Tuesday morning, at 7:30 a.m. sharp, I jumped out of bed, rushed out to my computer, put my new color cartridge in, and tried to print some pictures Caleb needed for his report on Kentucky.
No good; it was the wrong cartridge. So Caleb went to school again Kentucky-pictureless. And he was really needing them that day!
Hester was staying home from school. When she is home in the mornings, I can rush off and get some errands done while Victoria is sleeping. Otherwise, I have to wait until Victoria wakes up, eats, and gets dressed…and sometimes she sleeps till nearly noon! So, if I absolutely have to go somewhere, I must waken her, and I don’t like to do that when she hasn’t been feeling well.
So I went to Wal-Mart, took back that cartridge, and, lo and behold, there was a LexMark refill kit--only one--lying on the bottom shelf. Sooo…I got $37 back and only spent $12. Jubilant, I rushed home and proceeded to ink everything from the uppermost attic vent to the lowermost basement drain. And that, you can be sure, included me, my keyboard, my printer, and every last page I tried to print. Aaarrrggghhh! Stupid, stupid, stupid thing! GRRRRRRRRR!!!
After trying for 45 minutes to make it work, I gave up. Victoria was awake by then, and I needed to get her some breakfast and help her take a bath, get dressed and ready for school. Later, I printed Caleb’s pictures in light gray scale and then colored them, hurrying so as to finish before noon. They didn’t look too bad…but they would have looked a far sight better if the refilled cartridge would have cooperated.
And then he forgot to take them back to school that afternoon.
AAAAaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuggggghhh! That kid!
The Schwan man came. I, being absolutely starved half to death, bought twice as much as I usually did, much to everyone’s delight, especially the Schwan man’s.
After school, Caleb went with me to Wal-Mart, where we purchased a Pelikan brand colored ink cartridge. Pelikan isn’t as good as LexMark, but anything would beat the mess I made that morning.
We then went to a house to see the table and chairs, couch, and loveseat they had advertised in the newspaper.
We didn’t buy anything. The table wasn’t nearly so nice as ours, and the chairs would doubtless give somebody a real letdown real soon. The couch and chair were big overstuffed things in a moss-olive green ribless corduroy, with gobs and gobs of coordinating throw pillows, big, little, and humongous, all over them. I said that I would talk to my husband, but not to hold them for me.
(I didn’t need to talk to my husband; I already knew, all by myself, how ugly they were.)
Then we went to Hy-Vee. Caleb likes to come with me, because he gets to help pick out all the food.
By the time we came home, Lydia had finished baking Schwan’s Canadian bacon pizza. Soon Larry came home. He’d been working at The House, having gotten off early from Walkers. He got the footings poured for the porch, and is putting more walls up in the basement.
One day last week when Larry put the windows into The Basement, the Old Man From The Junkyard came to talk to him as he was backing in with his trailer, which was full of supplies from Menards. Then, in a few minutes, he came on up the hill to where Larry was working. He walks a bit hunched, and uses a cane. It was a cold, cold evening. But he spent at least an hour there, helping Larry set the windows into their openings, and it really was a big help to Larry.
Then finally, rubbing at his arthritic hands, he told Larry, “Well, I think I’d better go home and sit in front of the fire!” (He was kidding; they don't have any 'fire' to sit in front of.)
See, I knew we could make friends with him. Or maybe he made friends with us!
Wednesday, Hester went to school for the first time in a week. She was glad to see she had not missed too much work; she should be able to catch up soon.
Larry didn’t work for Walker’s Wednesday; he spent all day at The House. He laid the blocks and put in the flue for most of the chimney in the basement before church, and finished it afterwards; he had to use the mortar before it got hard. The walls are more cracked and messed up than ever, since the movers set the house down and jacked it up all whoppyjaw underneath. He has it level and straight now, but the damage is done. Fixing the cracks will not be hard, really, but will take some time.
