Remember last Sunday’s ride through the country, and particularly that excursion on the minimum maintenance road? Well, here is Installment #2 of the story:
After splatting mud high and low on the poor Suburban, even getting mud on the windshield, Larry thought he would take advantage of one of the center pivots that happened to be spraying water out onto the road, and wash the windshield.
He pulled to the left on a wide country road, parked, and waited hopefully for the water to come around and spray the glass.
It didn’t come.
He waited.
It still didn’t come.
We finally decided the pivot had moved too far down the hill to reach the road, in spite of the fact that we could see that the road was still damp...
“Roll your window down,” I requested, “and I’ll take a video. Look how pretty it is, looking at it through all that mist, straight down the pivot line. There’s a rainbow!”
Larry obligingly rolled his window down. I started filming.
And that was when the revolving spigot that had sprayed into the road finally came around again.
S S S P L O O O O O S H S H S H ! ! ! Right into Larry’s face.
He jumped out of his hide. He yelped. He howled. He yowled.
Caleb and Victoria howled and yowled with laughter, and I went on filming.
Then, to make matters worse, Larry picked up a soft paper towel to dry off his glasses--but it was the towel I’d used to wipe up spilt sunblock lotion. Don’t ever suppose that helped!
Bobby, Hannah, and Aaron were at our house when I got back from Mama’s house last Sunday night. Hannah was playing the piano, Larry was singing, and Bobby was buried in one of those new Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Story Books I’d gotten.
As usual, Hannah forgot something when they left: her hat, this time. We should have named her ‘Gretel’. At least she’s never forgotten Aaron. So far.
Monday, Lydia decided she really must make wedding mints...so off to Hy-Vee we went for cream cheese and powdered sugar. Home again, we discovered we had only green and yellow food coloring, so we had only three different colors of mints: green, yellow, and sickly yellow-green.
And everyone ate enough mints to give themselves a stomachache. Except me, that is; I have never in my life eaten enough to give me a stomachache--but not for lack of trying.
Yeah, I like wedding mints. I could eat them by the score.
Larry ran out of fuel just as he was turning into our alley on his way home from work that evening. (Yes, again.) (But it was with a different vehicle this time, so it didn’t count, you understand.) He managed to coast all the way down the alley to the back drive--and there he was stymied. So he went off to buy fuel, after which he spent a while trying to start the unhappy pickup. Diesels do not appreciate having themselves run out of fuel, and they retaliate by refusing to start until the erstwhile driver is absolutely reeking of diesel fuel. This I know, having conducted many scientific studies on the phenomenon during the last two decades.
Hannah and Aaron came visiting Tuesday afternoon. Shortly thereafter, it got cloudy--and then, suddenly, we had a--get this, now: a thunderstorm. Can you believe it?! It hailed, too. Unfortunately, the rain we need in this part of the country is often accompanied by high winds, hail, tornadoes...
Hannah wanted to cut out a couple of jumpers on our table, but the table was clear full of dishes. So the girls and Caleb started clearing off the table and putting dishes into the dishwasher.
In the middle of the downpour, Joseph called to say somebody could come and get him; they were stopping work. Can’t pour cement in a downpour, you know. I went off to get him. He’d gotten his check and wanted to deposit it, so we headed for the bank.
We were almost to Main Street when the wind hit with such force that the stop lights and street signs were swaying alarmingly, and we could see branches falling on the streets and avenues up ahead. I was not liking my position, stopped under those lights, but there were cars ahead of me and cars behind me, and I couldn’t move, unless I wanted to climb the curb and head off in the wrong lane. Then the light changed and we drove on--right under those wildly tossing old trees. I steered into the center of the one-way street and stepped on the accelerator.
It seemed like a long time, but I don’t suppose it really was, before we were in the main part of town, sturdy buildings on each side of the street, and no more tall trees. I could see branches falling into the street in my rear-view mirror.
We drove into the bank’s tunnel to make a deposit. In the few minutes it took to do our business, the wind died completely. When we emerged at the other end, there was absolutely not a whisper of a breeze; it was dead still. Strange weather!
