Journal: Birthday Parties, Old Photos, & Old Churches

 

Tuesday morning when I refilled and rehung the bird feeders, it was 30°, on the way up to 33° that afternoon.  I had on a thick, fuzzy white sweater over a thin, short-sleeved top.  Am I dressed too warmly for the day? I wondered.  I’d rather be chilly than too hot – but mostly I want to be exactly right.  Maybe I’m part manatee – they need to be right at about 68°.  Yep, that’s me.

Here  are Mr. (below) and Mrs. (above) Downy.

That morning, Joseph sent a picture of himself graduating from the courses he’s been taking for the last couple of years, all decked out in cap and gown.

It was Oliver’s fourth birthday that day.  I sent him (by texts to Hester) some animated ‘Happy Birthday’ pictures, and then, after Keira got out of school, took him a present.

We gave him this magnetic ‘space’ game.  There’s a clear plastic cover, and one uses the magnetic wand to move the balls and wooden pieces through the maze.  I was surprised and pleased to learn that, unbeknownst to me, this coordinated with the birthday theme he’d asked for:  spaceships!

Andrew and Hester gave him a couple of big, hardcover books on space and rockets, and Andrew bought ‘tickets into space’ for Keira and Oliver.  Cards with their names will be made, and these will be carried into space on the next spaceship.  Each child has his or her own paper ‘ticket’.

Keira’s is still pristine.  Oliver’s was already somewhat rumpled, because...  Four-year-old boy!  Space ticket!  You understand.  😉

Oliver was excited that I was coming, and trotted right out to greet me – in shirtsleeves, on that cold day.  Here are Keira and Oliver trying out the spaceship game.

Soon Oliver invited me upstairs to see the new bed he got for his birthday.  Until now, he’s had a toddler bed.  This one is full-sized.  This is how you show Grandma your new bed.

As Hester and I were chatting, I mentioned that I wanted to have some coins appraised.  

She told me, “We have some of the big Eisenhower dollar coins; we use them for when Keira loses her teeth.”

“You mustn’t give out TOO big of an award,” I warned, “or your kids will be removing their teeth with hammer and tongs!”  😂

Here’s Joanna wearing the sweater we gave her for her birthday.

That evening, Larry brought out the old Singer sewing machines that belonged to my late sister-in-law, Janice.  The little one, a Featherweight, ran just fine after a little oiling. 

The bigger one, the one we found outside under Loren’s back deck in a plastic bag that was totally disintegrating, was once a beautiful machine, but the box is in shambles, and the inside workings of the machine are all rusty. 

Larry thoroughly oiled and cleaned it, detached the motor from the hook, and pressed the button on the pedal.  It ran!  And it sounded quiet and nice, just like it should.  He again cleaned and oiled everything that moved, left it for hours, then cleaned and oiled it once more and hooked the mechanisms back together.

Annnnnd... it runs.  What a shame, that it was put outside like that!  It had been out there a long, long time, too.  I looked it up and learned (not from AI Overview, mind you; whoever programs that knows nuttin’ ’bout sewing, quilting, machines, or any of the tools sewists use) that the machine is a Singer Class Model 15.  This machine was made between 1930 and 1956.  I have yet to find any numbers or characteristics of the machine that might help me zero in on the exact manufacturing date.  (AI thought the machine’s model number referred to an attachment for a Singer Featherweight.  🙄)  Here's what it should look like:

The soft black matte finish still looks nice, and all the pretty gold emblems are almost perfect.  The ornate silver pieces are in near-perfect condition, too.  Are they stainless steel?  Could they possibly be silverplate?

Okay, I just looked it up – and this time, AI does know:  they’re made of nickel-plated metal.

The reason for this foray into vintage sewing-machine repair was that Larry thought he might be able to use one of the machines to sew seams in heavy-duty straps that Walkers use to secure things on their trucks.  However, once he started looking at the machines, and seeing how nice they once were, and after hearing from his wife that those machines are not heavy-duty enough to sew thick straps together (at least, not without potentially damaging them), he instead took the straps to a company in town that makes all sorts of canvas products.  They can sew together and cut the straps as needed, all in one fell swoop, and no lovely old vintage Singers will be harmed in the process.