I spent the day working in the basement, sorting clothes. I found a bin full of things that will fit Victoria--and she was needing them, because she has grown out of most of the things in her closet. I washed some, tossed some into the dryer with other damp clothes and dryer sheets in order to freshen them and get the wrinkles out, and just hung up others. I found quite a few ‘new’ things for Hester and Lydia, too.
That evening at church, Robert told us that the judge who would be residing over the case for the man who ran his pickup into David’s house said he had received many letters from members of our congregation. He said that the letters were eloquent and well written; he wept over some of them. He was impressed that the people were not vengeful; not a one asked for a jail term for Hilger, but only that he be removed from driving the streets.
Robert also read to us from a handwritten letter the man’s girlfriend wrote to the judge, a copy of which she had given to Christine, David’s wife. The girlfriend was the bartender at the lounge where he’d been drinking the night he crashed into David’s house. The letter was full of grammatical and spelling errors, and addressed the judge simply as Dear Mr. S., while all of our letters addressed him as The Honorable Judge S. In telling what a loving, caring person H. is, she said that he had not long ago buried his best friend 'with more sorrow and pain and love than most people show for members of their family.'
His best friend? … … … his dog.
She wrote, “I don’t think” -- this then was scribbled out and she continued, “I know he doesn’t deserve a prison term, and neither does Mrs. Walker.”
Huh? Howzat? Mrs. Walker doesn’t deserve a prison term? (Or did she mean, Mrs. Walker doesn’t think he deserves a prison term, either?)
It started snowing Wednesday morning, and it kept on snowing. By church time, we had several inches of snow to wade through crossing the street; and afterwards, the snow was well beyond our ankles as we came home. Victoria howled about it all the way, because the snow was going into her shoes and getting all over her legs. And I had on my red high-heeled slippers with an open heel. Brrrr…
Larry went to work at 8:00 a.m. Thursday; he only worked for a little while before going out to The House, as the weather is slowing construction. It was a powdery snow; they say it would take 10 to 20 inches of this dry snow to equal an inch of moisture.
As he headed out of town, he looked at his fuel gauge: it was low. There’ll be plenty to make it out there and back one more time, he thought.
He was only half right; it spluttered to a stop as he was backing it up to the walkout basement. Fortunately, Teddy’s Festiva was out there, so he wasn’t stranded.
He hooked up the wood-burning stove so as to have some heat. He used the green wood he’d cut in November, and it wasn’t burning too well. I’ll speed things up by putting a plastic bag into the stove, he thought, that always makes fires burn better.
A few seconds later, there was a strange, “FWOOOOOOOPP!!” The bag had been sucked up the chimney.
And there it was, somewhere in the midriff of the house, effectively making a damper out of itself. The smoke backed up and billowed into the house. And, since smoke rises, it insidiously made its way right up to the topmost rafters.
So Larry put the fire out, opened a bunch of windows, and aired the place out. And it had been getting warm.
So much for that.
Trouble was, the bag was still stuck. Larry tried to reach the bag from the bottom with a long wire.
No luck.
He tried blowing it out with a high-powered blower .
No luck.
So he was back to using his propane heater until he had a way to remove the bag. The heater needed propane, and the pickup needed diesel, so Larry took an empty propane bottle and a five-gallon gas can back to town. But things weren’t done going wrong. He paid for his purchases, climbed into the Festiva--and left the full propane bottle behind. He didn’t realize he was missing it until he’d gotten all the way back out to the house.
Well, there was nothing for it but to go back to town and get the bottle, before someone else did.
I think Larry was feeling just like I was the day I did nothing but pack one china doll.
That afternoon, I sent Victoria off to school in her snowboots, with her shoes in a bag. She got to the bottom of the porch, and one of her shoes landed ker-plop in the snow. There was a hole in the bottom of the bag.
While she picked up her shoe and dusted off the snow, she found herself being admonished that ‘What in the thunder’ is not a ladylike thing to say. I got her a new bag, and off she went again.
