Last week somebody took Mama some tomatoes from their garden (although the nutritionist at the hospital has since said that she should eat nothing with seeds in it). She couldn’t finish them, but she liked them, so she asked her favorite nurse, Julie, to save them for her, and bring them back for breakfast on bread with peanut butter.
Julie looked properly amazed. “I don’t have that recipe!” she said, making Mama laugh.
David was low on work this week; he told his men that if they were wishing to go on vacation, now was the time to do it. Joseph didn’t work Monday or Tuesday; Larry did some work on David’s shop.
Last week when I printed my letter, my word processor went bonkers. It looked like the cats had walked on the keyboard and typed a bunch of hieroglyphics. I turned it off and tried again... It did it again. I thought it was ruined... But I didn’t have time to worry about it, because we were going to Norfolk to get my camera! Yes! It was done! I received a notice in the mail, telling me so! (After we got back home, I tried my printer again...it still didn’t work, and then I ran out of ribbon...I inserted a new ribbon, and the printer worked like magic! Stupid thing. Wonder what ailed it?)
It was very hot--98°--and humid. After getting the camera--I had to leave one arm and one leg as proper payment--we went to Ta-ha-Zouka Park, where we planned to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But it was just toooo hot, and we weren’t even hungry. Luckily, we’d brought plenty to drink. I parked under some big shade trees. Victoria bounced up onto her knees and peered out the window at the toys.
Sitting there with the air conditioner blowing on her full blast, bottle of cold water in hand, she giggled and said, “Oh, this is so much fun!”
The children leaped out and dashed off to play. Joseph helped Victoria and Caleb onto the old-time merry-go-round, and then, pumping the handle as hard as he could, sent them flying round and round.
“My stomach hurts,” said Caleb, and you would not have believed Joseph could have stopped that thing so fast.
Victoria told me, “Joseph had us going so fast, my head nearly flew off my neck!”
After walking across the little white wooden bridge over the pond, we’d had quite enough of that oppressive heat. So we climbed back into the Suburban and headed for home, and I went back to cleaning Joseph and Caleb’s room. There is not yet an end in sight.
That evening, in spite of the heat, we took our supper to Pawnee Park. After we ate, Larry, Joseph, and Caleb played basketball while Hester and Lydia played volleyball with a small beachball Teddy had given them. Victoria played in the sand around their feet.
“Do you want to move over to the side?” requested Lydia politely, after nearly tumbling over her small sister who had moved unnoticed behind her. “Then I won’t step on you, and you won’t get hit with the ball.”
Victoria obliged. Lydia served and Hester smacked it--an unexpectedly wild hit that bounced right off Victoria’s head. So much for not getting hit. All three girls went into gales of mirth.
We were hearing the sound of motorcycles and four-wheelers, and finally curiosity got the better of us. We hiked over the dike and down to the Loup River, and there they were, pulling all sorts of stunts and capers with their bikes and ATVs. I took some videos...and then, when they spotted me doing so, they really put on a show for me.
After one came skidding past precariously close, sending up a spray of sand, I asked from my vantage point behind the camcorder, “Are my toes in danger?”
“Yes,” said Larry, and meant it. “Back up!”
I backed up.
That night, we got out the Nebraska map and pored over it. We thought longingly of the mountains with their refreshing beauty and coolness; but we couldn’t afford for Larry to take that much time off... The next day, Larry asked for Friday and Saturday off so we could go camping, starting Thursday night after supper. We planned to go to Fort Robinson State Park in the northwest corner of Nebraska--that’s about 450 miles away.
Our largest sleeping bag needed to be washed, and it’s too big for my washer, so I decided to do it in the bathtub. I poured in a cap full of detergent, filled the tub half full of water, and threw in the sleeping bag.
“Slooooooop!” said the sleeping bag, and the tub was emptied of its water.
“Wow!” I remarked to Caleb, who was standing beside me watching procedures, “That’s one thirsty sleeping bag!”
I put more water into the tub, kneeled down, and started to turn the bag --and that’s when I discovered that soaking wet sleeping bags are heavy. The fact was, I couldn’t turn it.
