran off that road and wrecked at exactly the same spot sixteen years ago, when he was sixteen. He was drunk that time, too. Back then, there was a big ditch between the road and the field, and cars that ran the dead end were stopped cold. But after another carload of drunk teenagers hit that ditch and several of them were killed, the county filled the ditch in so as to protect those nice drunks, don’t you know.
Anyway, the man came tearing down Lost Creek Road at an unearthly speed--90? 100?--and didn’t stop at the dead-end sign. He hit it, sending it flying seventy-five yards into the tree near David and Christine’s bedroom window. He snapped a guy wire, too, but none of this seems to have slowed him down in the slightest. In fact, the police say that he actually accelerated, once he left the roadway.
Around the tree was some decorative brick and white stone. When his tires hit that, he began skidding, and one front tire went off the ground for a distance of about ten feet. The skid turned him just enough that he made a near direct hit on the bedroom wall, and especially the side of the bed where David lay sleeping. The blow flung David out of bed and into the ceiling on the other side of the room, killing him nearly instantly.
Christine was thrown from the bed into the large walk-in closet, hitting the spot where hung David’s several suits, and breaking the Sheetrock on the wall behind them. The suits probably saved her life, but she has a cracked vertebra and crushed disc, and is bruised and sore all over. There is a gash on top of her head, too.
Little Joshua’s crib, which sits at the foot of their bed, was absolutely torn to shreds--but the little boy hasn’t a scratch on him. His mattress and bumper pads must have protected him. One side of the crib wound up on top of the pickup’s windshield, another inside the bathroom connected to the large bedroom.
Christine was knocked unconscious for a time, and then awakened to a semi-conscious state wherein she felt as if she was having a nightmare, and could hear little Joshua crying and screaming, but couldn’t do anything about it. When she came to, she found herself standing in the hallway holding Joshua, with no clear understanding of what had happened.
Meanwhile, Michael and Daniel, ages 9 and 6, had jumped out of bed and run for their parents’ room. They could not get the door open very far, as the pickup that was now about ten feet into the room had jammed furniture and parts of the outside wall against the opposite bedroom wall so hard that the china hutch on the other side of the wall in the dining room had fallen.
The boys, looking into the door, could see the glow of the yellow street lights to the east filtering through the thick dust in the room, and, not realizing the wall was gone, mistakenly thought the room was on fire. They heard their little brother crying and screaming, but could not get in the door to find him, and Daniel saw his mother lying on the floor amidst the rubble. Later, he must have been so upset and traumatized that he forgot about seeing her, since he said that he ‘couldn’t find Daddy and Mama’. The boys ran to get their sisters, Lynette and Sarah Kay, ages 7 and 4 ½, and jerked on their jeans.
The next time Daniel looked into his parents’ bedroom, he saw Christine sitting on a pile of rubble, and holding baby Joshua. He must have turned on the light, and then the children dashed outside to find help. The nearest neighbors did not answer the doorbell, and, nigh frantic not knowing for sure what to do, the children ran back into the house.
In the meantime, Christine had made her way to the hallway with Joshua, and, not finding the children anywhere, was nearly hysterical. That is the first she can remember of the entire episode. She could not fathom what had happened, thinking perhaps it had been a tornado or something, and she thought the phones were not working, because she had tried calling for help and found her phone not working. Later, Robert, David’s brother, discovered the phone dangling halfway to the basement into the yawning hole in the floor. Most likely, the cord had simply gotten jerked from the wall, for other phones in the house worked fine.
Christine sent the children to Robert and Margaret’s house, which is just across the street. Robert said they were pounding on the door and ringing the doorbell so frantically, he didn’t want Margaret to answer the door, but went himself. He was astonished to find four of his little nieces and nephews, in such a state of agitation that they all talked at once, and he could not at all make out what had happened--and most likely, they did not know, themselves.
“Only one of you talk,” he told them, and then one of them told him of a fire, or a tornado, or something terrible that had happened at their house.