I finished sorting all the clothes in Victoria’s closet, winding up with a giant stack of clothes for Susan’s little girl, Danica, and an even bigger stack for the Goodwill. I loaded the Suburban, and then Caleb and Victoria went with me to deliver everything. When we returned, I put all the clothes I’d found that will now fit Victoria into her room. Her closet isn’t so jam-packed as it used to be, because, instead of hanging everything, I filled one big under-the-bed drawer with blouses and another with skirts.
The day wore on. I took a short break for supper, and then returned to sorting and packing clothes. My face gets covered with minute particles of lint from all that fabric, and I want to claw at it furiously.
At midnight the phone rang, and my heart stopped. I glanced at the Caller ID; it said Robert Wright. I snatched the phone. “Hello?”
“There’s no emergency,” Hannah assured me quickly, and, after a while, my hands stopped shaking.
She was just calling to ask my advice; she was having a hard time feeding baby Joanna, mainly because little Joanna doesn’t want to eat, but only wants to sleep. I thought that the pain pills Hannah was taking was affecting the baby. I recommended everything I knew, so now she is smarter than me, because she knew something in the first place.
Friday morning, Victoria put on one of her ‘new’ dresses, a dusty navy and white stripe with narrow red plaid piping and trim along the front button placket and above the wide bottom ruffle. Eyelet lace hangs from the underskirt and matches the white eyelet double collar and the lace at the cuffs. With red cable-knit knee socks and a big red jeweled bow atop her curls, Victoria looked as if she’d stepped off the pages of Storybook Heirlooms catalogue.
I took a break from the packing to clean out the fish tank. (Is that a break?! I must be desperate.) It’s so much easier to clean since I put it on the bathroom counter, although it does get in my way. The scavenger is getting big--and there are still six live goldfish.
Larry came home for dinner. That morning, he told us, as he was wondering just how to go about removing that insurgent plastic bag from the chimney, his eyes fell upon his 30-foot tape measure. Ah ha!!! he thought, the very thing.
Fifteen seconds later, the bag was out. Now why didn’t I think of that yesterday??? he asked himself.
It was cold that day--7°. Listening to the radio, not knowing what station it was on, I heard a weather forecast: “The high tomorrow will be ‑7°; the low, ‑18°.” {!} I listened as hard as I could…and soon I heard the whereabouts of that station: Toronto, Canada. Brrrr! Did you know that the average annual snowfall in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, is 133.3 inches?!
I continued sorting clothes in the shelf room, finishing three racks, including one of the long ones. I took two tumble-down racks out to the garage, planning to haul them on out to the garbage someday when I was hot. But I was cold right then, and I thought if I took that tubing and canvas outside right then, I would freeze solid and never thaw out for the rest of my life.
When the kids got home from school, we went to Fremont to get a dark brown velour recliner/rocker some people were selling. It looked like new; they’d hardly used it. It had been purchased at Nebraska Furniture Mart. They had a spoiled little dog that yapped her head off at us; but when we knelt down to pet her, she wiggled around like everything, and I told the people, “If this dog was a cat, she’d be purring!” They laughed, looking at their dog fondly. If we stopped petting Pooch Dear and one of us moved, it went right back to yapping, the goofy thing.
They were older people, and there was no one else to help with the chair, and it was in their basement…so I helped the man head up the stairs with it. It would hardly fit, and the lady said that probably it came apart, because she seemed to remember the people from Nebraska Furniture Mart bringing it into her house in pieces. The man didn’t think so, but finally he got totally stymied at the top of the stairs; that chair simply would not fit. By then the lady was helping, which was good, because while the man starting looking under Velcroed fabric for the magic button (I guess that was what he was doing), he left us, four steps down, holding up the chair. The itty-bitty dog stood yapping at the bottom of the stairs, and I thought perhaps I’d get a chance to shut her up, because I knew that if that man gave the slightest push on that chair, I was a goner; I’d go tumbling backwards down the stairs and seat myself right on Poochie.
