Rambling in Natchez

Margo and I are spending a few weeks at a state park just out of Natchez, Mississippi. We are near the Mississippi River and have spent some time exploring the old river city of Natchez. It has ranged from 27 degrees up to 74 degrees and is a nice change from winter in Wisconsin and Minnesota!

This column starts the 5th year of stories we have put in the newspaper, mostly on local history from the Leader reader area. We are still looking to share your stories—so pass them along to us. We plan to return to MN mid February and to Wisconsin mid March.

We have been reading the electronic version of the Leader and are getting used to it. The color photos there are nice and being able to read it wherever we travel is great. My laptop computer has wireless, so we stop at a public library or in the parking lot of any motel and can connect for free and read the paper.

We have a small pop-up tent camper that we pull behind the old Buick Roadmaster. The Buick required a trip to the service shop when the autoleveling air shocks pumped up to the max and stayed there—just like the “call the doctor if it stays up more than 36 hours” advertisements with the evening news. The “doctor” found a broken wire shorting out on the frame. He charged $8.00 for the wire repairs and new fuses and $140 to find where the wire was broken. The Buick is back in a relaxed attitude again.

We have spent the last two weeks touring Civil War battle sites; old cotton plantations and mansions; the Natchez Trace—a Federal Parkway from Nashville to Natchez (like a wild river only a wild road); military and local cemeteries; museums and scenic vistas; and visiting back road towns and trying local restaurants for breakfasts of gravy, grits, country ham steak, and biscuits.

The state park is mostly filled with Wisconsin, Michigan and Ontario campers. Locals think it is too cold to be camping; those from Ohio and Indiana stop on their way to the deep south, but upper Midwesterners aren’t able to handle the really warm temperatures further south without too much guilt. If we can say it frosted overnight here, then our friends and relatives back home aren’t too jealous!

We went over to Vidalia, LA for breakfast one day and stopped at a roadside stand. We bought some pecans for only $1.25 a pound. They had fresh fish, crabs, shrimp, and some garden greens as well as freshly dressed raccoons. In the grocery store you could buy a frozen full head of a pig, or any parts from hooves on up.

Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana compete for the state that is the worst off in most education categories including; school dropouts, teacher/pupil ratio, teacher salaries, standardized testing, school facilities, tax support for public schools, spending per pupil and more. The same states also compete for most crime, most poverty, most substandard housing, highest unemployment, worst salaries, highest obesity, highest deaths from tobacco, highest number of people in prison, highest teen pregnancy, infant mortality, lowest death age, poorest health care and probably the most litter along the roads. Each day we see groups of prisoners wearing bright green and white horizontally striped pants picking up garbage along the highways.

Alabama and Mississippi also surely must compete for the most churches! Every crossroads in the country has a Baptist or other fundamentalist church. Natchez likely has a church for every 25 people by the number we see. There are humble shed churches with plastic mail order steeples, massive antique ones and huge new ones. We are in the Bible Belt.

Next to us in the campgrounds is a couple from WI. We have had some interesting discussions. He blames the poor conditions here on what he calls the “Three R’s of the South”–Racism, Religion and Republicanism. He thinks the three are so intertwined down here that you can’t separate them out and they all work together to prevent change for the better.

He says “Mississippi spent the hundred years after the Civil War trying to make sure that a third of it’s population, the black people, were kept uneducated and subservient to the rest. They didn’t even let blacks into their Universities until forced to in the 1960s. The majority down here still haven’t understood that keeping some people down keeps them all down! The worst part of it all is that religious people here are still some of the most overtly racist. Did you know that the Southern Baptist Convention took until 1996 to admit that they were wrong to have supported slavery! You remember Jerry Falwell, he got his start in trying to keep blacks out of the private Christian Schools set up when blacks were allowed in the public schools”

Another neighbor says “People are poor because they are lazy and that’s all there is to it!”

I don’t know who is right, but whatever the cause, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana seem to have been left behind by the rest of the USA in just about everything except low taxes. Even a pack of cigarettes here is cheap—only 18 cents tax per pack versus a couple of bucks up north. A Michigander, who retired here to a new house, tells me her property taxes are 1/3 as much as she paid for an old smaller house in Michigan and other taxes are low here too She says that people over 65 don’t pay any taxes to support schools at all. She lives in a gated community with fences to keep away the riff-raff.

The camellias are blooming. Magnolias and live oaks are lushly green. Pansies bloom in the flower beds along with snapdragons. White and red clover provide bright green clumps in the brown Bermuda grass lawns. Paperwhites and an occasional clump of jonquils decorate the ditches. Cardinals and robins are thick in the park. We wear short sleeves on days when the Natchezans still have their winter coats on. See you in a month!

Spreading the Profits

"Don't bite off more than you can chew," yelled my brother Everett across the barn as I jabbed my flat blade shovel into the gutter, trying to break off a foot of pungent, steaming, fresh, green manure, stuck together with bright yellow straw, to push down to him at the end of the gutter where was waiting to pitch it into the manure spreader. "The bigger they are the harder they fall," was my reply. Our attempts at wit were part of the camaraderie we brothers shared whenever we worked together.
In the Fifties, we did everything by hand on our farm behind Bass Lake, including cleaning the barns. We boys estimated that if we fed the cows a ton of hay and grain, by the time it had gone through their four stomachs and had been mixed with water, it came out as 2 tons of manure. The more common name for manure was considered a four-letter word in our home—and used at the pain of a soap-washed mouth.