While Margaret called 911 and cared for the children, Robert ran across the street as fast as he’d ever run before, dashed to the bedroom, and found his brother. He attempted CPR for about five minutes, during which time the police arrived and seemed afraid to come in. He could hear and see them outside, and yelled for them to come in the front door and help him, as he was completely winded. But they dilly-dallied around, and seemed quite reluctant to come in and assist him.
In actuality, it was already too late anyway, but they could not have known that. I tell you, we live in too small a town, and officers are not paid enough to attract the best, men who will not delay to offer instant support when it is needed.
It was not long before Christine was beginning to feel intense pain in her back, and everyone convinced her that she should go to the hospital to have it X-rayed. The doctor, looking at the pictures later, said that if the vertebra just above the cracked one would have been broken, it would probably have killed her. And if the one just below the cracked one had broken, she likely would have been paralyzed.
As I said, it was about 3:00 a.m. that Keith called us, and minutes later Kelvin, Lura Kay’s oldest son and David’s older brother, called from the hospital. Larry, Teddy, and I then went to the hospital, joining family and friends already there. We just couldn’t get it through our heads that David was really gone.
Lura Kay has heart trouble (something she’s had for several years). As you can imagine, this terrible news caused problems with her heart. At the hospital, she took a nitroglycerin, and was then sick and got a sudden, bad headache, frightening us all. By then Christine had been taken to her room, and her mother, Sarah, was with her, so John H. took Lura Kay home.
We saw the parents and sisters of the man who’d been driving the pickup, and they were crying and telling us how very sorry they were. The mother put her arms around me and sobbed, and the father took my hand and, with tears running down his face, said, “The wrong man died.” Their son has at least two skull fractures, and brain injuries.
I felt sorry for them; no one would wish that their son do a thing like this.
Helen and I walked upstairs to see Christine after she was taken to her room. She is so slender, she barely makes a shadow under the covers. I took her hand, and it seemed almost transparent.
When we walked into the room, Sarah was kneeling beside the bed sobbing, while Christine had her arm around her mother and was saying, “It’s all right, Mama, don’t cry...” It is so like Christine to be comforting others when she herself needs comforting.
She said to me, “I’m just thankful that I’m alive, so I can care for the children.”
“So are we,” I assured her fervently, giving her hand a squeeze.
Christine said that Friday night, David spent an extra lot of time playing with the children, reading to them, and praying together. “It was a special night,” she said.
You’ll recall, it was five months ago that our friend Malinda died. At that time, David said to Robert, “Promise me you will be the one to preach at my funeral.”
Not long ago, he said to Christine, “When I die, don’t buy one of those expensive sealing vaults; just get the cheaper one; don’t waste the money.”
And it was only two months ago that he wrote his will, saying that he didn’t want to leave a lot of loose ends if he should die.
We left the hospital at a quarter till five, and drove to David and Christine’s house. A big flatbed wrecker was only just then leaving with the smashed pickup. Floodlights were set up, and many of our friends were already working hard on the house, getting the rubble out of the way, and shoring up the sagging floor. There was a twelve-foot square hole in the floor where things were falling into the basement, and the thick, heavy floor joists were splintered back about five feet, just as if they were as flimsy as a toothpick someone would smash against a table. Chunks of the cement basement wall were found to have flown clear across the basement, some hitting the furnace and nearly tipping it over. Women had come to sort household items and clean up the piles of china and glass shards.
Lura Kay is going to try to order Christine another set of china, for the set that broke to smithereens was one Christine was ever so proud of, because David bought it for her from Lura Kay, who used to sell china, pots and pans, and such. Before they were married, David somehow found out Christine liked that particular pattern, so he bought her a large set, even though it was the most expensive set Lura Kay had. He was usually tight with his money about such things...although in a multitude of ways, he was extremely generous.