The man pulled on the backrest of the chair, and suddenly it took a parting of ways from the seat, and there we were, then, with two parts of one chair, the ladies holding the larger part. We rocked back on our heels. The endangered Pooch Yapper yapped on. I slid one foot back as far as I dared, and leaned forward with all my might and main, and somehow managed to save both myself and P. Yapper, too.
{You know, if Larry had’ve been there, he would have had that chair apart and into the Suburban before anybody ever began wondering how best to carry it out.} {And indeed he did laugh when I told him how we attempted to carry it out whole.}
Soon the chair was in the Suburban and we were heading for home. We made a pit stop at Sapp Bros. Truck Stop north of Fremont. I paid for my coffee and was turning to leave when I saw them: big Valentine cards, a good two feet by a foot and a half. I took another look--and that was my undoing, for there was one picturing the most adorable golden retriever puppy you ever did see in your life. To My Love, read the front of the card. I knew I was going to buy it before I ever opened it and read the rest of the card. It was just what I needed to prop up in that chair when I told Larry it was for him. (Aren’t I generous?--I buy him all sorts of things--with his own money.)
We went out to The House to show Larry the chair. He was working on the porch, getting it ready to be poured. We went into the house via the side door, stepping on an upside down five-gallon bucket and then letting Larry haul us the rest of the way in. We looked around through the house, making plans and vetoing each other’s. It was the first time I’d been back in it since they lifted it off its original basement.
Only Caleb’s room has a decent closet, and even that one will have to have another rod. I declare! The people who lived in that house must have had a total of three and a half clothing items each, judging by the lack of clothes rods. Or maybe they wore nothing but overalls, and hung them on hooks; there are quite a few of those.
In the living room, some dumbies glued the rug to the floor. So Larry needs some adhesive remover that won’t damage the pretty wood floors.
The kids and I nearly froze our toes out there. After a while we couldn’t stand it any longer, and we rushed for the Suburban. Furthermore, our stomachs were rubbing our backbones, so we hurried home and fixed ham and cheese pockets for supper. Then I went back to sorting and packing clothes, quitting and heading for bed when I finally finished the third rack.
Saturday, I found a pair of brand new tennis shoes that I once got for Dorcas, and she never wore but once, I think. They will probably fit Hester. I finished another rack of clothes today, leaving it mostly empty…but then Hester brought things out of her closet, and before I knew it, the rack was full again. Remember what I said about spinning my wheels? Déjà vu. I filled four big bags with things for the Goodwill.
Lydia’s friend Amber called to invite her ice skating, and she gladly went. When she came home a couple of hours later, she could hardly walk, because she’d fallen hard on her left knee. It was badly swollen and starting to discolor, and we were afraid she had broken her kneecap. But we put ice on it, the swelling went down, and she could walk on it okay, although she did limp. The emergency room nurse at Butler County Hospital thought from my description that the kneecap probably was not broken, just badly bruised; she said they see children who have done that to their knees all the time, and very seldom is it actually broken or cracked.
Sooo…Lydia seated herself in the recliner, and gingerly covered the poor knee with a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel. It was too heavy. I emptied half of the peas into a pan for supper, rewrapped the bag, and took it back to her. Even that hurt, but not as much.
Larry came home about that time; he’d finished framing up the porch, and was ready to go to Menards in Norfolk to get the wood for the steps going into the basement, and the Sheetrock for the basement walls. Caleb and Victoria went with us; Hester stayed to keep Lydia company and to do her makeup work.
Dorcas bought her little sisters quesidillas from Taco Bell “because,” said she, “I wanted some of those cinnamon roll sticks they have.”
So much for the peas in the pan.
