Journal: A Model T, an Impala, a Mustang, & a Trip to Omaha

 

Here are Lydia and Hester on the Fourth of July, 1995.  The fabric from which Lydia’s collar, inset belt, and skirt border were made was leftover scraps from a dress someone made for me when I was about Lydia’s age, four years old.  Hester was six in this picture.

Below is my nephew Kelvin exiting a friend’s 1926 Model T last Monday at our church picnic.

My father had a Model T when he and my mother were married March 14, 1936.  He proudly took her for a ride in their little town in Illinois – but Mama was unimpressed.

“You sit up there so high, everybody can see you!” she exclaimed in mortification. 

That was my mother:  never cause a scene, never do anything to draw attention to yourself.  Just quietly go about doing things for others.

Wednesday morning I woke up and thought (à la Winnie the Pooh), “Oh!  Yes!  Quite so! — yesterday was the day to take the quilt and scissors case to the Platte County Fair.”  🙄😏

I remembered every day for a month.  But I forgot, Tuesday.  Ah, well; there’s always the State Fair.  The County Fair awards people with $1, or maybe $2, for grand prizes.  But the poor thing needs people to contribute their crafting things, so that others have stuff to look at when they come!  Siggghhhhhh...

Here’s a friend’s 1963 Impala, all fixed up fancy, and below is another friend’s 1967 Mustang convertible.

It was a pretty day Wednesday, with a high of 82°.  Would’ve been nice to have had that temperature on the 4^th! 

There were two bats in the house Tuesday night at 3:30 a.m. – one on the main floor, the other in the basement.  We found another on the upper stairs Wednesday night at 11:15 p.m.  So much for Larry’s notion that they never come in the house at such an early hour (I have seen them at pretty much all hours), and so much for thinking he got their point of entry sealed.  🙁

Back when all nine of our children were still at home, one of our cats once brought in a small garter snake and deposited it under the table – right while we were having a nice, peaceful Sunday dinner.  Now, this would normally have been unremarkable, as the kids all subscribed to their mother’s general Mode of Operation:  1) rescue critter from cat(s), 2) take a picture of critter, and, finally, 3) release said critter back into the Great Out-of-Doors.  However!!! – Keith, our oldest, had invited his girlfriend to have dinner with us.  And... she was squeamish.  Furthermore, she was the one who saw it first.  😲

Suddenly, our dinner was interrupted with an ear-splitting shriek, and Esther, who was situated behind the table, against the wall, and in between several others, was trying to pull her feet up onto her chair and scramble out from behind the table, all at once.

The kids, after their initial astonishment (imagine nine forks or spoons, all paused halfway to mouths), quickly put down their utensils, and several slid rapidly off their chairs to join snake-capturing forces under the table.

Teddy came up triumphant, and then the brat proceeded to wave that snake around a bit (while Esther went on shrieking) before carting it out the back door, laughing all the way. 🙄

I ordered young’ns to wash their hands, and then we reseated ourselves and got back to the taters ’n gravy.  Multiple spontaneous outbursts of hilarity ensued.  Those kids!

Here is the cement swingset one of our friends built at Christine’s property.

Thursday afternoon, I opened the stairs door to head upstairs to my office to scan photos – and there was a bat, calmly reposing on the steps.  AAauuuugggghhh!

I spoke harsh words of admonition to it and disposed of it.

That evening, I turned a page in the album I was scanning – and there was Hannah in her beautiful wedding gown, before we removed the train.  

Yes, yes, I know that would be considered a sacrilege by many people, and indeed we did regret it a bit; but trains were not the style back then in our little circle of the world.  And one big advantage to doing this was that I did not then have to purchase fabric for Victoria’s flowergirl dress; there was more than enough to make a lovely, floor-length, full-skirted dress for a three-year-old.

I finished that album a little after 1:00 a.m., having scanned 121 photos that day.  12 albums to go.  I’ve scanned a total of 31,632 photos.

I then spent a while labeling my Fourth-of-July pictures, and sending a few off to the girls for confirmation of some of the children’s names.

“Help!” I wrote.  “They all look alike!  Their mothers should’ve named them all Dave, boys and girls alike, to keep things easy, like Mrs. McCave in the Dr. Seuss book.  All she had to do was poke her head out her door and yell, “Daa-aaa-aaa-ve!” – and all 23 Daves came a-running.

Even little Keira got in on the labeling query.  Hester showed her one of my pictures of a cute little girl with a red ball cap covering enough of her face that I couldn’t be sure who it was. 

“That’s Jill,” announced Keira.

Several pictures later, I came upon the same little girl, this time looking full at the camera, and with her red cap in her hand.  Yesirree, it absolutely was Jill, my great-great-niece – and therefore, she’s Keira’s first cousin thrice removed.