That day, Larry belatedly realized that the reason he was so sick the previous night was because he’d spent time working in a loader Walkers had loaned out, and someone had been smoking in it (or perhaps their clothing and breath reeked of smoke).  He is extremely sensitive to cigarette smoke – but the trouble is, he has little sense of smell, and he didn’t realize the thing was saturated with the odor.  Then he found a cigarette lighter in it, and started putting two and two together.

Tuesday he started working in that loader again – and began getting a bad headache and having trouble breathing again, just like the day before.  So he rolled the windows down, despite the cold, and that helped.

The sky was gray and overcast Wednesday.  I spent most of the day scanning photos, finishing one album and getting over half of the pictures cropped and edited before time for church that evening.

My afternoon snack consisted of two slices of mozzarella cheese and a piece of dried mango.  Mmmm, I love dried mango.  (And mozzarella cheese.)  I had iced peach-mango green tea to drink, too; but it was chilly in my upstairs room.  As soon as I ran out of iced tea, I made myself some hot tea called Oriental Treasures.

Here’s Keith, age 14, in 1994 with a bike he was able to buy with his own money, which he earned by helping Larry in his auto-body shop.

Dorcas and Teddy had new bikes too, and I’m sure Hannah must’ve, also; but I haven’t come to a picture of her yet.

Late Thursday morning, it was 54°, on the way up to 64° – unusually warm for middle Nebraska in early February.  And, as usual, that brings on ice breakup on the rivers.  

Nebraska is a major contender for ‘states with most river mileage’, with roughly 79,056 miles of rivers.  But sudden warm weather after bitter cold spells can cause trouble, with chunks of ice the size of buses – and smaller chunks filling the open waters – rampaging down the streams and rivers and causing flooding.  Platte County, where we live, was one of those being issued flood watches that day.

Also as usual, I went on scanning and editing photos that day.  A couple more hours of cropping, and I was ready to start on the next album.

Here’s one of those wide-angled shots I took with the cheapie camera I tried out in 1994:  Lydia, Joseph, Dorcas, Keith, Hannah, Caleb, Teddy, Hester, and Aleutia the Siberian husky.

Aleutia was a good dog.  Sometimes I miss having pets, but I don’t intend to get any.  I’ve had pets since I was a little girl, and I’ve loved them.  But they’re a lot of work, and I don’t like obligating one of the kids to care for a pet if we travel and leave the pet home.  It often wound up being Hannah, and she doesn’t need that, as she has severe asthma.  

When we had dogs, we always took them with us.  Not cats, though; all but one of our cats sang loud and long – “MEEeeeeeeOOOOoooooowwwWW!!!” – any time we took them anywhere in a vehicle.  🙀😾🐈‍⬛🐈

I’m happy without cat and dog hair everywhere, no litter boxes in the house, no animals getting sick on the floor (and me stepping in it before I’m fully awake), no getting up to let animals in and out in the middle of the night, no trying to save birds and bunnies the cats brought through the pet door, no vet bills, etc., etc.

Larry would like to get a dog/puppy.  “I’ll take care of it!” he says.

Sherrrrrr, he would.  He’s gone all day, almost every day!  I will not have a dog that isn’t well-trained.  And I’m the one who would do it.  I’ve done that enough; too tired to do it again.

Furthermore, we have enough trouble with wild animals.  A raccoon got into the addition again and made a mess in there.  When the sun warmed the place nicely Thursday afternoon, my nose became more and more offended, until finally I stopped what I was doing and thought, That’s coming from the addition, and I know what it is, too!

Smells like dogs, only maybe worse.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Close, though.

Larry found it and cleaned it up (I figured it was his job, since it’s his unfinished addition, right?) – and then he found messes all over the upper deck.  Aarrgghh.