Sooo...I stepped into the tub, and proceeded to agitate the thing with my feet, creating mounds of bubbles, while Caleb and Victoria stood watching and laughing. I let the water out, standing on the sleeping bag to drain as much water out as I could, then filled the tub again. Once more, I stomped about on the bag, to the accompaniment of Caleb and Victoria’s laughter. I let the water out, and filled the tub the third time. After rinsing it and draining the tub again, I tried to lift the bag out. But I couldn’t do it; it was simply too heavy.
I called in reinforcements--namely, Hester. With her help, I managed to get the thing out to the front lawn, where we spread it out in the sun to dry. Now and then throughout the afternoon, we turned it and moved it, so as not to damage the grass. By 6:00 p.m., it was dry enough that I could put it into my dryer to finish the job.
That afternoon when I started to curl Lydia’s hair, her temple felt too hot.
“Are you sick?” I asked.
“Oh, well, my stomach just hurts a little bit,” replied Lydia.
I took her temperature. She had one degree of fever...but she wanted to get ready for church, so I went ahead and curled her hair. Hannah and Aaron came visiting, and all of a sudden it was too late to go see Mama, and I didn’t feel good enough to go, anyway. I had a fever, too, and so did Dorcas. Dorcas has been having a fever every evening for a week. I took a nap, then got up to get Victoria dressed for church. I went in her room, woke her up, got her clothes--and she informed me her stomach hurt. So Lydia, Victoria, and I stayed home from church.
I decided I’d better make some food for our trip. I started making three pumpkin pies, and ran out of eggs. I left that sit until somebody came home from church and could go to the store, and started making zucchini bread. Ooops; I still needed eggs. And walnuts. I gave up and went back to bed. Lydia was asleep in the recliner, and Victoria was playing here and there between us... Lydia was once abruptly awoken by Victoria’s stuffed duck quacking loudly beside her head.
“Well, he didn’t mean to wake anybody up,” explained Victoria, raising one shoulder and lifting a palm upwards, “But I accidentally gave him too big of a hug, and so he had to quack; he couldn’t even help it!”
Soon the rest of the family came home from church. Dorcas went to the store for me, and then I finished making the pumpkin pie and three loaves of zucchini bread.
Thursday we spent the day getting packed. I visited Mama and, true to form, she spent a good deal of the time telling me to drive carefully, don’t forget a can opener or the lighter, wear life jackets when boating, take bags for dirty clothes, and watch out for the rattle snakes that live in that part of the state. Although it’s been many years since Mama traveled with my father, she can still remember many items of importance that I never think of.
When Larry came home from work, he resumed working on the trailer we would use to haul our carriers and bins. He’d made a plywood floor for it, and now was putting sides on it.
At 7:30 p.m., he went to State Farm Insurance to finalize everything relating to our family’s auto insurance, which is a good thing to have when one is traveling. It took an hour and a half, because, as usual, they didn’t have the paperwork done. He came back and continued working on the trailer. It got later...and later...and later... At one point, he said we would sleep at home that night, and leave in the morning.
“No!” I exclaimed, “We can’t do that! The kids are all excited, having planned for days to leave tonight; and, furthermore, our stuff is all packed; we would have to unpack, and every time we do that, we wind up leaving important things behind. I will drive; you can sleep.”
So he agreed to go. We left home at 1:30 a.m. We stopped at the store before leaving town ...and then we came back home and got Larry’s glasses and sweaters for everyone. It was not a bit cool outside, but sometimes the children get cold in the Suburban. And then we were on our way. Just out of town, I took over the driving, and I drove till the sky was getting light. At Norfolk, I turned northwest on Rt. 275.
A nearly-full orange moon sank to the horizon in front of me. An ermine came strolling out of the left ditch. Realizing he didn’t have time to cross, he stopped and sat down in the left lane, then looked at me as I approached, blinking his big brown eyes, his fuzzy little head tipped to one side. During the night, I drove through fog here and there, and sometimes it was dense enough that I had to slow down. Somewhere by Wood Lake, the sun came up. There was a layer of fog just above the ground, and the sun glistened through it. Larry took over the driving, and I took over the picture- and video-taking.
“Look!” I said, pointing, “Look at that enormous turkey farm!”
The kids all stared at one long building after another.
“We should leave Caleb there,” suggested Joseph.
Caleb ruined the joke by exclaiming, “Oh, goody! That’d be fun!”