I now understand how Mrs. Armstrong used to feel, when she’d tell me (in her signature ‘confidential’ manner behind her hand), “I’d never know who these kids were, if they weren’t with their parents!” 

Mrs. Armstrong was one of the oldest members of our church for many years.

I’m always amazed when some child who was born just last month is now four years old. 

Below is the tractor pulling the barrel cars.  Keira is in car number 2.

Hester said, “Keira really, really thought she was helping drive the barrel train/tractor thing.  She took it so seriously.  😂  Andrew was saying something to her, but she wouldn’t even look towards him because she was watching where they were going – and steering.  👀”

I replied, “Daddy and I were laughing about that, because I noticed that while most of the kids sat back, relaxed, and had a nice ride, Keira was sitting up straight as could be, holding the steering wheel good and tight, watching the route intently, and really steeeeeering into those corners.  She tickles our funnybones.”

In this picture, Andrew is sitting near the middle of the wagon (in the dark plaid shirt), and you can just see Keira’s little head against his right shoulder.

I found the suede and Sherpa slippers Loren lost the first week he was at the nursing home – that is, I didn’t find them physically; I spotted them on another man’s feet in a picture on the nursing home’s Facebook page.  😄  Well, I suppose it’s possible that the other man had some identical to Loren’s... but they look big on his feet, and I know he’s a smaller man than Loren is.  Loren’s shoes have been long gone, too; but he does have a pair of cheap canvas slippers that he declares are quite comfortable.  He says he found them when he was outside mowing.  😏  Perhaps the staff gave them to him.

I considered telling one of the nurses about those suede and Sherpa slippers Saturday, and showing her the picture.  Loren’s slippers do have his name written in permanent ink on the bottom in the arch area.

On the other hand, if I did that, I’d be obliged to also tell her that the red Nebraska cap Loren was wearing in one of their pictures isn’t his, wouldn’t I?  This was taken on ‘Hawaii Day’.

Maybe I’ll just let well enough alone.  They all ‘share’ stuff, voluntarily or otherwise.

He seems content and happy, really, and never acts sad or upset when we leave.  I’m thankful for that – especially when I remembered what happened a year ago on the Saturday night before the Fourth of July:  he must’ve gone to bed early, woken up right before sundown, thought it was Sunday morning, and headed off to church at 9:15 p.m.  No one was there, of course, so he wandered around a little – and then got tangled up in the traffic leaving the high school after a fireworks display. 

I received notifications from the trackers on his Jeep, and we headed out to find him, but couldn’t get to him on account of all that traffic.  We could see he was heading home, but only going about 3 to 5 miles per hour; so we went to the park by Loup Power House near his house and waited for him.  He didn’t get home until about 11:00 p.m.  He must’ve been exhausted by then.  His lights came on just long enough for him to go to his bedroom, and then all was dark; so we headed home again.

So... like I said, I am very thankful that he’s safe, fed good meals three times a day, and taken care of by nurses who seem to really care for the residents.  The nursing home got another award recently – first place in nursing homes all around the area, for the second year in a row.  It really is a nice place.

In this picture, if you zoom in, you’ll see that the young man, David, in the light gray shirt and black pants, just right of center, has a nice-sized fish in his hand.  He’s removing the hook so as to release the fish back into the lake.  David is married to my great-niece, Michelle, Robert’s daughter.  In the center of the picture, dressed in a red shirt, is my great-nephew Joshua.  He’s my late nephew David’s youngest son – and he’s 6’ 10”.  Behind him in the blue plaid shirt is Teddy.  The wee little girl in the red hat who’s playing in the water is Felicity, my great-great-niece.  My nephew Kelvin, all in navy or black, is to the right of David.

Saturday, I went to visit Loren.  Larry had too much to do, and too little time to do it, so he didn’t come along.  I took my laptop in order to show Loren my Fourth-of-July pictures.

I found him in the dining room with his friends Roslyn and Sandy.  He had finished eating, so I pulled out my laptop, set it on the table, and fired up the picture show.

Along came a nurse to tell me I had to wear a mask if I was going to sit in the dining room. 

Some visitors wear them... some don’t... sometimes nurses tell people to wear them... sometimes they don’t.  I always act agreeable.

Mind you, I’m not agreeable.  I only act agreeable.

Elkhorn River

I smiled at her, said, “Okay,” and started reaching for my purse to extract one that has traveled with me for 2 ½ years now.  It’s still just like new, pristine and stiff, one of those blue disposable types.  I’ve only used it a small handful of times, and never for much longer than ten minutes at a time.

“I’ll get you one, hon,” said the nurse, turning to scurry off. 

They’re always quite nice to me.  ’Cuz, after all, I’m agreeable, you know!

“It’s okay,” I said, “I have one.”  I fished around in my purse.  I’ve got monkey wrenches, piano benches, and a kitchen sink in there... but where was the silly mask?