In Norfolk, we stopped at Arby’s. I got the new roasted chicken and bacon on whole wheat berry bread. It has tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, onions, and ranch dressing in it. It was good, but I was so cold that I was sorry I hadn’t gotten a sandwich that was hot enough to warm my hands while I was eating it. The sandwich was so big, I was stuffed to the gills, even though I gave at least a fourth of it to Caleb, and a few bites to Victoria, too. Larry got Chicken Cordon Bleu. The kids got chicken and curly fries, and the latter gave Caleb a stomachache, horrid greasy things. I get a stomachache just looking at them, let alone smelling them. Ugh.
We took our load of Sheetrock and wood, which we were hauling on a flatbed trailer, to The House. Our lane has not been plowed, and the snow is deep out there, because the trees catch it all as it comes over the north hill. Larry put the Suburban into four-wheel-drive and drove in. We skidded around, spraying snow everywhere, while the neighbor dog gladly trotted along in front of us through the snow, big fluffy tail waving grandly as he went. We managed to get down the driveway to The House, and Larry pulled past the spot where he wanted to park the trailer and then tried to back it into place.
We spun and slid, the front end swinging around and trying its best to smack into Jim Cumming’s electric fence. The trailer went askew one way while the Suburban went awry the other, threatening to jackknife any minute. Larry straightened the rig and tried again. The black dog pranced around, grinning at us and wagging his tail.
“Come on, come on,” he panted, cavorting happily about, “Get out and play with me!”
Larry put it into reverse (the Suburban; not the dog) and stepped on the accelerator--and a blizzard flew out from under the front tires and all over the dog. His ears flew straight up in surprise, and he made a fast sideways jump right into a big bank of snow to escape the blast. We laughed till we cried, and the dog, peering at us through the windshield, wagged and grinned in silly canine chagrin. I opened the door and handed him a couple of Caleb’s curly fries by way of apology. He accepted it with aplomb.
After a good deal of twubbles and twials, Larry finally got that trailer where he wanted it. He climbed out, unhitched it, and then we had the job of getting ourselves back out of all the snow and back to the road. It wasn’t easy…but we done it!
When we got home, I took another look at Lydia’s knee. It wasn’t as swollen as it had been. She could walk on it fairly well, but it really hurt. We decided to wait till the next day to have the knee x‑rayed, if at all.
By Sunday, we’d decided that Lydia’s knee was going to be okay. I held her hand as we crossed the icy, snowy street; I didn’t want her falling on it again.
There was a big front-page article about the hearing for Hilger in our Columbus Telegram:
Hilger off roads as family left to mourn
Walker killed in sleep after Hilger drove into home
COLUMBUS – Michael Hilger sat in the courtroom, his eyes to the ground, his legs nervously shaking up and down.
A few rows back sat Christine Walker and her five children. The three boys were clad in dress shirts and trousers. The girls, their blond curls pulled back from their faces, were wearing dresses. Christine Walker held the youngest boy, a toddler, on her lap.
They were all silent.
Hilger, 34, rarely glanced back at them. He was awaiting sentencing in the Platte County District Court on motor vehicle homicide charges. At 1:30 a.m. April 20, 2002, he drove drunk through the wall of the Walker’s 4820 37th St. home, killing David Walker and seriously injuring his wife, Christine.
The case has been described by all parties as tragic. A young wife without her husband, five young children without a father, a brother and son lost.
But through it all, Christine Walker has maintained one thing. She was not out for revenge. Hilger’s jail time was not as important to her as making sure that he did not get behind the wheel of a vehicle for a long time. Making sure that another innocent family would not be heartbroken by the same fate that became her husband’s.
“The Walkers want Mr. Hilger off the road,” Platte County attorney Andrea Belgau said on behalf of the family, who submitted a letter to the judge to such an effect.
During the sentencing hearing, the announcement of Hilger’s three speeding tickets, which came last September, October, and December, all after the incident, made that request seem more pressing.
Judge Robert Steinke took them into account, and questioned why Hilger was driving even though he suffered a serious brain injury in the crash, which affected his attention span.
Ignoring the terms of the plea bargain entered into by attorneys, which suggested a five-year suspension of his driver’s license, Steinke ordered Hilger’s license taken for 15 years. He also ordered him to serve two to five years in prison and to pay court costs. Restitution, Steinke said, would be addressed in civil court proceedings.