At Valentine, we turned back east on Route 12 and went to Smith Falls, where we ate breakfast. It was already muggy and hot, and the bugs were out full force. Miserable! These little black bugs are shaped like thin triangles, and they bite hard. When Hannah was little, she called them ‘jets’, because of their shape, and the rest of the children have called them ‘jet bugs’ ever since.
We ate zucchini bread, although we had earlier said we would eat the pumpkin pie...but I thought perhaps Larry had changed his mind, and didn’t remind him about the pie. In truth, he had forgotten it. We regretted this, later.
After gulping down some milk, we hastily put everything back into the coolers, grabbed the cameras, and trotted off to the falls. Smith Falls, at 75 feet Nebraska’s highest waterfall, is spring-fed, and very cold. The closer we got to the falls, the cooler the air, and the less bugs there were. The little stream that tumbled down over the rocks below the falls was full of water and flowing fast, so we thought there would be more water than usual at the falls--and there was.
It is so pretty, the way it comes spraying down like a veil, misting the woods around it. We stayed in the coolness for a time, and then we walked back alongside the creek. Just below a small rapids, we took off our shoes and waded. BrrrrRRRRrrr!!! It was cold!!! But it felt good on that hot, sultry day.
Soon we were on the road again, heading toward Chadron and then on to Fort Robinson. The children slept part of the way.
Caleb woke up. He tossed his pillow over the seat behind him.
“Oh, no!” cried Lydia. “You got it in the pumpkin pie!”
That’s when we learned that the pie had not fared so well in the heat while we were cooling ourselves at Smith Falls.
We drove through part of Fort Robinson State Park, looking for a good fishing lake and a good campground, preferably with one near the other. We followed a small gravel road up into the bluffs, and there we ate dinner: liquefied pumpkin pie. It still tasted scrumptious, though, so nobody was complaining.
“Just pretend it’s pudding,” I told everyone, although it tasted like nothing but liquefied pumpkin pie, to me.
The children were intrigued at the road: it went down through a dip, and there flowed a spring-fed stream right over the top of it, perhaps a foot deep, and the vehicles were required to ‘wade right through’, according to Lydia. It was beside this little stream that we found a lonesome picnic table and stopped to eat. Upon leaving this little picnic area, we had to ford the little stream, too, which was accomplished with a good deal of giggles issuing from the rear of the Suburban as we splashed our way across.
There was a nice campground in the village of Fort Robinson, and the entire village was a museum of sorts; but there was nary a shady site to be seen for setting up our tents, so we decided to take a look at Pine Ridge National Recreation Area. The map showed the park to be roughly in the center of a lop-sided square formed of Routes 20, 2, 71, and 385. We drove south on 71... We saw no signs telling us of Pine Ridge National Recreation Area. We turned east on a little country road, and eventually came to Box Butte Reservoir, still finding no signs of Pine Ridge. There was a tiny ghost town in the hills by the reservoir.
We wondered about the inhabitants, and what had become of them. Think of the pioneers, settling here and there throughout the country, having no idea if their village would thrive or die in the years to come. Life was often hard for them in the Sandhills of Nebraska, so far from civilization. If they had no spring nearby, they were dependent on the rain, and the rain in those parts was not dependable at all.
We continued north then on 385, and when we came to Chadron State Park, we pulled in to take a look. It was a nice park, with a lake where we could make use of their pedal boats, and shade trees all over the grounds. The showers were nice, and we decided to stay. We set up the tents and ate supper -- beans in tomato sauce, macaroni and cheese, zucchini bread, and fruit. Joseph, Hester, and I were unimpressed with those beans...but Caleb gobbled them up and had the rest of Hester’s, too.
Then we went to the lake, where we first rode on the pedal boats. Joseph, Hester, Lydia, and Caleb rode on one, and Larry, Victoria, and I took another. But that didn’t last long, because the park supervisors required them to be docked by 8:00 p.m. So we collected the fishing poles from the Suburban and went fishing. Larry caught several small trout, and Lydia nearly caught a sleeping female Mallard, who quacked reproachfully before swimming a little ways farther away, tucking her head under her wing, and going back to sleep.
When Larry knew he had something on his line, he’d call Victoria or Caleb to come reel his line in--and weren’t they pleased, when they discovered they’d caught a fish!