The nurse paused, then said, “You could go with him into his room, and then you wouldn’t have to wear one.”

So I did exactly that, after rapidly stuffing my laptop back in the bag.

“Let’s go to your room,” I said to Loren, and took off at a fast clip.

This always makes him rush quickly after me – and Roslyn and Sandy never walk as fast as he does, though perhaps they could, if they tried hard enough.  They seem healthy enough.  Anyway, we left them behind.  I quickly pressed the numbers on his pushbutton door lock, opened the door so we could enter, and made sure the door shut and locked behind us.

Loren was properly amazed.  “How’d you do that?!” he asked.  “I tried all morning to get that door open!”

“The nurse told me how,” I said.  She had, last time I was there.  I did not tell Loren the number code.  Not that he would be very likely to remember it... but... you never know.

We spent almost two hours looking at pictures.  Loren didn’t appear to be getting tired, and he was very much enjoying the pictures, seeing all the people, the vehicles, the tables under the tents, and the pretty lake.  So I kept going until we reached the end.

Loren recognized a good many of the people who are over the age of, oh, perhaps 40 or so, though he does forget names.  Every few pictures, he asked again where the picnic had been held, and who owned the property.  Each time he asked, I explained all over again, just like I had the first time:  “Christine bought this property, lake and all.  It’s about 90 acres.”  I told him the general location, on the northwest side of town.  He couldn’t get it straight in his mind where it might be – until he saw this picture, taken as we left the property and headed back toward town.  Dead center, you can see the steeple on our church.  

Loren spotted it, and immediately knew it was our church – even though sometimes when he was still living at his home, he’d get totally confused as to where the church service was going to be, and would arrive at our house, or Robert and Margaret’s house, or Charles and Susan’s house, thinking the ‘meeting’ would be there, and not knowing where the church was (though once when I led him there in my Jeep, he complained, “Well, I knew where this church was!  Why didn’t you just say so?!”).  (I had.) 

As I gathered up laptop and purse to leave, Loren told me, “I started to go home last night, but I only got as far as Central City...” he paused, then decided, “No, it was Seward.  Then I was too exhausted to keep going, so I had to come back.” 

Next, he said that someone had stolen his shoes.  And sure enough, he only had on socks.  “It happened when I was at the airport,” he informed me.  His memory veered a little farther offtrack, and he started trying to describe an airplane that I think he thought he’d been flying (he did used to have a pilot’s license), and we forgot all about lost or stolen shoes.

He couldn’t find the words to express all this to me, and I wasn’t  much help, because I hadn’t known where we were going with the conversation in the first place.  However, when he began describing mechanical problems the aircraft had, I remarked that the biggest trouble when something like that happens is that you can’t pull over to the shoulder to check it out.

That made him laugh.  His story sort of petered out then, but at least he’d forgotten about the stolen shoes and about trying to ‘drive home’.  I think he was getting tired; it was a quarter after 7 by then.

Telling him goodbye, I left his room, walked down the hall – and met the man who’d been wearing the suede and Sherpa slippers in the picture on Facebook.  He must’ve been at the airport recently, too, and the shoe thief had been busy while he was gone, because he had a dilapidated canvas slipper on one foot and a sock on the other. 

He was counting his fingers as we passed in the hallway.  The distraction interrupted him, and he had to start over again.

They were all still there; I looked.

Forty minutes later, on the west side of Fremont, I saw flashing red and blue lights up ahead.  As I got closer, I could see that the two-lane highway was closed on account of an accident.  I later learned that a woman in her 30s had been killed, and two others, also in their 30s, had been transported by LifeNet helicopters to hospitals in Omaha.  Both were in very serious to critical condition.

I made a U-turn and went back to Fremont, then turned south toward Inglewood.  

By this time, my stomach was rubbing on my backbone.  The detour was going to add thirty minutes to the drive home.  The coffee, tea, and water I had with me weren’t going to be very satisfying, and all I’d had to eat so far that day was half a bagel, toasted, with butter and honey.

Platte River

I stopped at a Casey’s and got a piece of string cheese, a bottle of chocolate milk, and a strawberry yogurt parfait.  I saved the parfait for when I got home; I can’t eat that kind of stuff and drive at the same time.  Anyway, the cheese and milk saved me from perishing.

In reading the newspaper (online) that night, I discovered that Mr. Jackson, one of my favorite teachers, had passed away Wednesday, July 7.  He was 89. 

In reading his obituary, I discovered that his son Travis, who graduated the same year I did, had passed away in January.  Travis was 62; he had died of cancer.  He’d been a pharmacist in Arlington, Texas.

Mr. Jackson was my Business Administrations teacher.  He’s the one who got me the job at Nebraska Public Power District.  I really enjoyed that job.

The last load of clothes is dry, so I shall bid you adieu and trot into the laundry room to extract clothes from dryer.

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