A good many of the streets were flooded, and cars were creeping cautiously through them. The Suburban sits up high enough that there is not too great a danger of it getting flooded out. The carburetor is fairly safe, and the distributor sits at the top and back of the motor, pretty well sealed.
Knowing this, I proceeded to get rid of Sunday’s mud and clay, remnants of that minimum maintenance road that some farmer thought he should water, perhaps in the hopes of growing a blacktop or something.
I’ve always thought it was fun to go splashing gaily through large puddles. I’m going to be a speedboat pilot when I grow up.
When we got home, Hannah wasn’t done cutting out the first jumper, and it was two hours past Aaron’s nap time, and he was so tired he was endangering himself with his numerous tumbles. So I cut out the last piece of the jumper. She left the material for the other jumper, and I cut that out later.
She also left behind Aaron’s Goldfish crackers. But she did remember Aaron.
Walker Construction didn’t get flooded out; they went on working: first north of Genoa, then in Fremont. Larry didn’t get home till 8:00 p.m.
That whole big storm only brought us 48/100 of an inch of rain. The Platte River bed looks just as much like a desert as it ever did. The rain was not enough to help drought-stricken crops, and the hail damaged the irrigated crops. South of town, there were golfball-sized hailstones.
Our cats don’t know enough to come in out of the rain. Especially Tabby. He sits out in the midst of a downpour, all huddled up, looking miserable and dejected. Kitty comes in with her rump and the nearer part of her tail soggy, while her head, shoulders, and the tip of her tail are dry. That, because, evidently, she gets the front part of herself into some small sheltered area, while her posterior is left sticking out. Her tail, which she wraps around herself, comes up far enough beside her that the tip stays dry. Tuesday, however, Kitty got her entire self drowned. And then!--she came in, jumped up on my desk, and laid down on my Chapter 36 that I’d just printed. Aarrgghh!
Victoria, thinking she was doing the right thing, put the blocks into the pet doors, so as to keep the cats from going out into the rain. Trouble was, she forgot to take roll call before doing so...and one or two of them were already out. After a while, somebody noticed and opened the doors. In came Socks, mmrrrrowing and telling us all about the injustice. He was hardly wet; he has always been able to keep himself dryer, to say nothing of cleaner, than the other cats.
Lawrence and Norma had another big branch--about 30 feet long--come crashing down from the tree behind their house, so hard it cracked their sidewalk. Lucky thing it didn’t hit their house! Or their earnest pates.
We learned that the wind had gusted up to 61 mph.
I have reached the story of David and Goliath in the series I’ve been reading to the children. They were delighted; like children everywhere, I think, that is one of their favorites.
Hannah and Aaron came back the next day; she was trying to sew one of the jumpers to wear to church that evening. She’d lined the top, which makes a jumper nicer; but since the pattern only showed facings around arm and neckholes, it couldn’t be sewn according to the instructions. She did it like a vest, then wondered why, after sewing first the shoulder seams together, then laying lining to material and sewing armholes and neckhole, it refused to turn right side out.
I ripped out the armholes, turned it, ironed it around the neck, and showed her how to put front lining to front outer and sew up to the shoulder seam; then do the same with the back. When that’s done, iron it and do the sideseams. I offered to pin it, but Hannah thought it looked easy enough that she could remember...
It wasn’t long after she’d gone home that the phone rang. Somehow, she’d managed to sew the entire armhole smack shut, so that there was no armhole left at all. haha I carefully explained it all over again, which is a bit hard to do over the phone; but Hannah thought she caught on.
I didn’t hear from her again until church time, when Bobby parked in his customary place in our driveway. Hannah climbed out--and she was wearing the new jumper. Her arms were sticking out of nicely done armholes, rather than bound to her sides straight-jacket style, so she must have figured it out.
I finished washing the clothes (momentarily, that is) and got all the mending done. Yes, again. For the second time that week, and it was only Wednesday.
The very next day, I found two pairs of jeans with holes in the knees in a load of clothes, and Hester brought me a couple of dresses with ripped-out seams. I was just finishing the last seam when Victoria skipped past.