Okay, that’s enough about that.

Hester

Teddy

Caleb

Joseph

Dorcas

Lydia

Keith

Hannah

I finished scanning another album that day. 

I didn’t sleep much that night.  Everything hurt (or itched) or my brain wouldn’t turn off.  Or Larry awoke me... or a raccoon on the deck awoke me.  I finally put on a thick robe and my boots and went storming out on the deck, stomping my feet and clapping my hands.  The raccoon, who’d been industriously clearing the deck of black-oil sunflower seeds, went barreling across the deck to the steps (puts him in a bit of a panic, because he has to go past me to get to the steps), somersaulted down the stairs, and went plowing through the flower garden toward the south.

If he came back later, he tiptoed.

I eventually wound up with about 2 ½ hours of sleep.  By then, the sun was well up; so I called it good and scrambled out of bed.

I spent most of Friday cropping and editing the photos I’d scanned the previous day. 

That evening, we went to Willie’s fourth birthday party.  We were late, but Victoria saved me a piece of the bacon jalapeño pizza, bless her heart.  She even kept several pieces of pizza for us in the oven, so they were still nice and warm.

Here’s Willie opening one of his gifts, with little brother Arnold looking on. 

A little later, Willie brought his Great-great-uncle Dennis an old-fashioned pickup and camper someone gave him.  It was in plastic, sealed good and proper. 

“You can use your knife to get this out for me!” said Willie.

Dennis obligingly pulled his large pocketknife from his pocket and began working away at it.  The manufacturer had put that polyethylene terephthalate around the toy to stay!

“When I get it out of here,” said Dennis, still sawing at it, “can I play with it?”

Willie, carefully watching the operation, looked up quickly into Dennis’ face.  Then, after a bit of a pause, in his sweet voice, he said, somewhat reluctantly, “Yyesss...” another pause, then, “You can give it to me!”

This caused Great-grandpa Steve to give a big shout of laughter and clap his hands together, which made Willie smile at him.

“Can’t I play with it, too?” persisted Uncle Dennis.  “Don’t you like me?”

“Oh, yes!” said Willie adamantly, and proceeded to give him a big hug, just as Dennis finally was able to extract pickup and camper from the plastic.

Victoria made Willie's cake.  All the ‘rocks’ were edible chocolate.

I sent this picture to Hester; this was the Christmas dress I made her in 1994.

“I remember that I really liked the gold shoes!” she responded.

I told her, “You used to get them out before each church service and ask, ‘Do these match this dress?’ (holding them up against whatever you were wearing).”

By late November, 1994, Caleb was walking.  He was a little past 13 months.

By the following month, he was running – and working up a new game with the lace curtains at the front windows (until his mother, fearing for the life of the curtains, called a halt to the game, to the disappointment of all players and onlookers).

A year earlier, in 1993, we had no electricity on account of a bad ice storm.  Caleb was just a few weeks old.  Our house was without power longer than the rest of the neighborhood, because in addition to main lines being down, a tree had fallen on the specific line to our house.  We had city water, but no hot water.

We kept big pots of water warming continuously on a couple of two-burner kerosene camp stoves, and a couple of giant pots of water warming on a metal stand Larry made to fit inside the fireplace.  With that water, we cooked and bathed, and the fireplace kept the main floor warm.  Everyone camped out in the living room for four or five days, since the four bedrooms in the basement and the two bedrooms on the main floor were freezing cold.  We had candles and kerosene lamps to see by at night.

The kids thought it was Great Fun and Adventuresome.

Saturday morning, I did a bit of housecleaning, started a load of clothes, then headed back upstairs to finish cropping and editing photos from the last album I’d scanned, and to start scanning the next.

Here’s Hannah on February 26, 1995, two days before her 14^th birthday.

When Hannah was little, maybe about 3 years old, we were at Lake North watching the waterfowl.  A whole flock of small ducks – canvasbacks and blue-winged teal, mostly – tipped over and plunged their heads underwater almost simultaneously, gobbling up aquatic plants or snails or worms or whatever they were finding down there.