We awoke the next day at 7:45 a.m. and deduced that a nice shady spot in the evening is not necessarily a nice shady spot in the morning. Ugh! It was hot!!! We were soon up and out of our tents, folding everything up.
Larry went to get the milk out of the electric cooler--and that’s when he learnt that he’d turned the dial the wrong direction. Instead of cooling the milk, juice, butter, and jelly, the cooler had heated them. All night. And we discovered that that cooler was, indeed, capable of heating things well. We’d always wondered how well it did that. All we needed were some packets of Carnation, and there we’d be then, with mugs of hot chocolate. But it was nearly 100° already, and we had no Carnation, and nobody wanted hot milk. The hot cherry juice, however, was so good that we drank it in spite of the heat, and it did go well with the zucchini bread, which tasted like fresh-baked, piping hot bread.
Soon we were on our way to Toadstool Park, where there are many tall, pointed sandstone formations with big funny round shapes up on top. We drove down a rough gravel road--the gravel is snow white, in that part of the state--for nineteen miles, and then discovered: we had to hike a mile to see the Toadstools. It was already getting late in the morning, and we had 550 miles to go before getting home, and we intended to make it home that night... and besides: it was 102°. So we took pictures of an old reconstructed sod shanty, complete with a large cactus growing out of its roof, and all the funny sandstone bluffs and the strange shapes rising in the middle of nowhere. Then we bumped our dusty way back to the highway.
We saw antelope and whitetail deer, and hawks by the dozens. On Route 27 south from Gordon to Ellsworth, we saw one spring-fed lake after another. Pelicans swam on many of them, along with Canada geese and a variety of ducks.
As we topped a hill and flew down the other side, Joseph abruptly announced, “The top carrier just blew off!”
We looked back--and sure enough, there sat our carrier, right smack-dab in the middle of the road. It had been on the trailer, and the wind had lifted it enough that the strap didn’t hold it in place. We found a place to turn around, and went back. Amazingly enough, it was still in one piece, and the lid was still on it, although several of the clasps were loose. It took at least fifteen minutes to collect the carrier and secure it on the trailer again, and during all that time, not another single vehicle went past. Humanity is few and far between, out in them thar Sandhills. Did you know that the state of Nebraska ranks 43rd in density, with only 21 people per square mile?
At Ellsworth, population 26, give or take a horse or two, we stopped at the one and only place of business for one of those extremely necessary pit stops. Then, because we dislike taking advantage of all the facilities without giving anything in return, we looked around the store for something to buy. It was a long building, with several rooms and different levels of floors. At the far back was a room full of saddlebags and necessities for a trail ride; off the narrow hall was a little room with displays of BB and pellet guns of all types and sizes; in the large room just off the main floor were racks upon racks of boots for dress or work, men’s, women’s, and children’s, and on the walls were handcrafted shelves, paintings, and Indian beadwork; in the main room was a rack of postcards, handmade necklaces, money clips, and bracelets; on the wall was an assortment of bits and bridles; and at the back of the room was a refrigerator half full of pop and water. We bought all the water and several bottles of pop.
Larry got a pair of Wrangler jeans, and I bought one souvenir--for baby Aaron: a tiny pair of the softest moccasins I’d ever laid hands on. They are made in three shades of suede. They come to the ankle, and around the tops are fringes.
Leaving Ellsworth, we turned east on scenic Route 2 and headed for Broken Bow.
“Why in the world would anyone name a town ‘Broken Bone’?!” queried Caleb.
The air conditioners (there are both front and rear) in the Suburban cool the vehicle so quickly and efficiently, the children were often glad I had brought their sweaters.
Caleb put his on and buttoned it up the front.
“Something’s wrong,” he said.
“Oh, help,” said he.
“What happened?!” he said.
Everyone turned and looked.
Caleb, it seemed, was caught with the seatbelt right down the back of his sweater, through the sleeve, and out at the wrist. We couldn’t help it; we all burst out laughing. Caleb removed the sweater with some degree of difficulty, nearly stringing himself up in the process, and then sat looking up at it, perplexed, as it hung there above his head, in a ferocious wad of seatbelt and sleeves. We laughed the harder, and then Lydia had pity on him and untangled it.
Caleb, by then laughing, too, took his sweater, debating whether or not he wanted to put it on. “I was cold, once,” he told us, “but not any more!”