“Here, let me tie your sash,” I said--and then I noticed: the sash was torn away from one side of the seam, leaving a gaping hole in the sideseam. So you understand how the mending is never done around here.
Socks was giving himself a bath. He lay partly on his back, sitting halfway up, pulling his tail up to lick it daintily, one charcoal-gray-striped hind leg with its little white foot sticking straight up, still slightly damp from its recent thorough cleaning.
Victoria watched with interest. “Why does he do that?” she queried.
“He’s checking for wind direction,” explained her father.
She turned and looked at him for a moment. “Nosiree,” she said.
“Well, isn’t that how you find out which way the wind is blowing, by licking your finger and holding it up?” asked Larry.
Victoria giggled. “No,” she replied, “I just look out the window and see which way the mail lady’s hair is blowing.”
Larry nodded gravely. “That would be just as good as a wind sock,” he agreed.
Victoria returned to The Cat Bath subject. “Well, I think he’s just holding up his leg like that so that he can dry off his little footy after he got it all soppy, licking it.” Thursday afternoon, we went to the park in Osceola, where I typed for a bit while the kids played. We couldn’t stay long, because we had to be back by six, when Hester was going to help clean the church. It’s her first time to do that; the young people all take turns in shifts, after the age of thirteen.
Friday I decided to drive to Schuyler Park to type while the kids played, since Thursday’s venture was cut short; but, lo and behold, the park was closed! We couldn’t get in on either side of the pond. There it was, all shady and nice, toys beckoning, fountain spraying prettily...but the lane was barricaded. Sooo...after exploring the town a bit--many of the roads are brick, and the children think that’s nifty, driving on bricks--we headed to Rogers, where live 3 ½ people, I think. We scouted about the small town, drove on down toward the river, and then headed back. After a short run past Tail Race Park, where the Loup Canal, Loup River, and the Platte River converge, we went home. The Loup Canal still has plenty of water in it, but the Loup is much dryer than usual, and the Platte is still nothing but sand.
Victoria is improving at rollerblading by leaps and bounds. And splats. Oooo, some of those splats.
I thought that perhaps it was because the clasps on her blades were broken, and suggested we look for some at the Goodwill. But Joseph said there were nice rollerblades in Victoria’s size at Wal-Mart for a good price, and further, he said he’d pay for them. So away we went to Wal-Mart. We got some that adjust from size 10-13--just right.
Then we hurried home so the kids could play outside for a while before dark. Soon Joseph was showing Lydia how to play hockey... While Lydia can run like a deer, and indeed is faster than Hester, she cannot hold a candle to her older sister when it comes to skating. Hester goes like lightning. Lydia looks more like a graceful swan skimming along in quite a dignified manner, while Hester looks like a greyhound tearing up the turf, passing everyone--she was passing everyone, that is, until Joseph put on his skates.
If Hester goes like lightning, then Joseph goes like greased lightning. Good heavens, it’s scary to look.
Lura Kay has called a nurse with Home Care from the hospital to come to Mama’s house once a week to help her with her bath, clip toenails, and various other things. Mama is glad about it, and really likes the nurse, who is as nice as nice can be.
Larry’s cousin Arthur’s wife Pat, who is also a nurse, upon hearing who the nurse was, said, “Oh, she’s the sweetest nurse at the hospital.”
And the nurse herself said about Pat, “I really like Pat; she’s a wonderful friend and an excellent nurse.”
We found out that the nurse is our Schwan man’s wife--and they learned Friday that they are expecting twins!
Saturday Larry came home and informed me he was going to clean the yard, so I took the littles to Platte County Museum. It cost a grand total of $3.00, how about that?
I especially like to look at the old pictures of Columbus. There are some that were taken in the late 1890s. There are authentic beaded Indian moccasins and headdresses; hand-sewn wedding gowns with unbelievable detail in tucks, pleats, tatting, and so forth; an old school room with all the desks, books, slates, and so forth; and--this is new--a couple of basement rooms devoted to Andrew Jackson Higgins, the man who designed and built the flat-bottomed landing boats used in WWII.
Across the hall from the schoolroom is an antiquated barbershop, complete with bottles of shampoo and tonic on the counters in front of the sectioned mirrors.