As we stood and stared at the awful ruin, we realized just what a miracle it was that we were not mourning the deaths of Christine and little Joshua, too. We then drove to Bobby and Hannah’s house to tell them about it. I’d tried to call them earlier, but couldn’t get them. When we got there, Bobby’s brother had just told them.
We came home, and then Larry, Teddy, and Joseph put on work clothes and went back out to help work on the house. Larry said the entire east side of the house is badly damaged, with nails popped out all over the place, walls cracked, the foundation demolished, and so on.
Meanwhile, Robert had the awful job of telling David and Christine’s children that their father had been killed. That, I think, was perhaps the most difficult thing he had ever had to do. At least he could tell them that their mother would be coming home from the hospital later that day. Somebody found a hospital bed for her, and people got the house in good enough order that Christine and the children could still live there.
Later Saturday morning, Larry and I walked to Mama’s to tell her and Dorcas. Not a job I would ever want to do...but somebody had to do it, and I knew it would be best if I did. Mama was quite shocked, and hardly ate anything the rest of the day.
Kelvin, worrying about his grandmother, went to see her in the afternoon, telling her to be sure to eat, and saying, “We sure don’t want to lose you, too!”
After that, she ate an egg sandwich Dorcas made, and I think one of the reasons was because of Kelvin’s concern.
The funeral has been planned for Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. I spent most of Saturday afternoon calling relatives to tell them of the tragedy that had befallen us. When I hung up the phone after the last phone call that evening, I told my family, “We surely do have a lot of people who love us.”
And that’s the truth of it.
Keith told me that Sarah and Esther took the children to Columbus Floral to pick out flowers and balloons, and when the lady who owns the shop found out who they were, she gave them everything they had chosen--free.
I hardly felt like cooking anything that evening, so we bought tacos and took a bag of them to Bobby and Hannah.
Then Larry read to us from some of the Psalms while I curled the girls’ hair.
It was cold and rainy most of the day; at least I didn’t have to water my newly planted flowers.
We felt so sorry for Robert this morning. He started to weep during his first prayer, and then practically the whole congregation was in tears. One does not expect someone to be taken suddenly in his prime, while sleeping safely in his own bed.
The Wright Quartet sang ‘Someday He’ll Make It Plain’. When the song was over, John, Bobby’s father, began weeping before he even got off the platform, and many of the congregation were crying, too.
Robert read from Isaiah 57, the first two verses: ‘The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.’ He spoke of how close he had been to David all his life, and told about David taking courses from Prairie Bible Institute, and said he had hoped David would someday go into the ministry with him.
Tonight I stayed with Mama during church, but my family told me of the verses Robert read in Psalms 111 and 112. Here are some of the verses in chapter 112:
“Praise ye the Lord. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments.
His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed.
Wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness endureth for ever.
Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.
A good man sheweth favour, and lendeth: he will guide his affairs with discretion.
Surely he shall not be moved for ever: the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.
He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.
His heart is established, he shall not be afraid, until he see his desire upon his enemies.
He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever; his horn shall be exalted with honour.
I don’t know how any verses could fit David better than those, for he delighted in the things of God, and I don’t know anyone more compassionate than he was. He had a reputation throughout the entire half of the state for ‘guiding his affairs with discretion’, for he was honest and fair in all his business dealings. His jobs were done quickly and accurately, and his reputation garnered him work far and near.
He could have hoarded wealth, but instead he gave generously to one after another. Verse 9 says, ‘his righteousness endureth for ever.’ I believe that a righteous man’s works and deeds will have lasting, eternal effects on generations to come.
Tonight Mama seemed to be okay, and I think she was comforted when I read her some of the verses Robert read this morning, and some that we read last night. She ate a cup of green bean/cream of mushroom soup/French-fried onion casserole I’d made, and later had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I was glad that her appetite had returned--such as it is, anyway.
Please pray for us, and for the rest of my family. This is one of the worst things that has ever happened to us.
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