The route to Broken Bow follows a two-track rail line that is normally very busy. But Saturday we saw six or seven long west-bound coal trains stopped on the tracks, perhaps three miles apart. The engineers were in the engines, but nothing was moving except for the prairie grasses alongside the tracks blowing in the never-ceasing wind, and a couple of slow-moving east-bound trains. We saw a line of railroad equipment, all headed west, and surmised that something had happened to the track somewhere farther west...a derailment?
At Broken Bow, we ordered pizza at the Pizza Hut, and then went to fill the Suburban with gas. I called home and talked to Dorcas...and by the time we went back to the Pizza Hut, our pizzas were done. We took them to the city park, ate, played Frisbee, and the children played on the toy set for a little bit. Then we turned south on Route 21 in order that we could go through Sumner and give a man a vehicle title he needed. This took us some distance out of our way, but it also allowed us to travel via I80, which is nice at nighttime when we need to make a pit stop. Pit stops in the Sandhills are hard enough to find in the daytime, and nearly nonexistent after sundown.
We were going around a corner in Kearney when Larry glanced in his rear-view mirror and spotted it (or didn’t spot it, as the case may be): the left tire on the little trailer was gone. That is, most of it was gone. There were a few shredded bits of rubber left on the wheel; that was all. And the spare was home in the Bronco. Larry pulled into the parking lot of a closed tire shop, and we looked longingly through the windows at the rows and rows of tires for sale. He unhitched, and we headed out to the all-night Wal-Mart, where we knew there was a tire store and lube express.
There we learned that just because the Wal-Mart was an all-night store, it did not necessarily follow that the tire store stayed open all night. It took no less than an hour for a clerk to ask another clerk who asked another clerk who asked an assistant manager who asked another manager who called another manager who called the secretary of state who called the vice president who called the president who called the premiere of Quebec who called the Queen Mother, who just had her 103rd birthday party, who called Prince Charles, who just knocked himself cuckoo (if he wasn’t already) falling off his horse in a polo match, who called the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to ask if someone could kindly open the Kearney Wal-Mart tire shop and sell Larry the tire he needed.
And then, finally, we got the tire. Tony Blair is a kindly man. (Sometimes.) We drove back to our trailer, and spent another hour there while Larry laboriously struggled to get the shreds of rubber off the wheel. Once the rubber was loose, it took no more than five minutes for him to straighten the wheel a bit, put the new tire on the wheel, and drive to a station to put air in the tire. Back to the trailer then, where Larry put the wheel back on, hitched up...and we were ready to roll.
We arrived home at 2:00 a.m., and then everyone had to take showers, and I curled Hester and Lydia’s hair. We tumbled into bed and slept as fast as we could, which wasn’t quite fast enough.
Morning arrived mighty soon. Hester didn’t feel well; I think she probably got whatever it was Dorcas, Lydia, and I had earlier in the week. She stayed home from church. No visitors for dinner Sunday, since I had not had time to go to the store, and the household grocery level was extraordinarily low. Teddy went to Amy's house to eat. For the rest of us, Larry concocted a dish with a vegetable stew blend, deer sausage, and scrambled eggs, along with fresh-baked biscuits. Mmmmmm, yummy.
Larry and I went to the hospital to see Mama that afternoon. Caleb didn’t feel well that night, so, not feeling so great myself, I stayed home with him.
Some books I ordered recently arrived: The Look-It-Up Book of Presidents, What Makes Flamingoes Pink, Everyday Geography of the United States, The Word Detective, Encyclopedia of Medical Care, and The Houseplant Encyclopedia. I like to scan through books of this sort ...especially word books and such like. When I was little, newly learning to read, I used to enjoy reading dictionaries. Imagine the book reports the children will have now.
As I type, Victoria is singing a song, making it up as she goes along: “Oh, the flowers are blooming, because I watered them, I watered them, I watered them. Yes, the flowers are blooming now! When they’re dying, we water them again, and they bloom some more, they bloom some more, they bloom some more. As soon as they’re dead, we’ll water them, we’ll water them, we’ll water them, and then they’ll bloom, they’ll bloom, they’ll bloom! Oh, yes, maaaaaaybeeee, maaaaaybeeee, maybe they will, they might, they might!”
Hmmm. Sounds like she has our method of watering the flowers down pat.
The dryer is dinging! Time to get busy...