Around the corner is the music room, with vintage pianos and organs, and even a huge old drum played by a local man who was in the Marine Marching Band just after the turn of the century. To the side of that room is a collection of treadle sewing machines--and there is even a miniature one that was some rich little girl’s toy. It is still threaded with a wooden spool of thread, and under the presser foot is a piece of muslin that the little girl had sewn into a small apron. Her daughter had bequeathed it to the museum.
Something else I had never seen was the log cabin, which is housed in a separate thermostatically-controlled building. This cabin was discovered under a shabby garage or shed on somebody’s property here in town--still intact, but with siding and different roof put on it. The owners checked into its history and were amazed to learn they had found one of the very first homestead cabins in Platte County. They donated it to the museum. The siding and everything ‘new’ was removed, and anything that was decrepit or broken-down was repaired or replaced with something suitable to the era.
The inside is lit by a lantern (it has a light bulb in it, but is made to look like a kerosene lantern), and the entire one-room cabin has been filled with old-time furnishings, right down to a tiny cradle and a pair of boots beside the bed. A hand-stitched quilt lies on the bed, and there is even a mattress and pillow of ticking, the first filled with straw, the second with down.
Reese Wood Sole Shoe Company, which has been located only a few blocks from us for over 100 years (not that we are quite that old, you understand), recently shut down their business. This was the only wood sole shoe company in the entire United States, and they even exported shoes to many other countries. People who bought these shoes are wondering what in the world to do, and where they will get more. Anyway, the owners donated their machines and most of the shoes left in stock to the museum about a month ago.
Also recently, First National Bank gave them the front door set from one of the vaults that have been in their bank for almost a hundred years; they have renovated their vaults for the first time since they began.
The wife of the man who owned Nielson Chevrolet has presented the museum with one of her late husband’s treasures: one of the first Chevrolets to grace his father’s lot in 1919.
Our museum is getting better and better, but not many people know it. It is only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. We were the sole visitors the entire time we tramped about the place, the main part of which is housed in one of the city’s oldest schools. There were two elderly ladies there to greet us and give us advice on whatever we wished to know, although they left us mainly to ourselves.
The lady who let us into the large structure to see the cabin was friendly and informative, and I thought that she must have been lovely when she was young, for she is still pretty now, and she must be about 70. While I was taping this and that, I tried unobtrusively to get her in the picture, but every time she noticed that the camera was moving her way, she skedaddled backwards and exclaimed, “Sorry!”
“No, it’s okay,” I said, smiling at her, and wishing I could just zero right in on her face without being rude. But I was not quite impertinent enough to ask.
We came home to discover Larry in his recliner.
“What?!” I exclaimed. “Do you mean to say you could have gone with us, and didn’t? You told us you were going to clean the yard just to get out of coming to the museum?!”
He insisted he had only just come in, “and then I forgot what I came in for,” he explained.
I attempted to show him the video I’d taken, but it kept getting interrupted by long, stealthy snores. Before long, evidently feeling guilty, he headed out to actually do something about the yard.
Soon Teddy, Joseph, and Caleb were helping him mow, use the weed eater, and set up sprinklers.
I went to the store to get food for Sunday’s dinner, when the whole family was coming, and also for ingredients for the Snickerdoodles Hester was going to make.
Soon after I returned, Hannah called; she was done with her second jumper except for the hem, and could I put it in, please. So a few minutes later she came, bringing Aaron with her, and I put the hem in while the children entertained Aaron, or Aaron entertained the children, I’m not sure which. Maybe both.
Larry, meanwhile, thinking he had solved the entire problem of Hester and Lydia’s leaking room by adding dirt next to the foundation under the faucet on the outer wall of their room, decided to actually use said faucet. It had not been used since the days of The Great Flood, way back in the Spring of 2000, when Niagara Falls, Columbia Falls, and Victoria Falls, all three, converged on that room without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps you remember?
There was a cataract tumbling from the light fixture, several catadupes spilling from the ceiling vents, and a waterspout spouting (as waterspouts will do) from the ashpit door. This, in Hester and Lydia’s pretty room!