Hannah giggled and said, “Bottoms up, kids!”  😄

In 1992, I was still using a little Point & Shoot 35mm Canon.  But at least I had big sleeves!

Here I am at age 2 – and I’d just discovered, to my great delight, that if I pedaled suddenly and with all my might and main, that throw rug under my tricycle would go rumpling and sailing backwards, making like a magic carpet until it hit the wall back there behind me.

Snow geese were flying over Sunday morning when I went out to rehang the bird feeders at a quarter ’til 8.  It was 28° on the way up to 61°, and the flood watch was – and is – ongoing.  I figured I shouldn’t wear any of my warmest sweaters or suit jackets since it would be about 50° by the time we got out of church – but I wound up being very glad I’d tucked my thin-but-warm velvet dress gloves into my church clutch!  It was chilly in the sanctuary.

My criteria for dress gloves:  1) they must look cute with my outfit, 2) I must be able to hold a pen and write notes with them on, and 3) I must be able to turn the pages in my Bible.  That last criterion is the trickiest.

Here’s a story Hester told me that morning after Sunday School:

She gets Oliver up at 8:00 a.m. each weekday morning – just in time to put on socks, shoes, and coat, then hurry out the door to take Keira to school.  She dresses him and feeds him breakfast when they get back home; this way, he gets to sleep as long as possible.

The other morning, he was sleepily bumbling along toward the door, eyes still at half-mast, when he announced, “Keira should take the bus.”  🤣

hee hee  Of course our church school has no bus.

It was both Oliver’s and Willie’s first day of Sunday School that day.  By all accounts, their own and their mothers’, they were thrilled with this new occupation.

My first day of Sunday school took place in Little Rock, Arkansas, at a huge church where my parents and I were visiting, and where evangelist J. Harold Smith was preaching.  I had turned 4 five days earlier.  After a congregational song, the children began filing out to go to Sunday School.  A friendly lady, after inquiring into my age, told us where my class would be – and it was in a separate building down the street that, to me, looked like a big church on its own.  I have no idea how I got there; I only have memories of walking for what seemed like miles and miles before being seated in a large room with other children who were probably about my age, but seemed much older and bigger than me.  (Of course they did; I was almost invariably the smallest one in the class.)

I was petrified.  Nobody would’ve known it, unless they had’ve realized my eyes were twice as big as usual.  I knew how to sit still, listen, and behave properly, and I would never have cried in public for a million dollars; but I was shy, and I was petrified.

When Sunday School was over, everyone rushed out the door.  I tried to follow the crowd; it seemed like the thing to do.  But they all scattered like chickens with their heads cut off, and I had absolutely no idea under the sun which way to go, or where my parents were.  I thought I was lost forever.

And then, wonder of wonders, waaaay off down the sidewalk, I saw my mother!  I quickly headed toward her.  I would not have run; that would’ve been undignified.  But I powerwalked.

Oh, my.  I just learned why I can’t find that church on Google Maps. 

In 1974, the First Baptist congregation moved to west Little Rock.  The buildings on Louisiana Street remained unused until 1993, when Ernestine (Ernie) Dodson purchased the buildings on Louisiana to create EMOBA (Ernie’s Museum of Black Arkansas).  In 2018, Preserve Arkansas listed the First Baptist Church buildings as one of the most endangered historical locations in Arkansas.

As I looked at this picture (a postcard for sale on eBay), knowing that is indeed the exact church where we attended, I wondered if my four-year-old mind had created something that wasn’t really there:  that ‘other building’ where I went to Sunday School.  Then I noticed the word ‘buildings’ – plural.  I kept reading.  There was the address, and I then found it on Google Maps and looked at Street View.

Yes, that’s it, and yes, there is another quite large building on the other side of the block which was purchased especially for Sunday School classes when they were running out of space in their church.