Belgau described the case as the collision of two different universes, Walker’s and Hilger’s, with tragic consequences.
David Walker was studying to be a minister. He was a successful businessman who had never touched a drop of alcohol in his life.
Contrast that with Michael Hilger. His attorney, Mark Sipple, told the court his client had his first drink at age 6, and was drunk to the point of being sick by the time he was 8.
But, Sipple said, it was not a cut and dried case of, “Terrible people do terrible things, and we know what should happen.”
Even Hilger’s ex-wife wrote a letter of support for him, Sipple said.
Hilger was a dedicated father and a hard worker. His two previous driving-while-intoxicated charges occurred more than a decade ago, in 1990 and 1992. Other than that, and a few more speeding tickets, he has had no other criminal actions against him.
Steinke agreed Hilger was not a monster. He said the only terrible thing about Hilger’s situation was that he did not learn from his previous drunken driving convictions, and it took such a tragedy to drive home the point.
Hilger stood quietly through the proceedings, but spoke up before he was formally sentenced.
He turned around briefly and told Christine Walker he was sorry she lost her spouse, and the children lost their father.
He told Steinke the wrong person died in the accident.
He told the judge he had a friend retrieve his truck from the mechanic so hopefully, later, he can use it as a visual aid while talking to students about the perils of driving drunk.
He said he showed his own 5-year-old daughter the picture of his truck, and explained that he killed someone with it.
Steinke said during the proceedings he was left with a hollow feeling.
“I only wish there was something I could do to undo this. This is a tough day…But I do hear a cry for justice,” Steinke told the defendant.
“Perhaps,” the judge said, “One positive aspect that can be achieved from today, is to bring a sense of closure so hearts can mend.”
Robert told us a little bit more about the hearing. About 21 people, friends or relatives of Christine, were in the courtroom. A few relatives of Mike Hilger’s were there, too, perhaps half a dozen, and four of his friends. While our people sat quietly before the judge came in, those four were having a good time, talking and laughing, sometimes seeming to make our friends the brunt of their ‘jokes’. They doubtless think we live a very ‘narrow’ life.
(Funny how people choose that word to describe us…never dreaming that it’s right in the Bible, Matthew 7:13: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”)
The county attorney, much to everyone’s surprise, read the following paragraph from a letter Christine wrote: “David has never had a drop of alcohol in his life. The Bible says in Proverbs 20:1, ‘Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.’ We know this is true,” she wrote, “because people who drink often get into their cars and drive drunk, hitting innocent people in their paths.”
Robert looked at those four jovial friends--and they were jovial no longer. Rather, they were staring silently at the floor, all four of them.
The county attorney sometimes had to stop her discourse because she was about to break down crying. She looked around the room after reading that paragraph, then said, “That ought to make every one of us think twice tonight when we decide whether or not to have a glass of wine with our dinner.”
At the end, Mike Hilger’s apology did not seem very sincere, for he hardly turned around far enough to glance at Christine and the children. A little “Oops, sorry,” just doesn’t cut it, does it?
Does that newspaper article get to you like it did to me? Something about that description of Christine and her sweet little children… I made the error of reading it between Sunday School and church, and then when we went back to church and started singing such songs as My Hope is in the Lord, I was nearly done for. What an awful gap David left behind!
Too bad whoever it was who first introduced that man to alcohol, when he was barely older than Victoria (imagine!!), can’t be strung up by the heels and left to hang in the wind for the rest of his/her life. Horrible, horrible. Nevertheless, in the end, each person is responsible for himself, no matter how he got that way. The Bible says so: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” That is stated several times in Ezekiel 18.
Well…Larry and I just finished watching a video telling how to build a new bathroom. My coffee mug is plumb empty, and there is no more coffee in the pot. Seems to be nothing else for it but to go to bed. Goodnight!
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