Well...we determined that the cause of the disaster was that Somebody had left a hose connected to the faucet the previous winter, and when the water that had collected in the hose and in the adjoining pipes froze, the pipes burst (as pipes will do). This pipe is evidently located in the ceiling of Hester and Lydia’s room.
We have therefore tiptoed softly past that faucet ever since, and Larry removed the handle so no one would forget and turn it on. And we always planned to call the plumber someday when our ship came in. Plumbers require schooners and frigates and yachts as payment for their services, you know.
But this year, apparently forgetting what deluges and torrents had flowed into the girls’ room, and noticing that, under that tap, the earth had sunk a bit, Larry came to the conclusion that the problem had been entirely because the earth had sunk. There wasn’t enough soil around the foundation. So soil he added.
And Saturday (always on a Saturday, when we conduct these experimentations, have you noticed) he put the handle back on, screwed a hose onto the faucet, and turned it on.
Now, he intended to head for the basement to ascertain that all was well, but something else caught his attention, and that was the end of that good plan.
Twenty minutes thereafter, he came inside to get a drink--and suddenly heard an unearthly screaming noise issuing from downstairs. He went to investigate.
Five seconds later, he was galloping back up the steps three at a time, screaming, “Water is leaking all over Hester and Lydia’s room!”
He galloped on outside, purportedly to turn off the faucet, while the rest of the family stared, transfixed and goggle-eyed.
I turned to Teddy. “Do you think perhaps I should wait until he calms down to say ‘I told you so’?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” Teddy agreed.
The screaming we’d heard--the first screaming, that is--was Hester and Lydia’s radio/cassette player, shorting out from all the water pouring onto it.
Plenty of other things would have been screaming, too, had they only known how.
Imagine, if you can, standing in your bedroom, holding a garden hose which is turned on full blast. Spray it around. Everywhere. Make sure you open the closet and spray everything in there, too. Don’t spare anything. Keep that up for twenty minutes.
There now. What do you think of that?
A A A A A A A R R R R R R G G G G G H H H H H ! ! ! ! !
That’s what.
Teddy rushed for his shop vac; the girls hurried to gather up books laying here and there; Larry helped to cram wet clothes into big bags; and Joseph scurried to move things away from his wall, because the water was flowing that way.
I ate Snickerdoodles to keep myself calm.
Caleb went down to help gather up sopping wet stuffed animals. Now and then I heard him or the girls laughing uproariously, and I knew Teddy was being Teddy.
Sure enough, Caleb later described how, as Teddy was vacuuming away, his attachment, along with part of the tube, came loose. Teddy went on pretending to vacuum, making goofy faces and peering hard into the attachment when it wouldn’t suck up any water.
The other end of the hose fastened itself to the bedspread and tried to eat it. Teddy suddenly flung his hands in the air in mock horror, sprang forward, grabbed the hose, and waged warfare with the quilt. When quilt and hose finally parted ways, the hose flew back and landed first on Lydia’s knee, then Caleb’s.
And that’s what all the cackling and guffawing was about.
Caleb came upstairs to take his bath. “I laughed too hard,” he told me after reciting that story, “and made myself have an asthma attack!”
“Quick, then,” I instructed him, “Go take your medicine!”
He did, and was soon in better shape.
By the time Teddy had the water vacuumed up, he was having trouble with asthma. He doesn’t have that problem often, so sometimes it doesn’t occur to us that he shouldn’t do something or other that might bring it on.
That’s when it dawned on me: it wasn’t the laughing that had caused Caleb’s asthma to flare up; it was the mustiness of water coming through Sheetrock, old insulation, and such!
“Caleb!” I said to him, “Don’t go back into Hester and Lydia’s room; don’t even go downstairs for a while. I think you didn’t have trouble breathing from laughing so much as from being in that room itself!”
Larry, having collected all the wet clothes, started carrying the bags out to his pickup. We would take them to a laundromat so as to get the job done quickly, before things got mildewed. I didn’t want to stay up for the next 24 hours, washing clothes. Aaauuuggghhh! I’d stayed up late Friday night washing clothes, just so I wouldn’t have any to do Saturday!