But sadly, this building has been allowed to deteriorate most terribly.  Many of the beautiful stained-glass windows have been broken out, and all of them are covered with transparent black material of some sort.  There’s black metal fencing all around it.  A portion of the roof is collapsing.  That handmade sign on the front door says BEWARE – because they used this building as a ‘Haunted Cathedral’.

The rest of the handprinted sign says, “Celebrate Juneteenth,” and “Black Lives Matter.”

Here’s that other building where I went to Sunday School.  It, too, has not been kept well.  I don’t know if that black stuff near the rooflines is algae, mildew, or tar residue from the roof surfacing.  There are broken windows in this building, too.

Here’s one more shot of the other side of the church.  I had hoped to find pictures of what I remember to be a beautiful sanctuary with soaring dark beams overhead; but I find none.

When Keith turned 4 and went to Sunday School, Hannah was astonished – and somewhat insulted – that she couldn’t go, too. 

A few days later, we were at the grocery store, and some unknown lady said to her, “What’s your name, honey?”

Hannah, who was usually stand-offish with those she didn’t know, said with great emphasis, “My name is Hannah Lynn Jackson, and I’m only 3, and I CAN’T GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL.”  That lady’s expression was so funny.

When Hannah turned 4, Keith, who was a year and six days older than his younger sister, ‘explained things’ to her, finishing with, “...and I would hold your hand, so you don’t be scared.”

Hannah, indignantly: “You don’t NEED to hold my hand, because BEING SCARED is what I DON’T DO!!!!”

Larry stayed home from church last night; he didn’t feel well.  After the service, I picked up an order of groceries at Walmart.  Home again, once the groceries were put away, we had a light supper of leftovers plus newovers.  (One of the kids used to say that.  Caleb?  Probably.)  The leftovers, which were somewhat scant, consisted of chicken/rice soup, cottage cheese, broccoli and cauliflower.  The ‘newovers’ – stuff I’d just gotten at the store – were pineapple/banana/mango juice (fresh from Dole, yummy), kale-cranberry-bacon salad, Chicken-in-a-Biskit crackers, and (another of the leftovers) coconut cream pie for dessert.  That might sound like a feast, but there were only a few bites of the leftovers, except for the pie.  Just enough to make the meal interesting and good.

Before heading to the feathers, I pulled up Walmart’s website and requested a refund for a big bottle of Strawberry Kiwi juice that had obviously been dropped on its lid.  The lid is smooshed down into the jug so far I cannot open it.  Or if I could, there would doubtless be a geyser.  🌋😱🫢😯😧  Whoever dropped it and/or put it in my grocery order knew full well that that bottle was damaged beyond repair and probably unusable.

At 11:30 a.m. this morning, it was 51° on the way up to 73°, of all things.  It isn’t even mid-February!  The birds were clustering around and under the feeders that I’d hung earlier this morning.  Let’s take a tally:  House finches, American goldfinches, dark-eyed juncos, Northern cardinals, Blue jays, English sparrows, Downy woodpeckers, Eurasian collared doves, Mourning doves... and there are American robins farther out in the trees.  I hear other birds that I can’t see:  Bobwhite quail, Harris’ sparrows, White-crowned sparrows (photo from Wikipedia), White-throated sparrows, and Chipping sparrows.  Now and then a Cooper’s hawk swoops over, making all the little birds scatter.

Later this afternoon, I took birthday gifts to granddaughter Emma and grandson Grant.

I’ve made myself some cherry pomegranate iced tea.  The sun was going down, and it was still 71° here!

For supper tonight, we had hamburgers on toasted buns with seeds on top, with tomatoes, Monterey Jack cheese, Romaine lettuce, and the very last one of Victoria’s homemade pickles, which we shared.  I fished the last few pieces of pickled onions and garlic cloves out of the jar and put them on the burgers, too.  She made the pickles from cucumbers she grew in her garden.

Bedtime!  Tomorrow I shall continue scanning the sixth-to-the-last album.  Lord willing, that is.  😊

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,