Now, Larry had some time earlier parked his pickup, with the flatbed trailer connected to it, in the alley, the better to load up grass clippings, branches he’d trimmed, and weeds he planned to dump. He hadn’t meant to leave it there but a minute or two--but that was before The Great Deluge.
Arriving at his pickup, heavy bags of wet clothes in tow, he found that insult had been added to injury: he had a ticket on his windshield. He’d been fined $5.00 for leaving his vehicle in the alley longer than five minutes.
Aarrgghh! Five dollars isn’t so bad, but one must pay court costs on top of that--$21.00, I think.
While Larry went to dump the clippings, I helped Victoria take a bath, washed her hair, and curled it. Then, with Victoria, Larry and I headed off to the laundromat, first stopping at the grocery store for detergent and dryer sheets.
At The Washing Well, I’d no sooner started pulling clothes from bags, rescuing a few dry-clean-only things, than two men who were washing their clothes lit up and began puffing away.
U G H !!!
Second problem: the coin machine was out of order.
So off went Larry to a car wash on the east side of town to use their bill changer. (What are those things called?) I sent Victoria with him, with instructions for him to take her back home again. I didn’t want my fresh-bathed little girl to smell like a chimney, thank you very much. More, I don’t want my children breathing that awful smoke.
He came back before I’d finished putting the clothes into the washers. I used thirteen smaller washing machines and three industrial-sized machines.
As soon as they were all chugging away, we returned home, where I curled Hester and Lydia’s hair. Then, after sending everyone to bed, back we went to the Well, stopping at Cubby’s for coffee and a candy bar on the way.
All the washing machines were finished. Larry went to get the only wheeled cart not in use--and that’s when he discovered another quarter dispenser (what are those things called?), one that was in perfectly good working order. Bother! All that driving for nothing.
We began transferring clothes from washers to dryers.
“We’ll use the big ones for the blankets and quilts,” said Larry, and then read me the directions printed on the front: “‘Number 1: check dryer for children, pets, and foreign objects.’ HAHAHA!!” laughed Larry, “they forgot ‘wives’!”
“No,” I replied, rolling my eyes, “the ‘foreign objects’ covers it.”
“Hey!” protested my husband, “That was my line!”
While we were in the laundromat, it actually rained. Yes, it rained! Uh, that is, it rained outside, not in the laundromat.
When the clothes started getting dry, Larry asked, “How about if we just load everything into the Suburban, take it home, and fold and hang things up there?”
“NO!” I retorted, “Not on your life.” I glared at him. “I know exactly what would happen if we did that.”
He looked at me innocently. “What?” he queried.
“And since it’s your fault we’re here in the first place,” I continued, not deigning to answer, “You can jolly well help!”
He grinned at me. (Isn’t that infuriating, when somebody to whom you’re trying to administer a first-rate lecture grins at you?) (And what’s even more infuriating than that is when you accidentally grin back.)
We finally got home at a quarter till two. Joseph had made the three bowls of jello for Sunday’s salad, thank goodness.
The dry-clean-only dress I was trying to dry in the dryer refused to get dry, because, of course, it was in Dryell’s plastic garment bag, and, of course, it is not supposed to be wet in the first place.
And then it was a little after 4:00 a.m., and the dress was finally dry--but for some reason, the thick plastic Dryell bag it is in is all crinkly and funny. What happened, did it get too hot? Hmmmm...
Everyone came for dinner today. We had beef vegetable soup with crackers, wilted lettuce salad, and jello salad--with no fruit in it, no cream cheese (only sour cream and powdered sugar) (it’s almost as good), and only one box of graham cracker crumbs, because Larry made it this morning before Sunday School, and he didn’t have time to make two boxes. Further, it was 1/3 short of butter and sugar. Ah, well; it wasn’t too bad.
It rained a little bit this morning, and a little bit tonight, too. It is a quarter till two now--actually, Monday morning--and lightning is flashing, thunder continuously rumbling. What we need is a steady rain all day every day for at least two, preferably three, weeks. These drips we’re getting aren’t nearly enough to put a dent in this awful drought we’re in.
Bedtime!
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