In the wintertime, our cows stayed in the barn, stanchioned in two rows facing each other across a 5-foot wide manger. Directly behind each row, was a 16-inch wide 8 inch deep gutter to hold the cows waste. The huge Holstein cows filled it to overflowing each day and it had to be shoveled and forked out by hand. In summer, the cows stayed in the pasture and only came in twice a day to be milked—allowing a weekly cleaning of the gutters. All winter, the daily routine was to let the cows outside for a little exercise while we cleaned the barn and then bring them back in to the warm comfortable barn. On nice days, Dad backed the tractor and manure spreader up to the barn doors and pitched the manure into the spreader and hauled it out to the field to be spread as fertilizer for the next year's crop. Deep snow and frigid weather stopped the tractor hauling and forced us to wheel it out in the barnyard to an ever increasingly large manure pile. Temperatures below 15 were too cold to get the Super C Farmall tractor started easily, and froze the manure quickly enough to risk breaking the spreader.

Dad was philosophical when it came to manure. "The Farmer Magazine says that manure is part of the profits from the farm. It saves me from having to buy fertilizer at the Co-op, and according to a guy from the University, should be treated as a valuable part of farming produce" After that he no longer hauled manure, he "spread the profits." Before the 1950s, dairy farmers rotated their crops between hay, corn and oats. The manure spread back on the fields was a necessary part of making this sustainable version of agriculture work. Dad did the barn cleaning work by himself during the week, but on weekends when we four boys were home from school, we helped as much as we could. It was not that we had to; it was because it was fun to be in the barn with Dad and helping out. We boys worked hard on the farm, but not nearly as hard as Mom and Dad did.

"I was a little to independent to work for other people," Dad told me when I asked why he chose to be a farmer. "I could be my own boss as a farmer. It was a lot of work, but I liked doing it." He milked cows, cleaned barns, and raised all of the crops on his own farm from 1941 until he retired forty years later when Parkinson's disease forced him to sell the cows.

There were two parts to the actual gutter cleaning. One of us pitched the manure from gutter to spreader or wheelbarrow. The other pushed it down the gutter to the person pitching it. The gutter was filled with a mixture of straw and manure. It was the consistency of pumpkin pie filling with a straw binder. The pusher "bit off" a section of manure/straw by breaking it loose from the rest with the flat shovel turned backward—cutting off the portion. Then you flipped the shovel right side up and shoved your bite down the cement gutter picking up speed as you came to the end. A five tined manure fork worked if the manure had lot of straw. Dad had put cement floors and gutters in the 1915 barn when he first bought it. Years of sliding manure down the gutter had worn the bottom smooth and shiny. It looked like green variegated marble—colorful rocks mixed in the cement giving it a lovely polished look, stained the color of green manure. It looked so colorful and bright, it would have made a beautiful kitchen countertop.

Dad bought a new barn shovel each fall. They were steel, with a long handle carefully selected for straight grain, the pan just narrower than the gutter. By spring, the shovel blade would have worn down nearly half from sliding on the cement. One year the shovel was the Armstrong brand. After that, when people asked Dad what kind of barn cleaner he had, "I have an Armstrong barn cleaner" he would reply, chuckling as he enjoyed the double meaning. "Watch Byron," Mom told Marvin as he helped his 4 year old "baby brother" get his barn boots on. Byron was the youngest and liked to be where the action was, even if he couldn't help yet. In the winter, he kept his trike in the barn and raced Lucky, our dog, up and down the white limed walkways behind the cows.

"I'm a hawn dog cryin o'er da bool" sang Byron that day as he raced his trike up the walk, wheeled it around and headed back while we were grunting over our manure evacuation jobs. He was a big fan of Elvis's new "Hound Dog" song. Suddenly the song was replaced by a real howl. We rushed to him on the other side of the barn. Taking a corner too fast for conditions, he had hit a cow pie slick and rolled into the gutter. The trike was on top of him; his arms and legs were waving wildly while he yowled.
"Be quiet—the cows will kick you," yelled Marvin as we pulled off the trike.

"Yuk, he's all covered with manure," said Everett.

"You pull him out! I'm not gonna touch him," Marvin commanded me.

"You do it, you're the oldest" I replied.

By then, Dad came over and pulled Byron, still sounding like a siren, out of the gutter. "Byron, hush up, you're OK. You just need to get cleaned up. A little manure never hurt anyone," said Dad who remained remarkably calm through most situations. "Marvin, you take him to the house, but first take him out in the snow bank and rub off the manure with snow and hay so Mom won't have such a mess." Marvin was soon back but Byron was out of action for the rest of the morning.

In the winter, we let the cows out while we cleaned the barn. They got thirty minutes to walk around and visit with each other before spending the rest of the day in their stalls. As soon as the cows left their stalls, they stopped to poop on the walkway that we had to keep white with lime. We tried to fool them by rattling their stanchions, or rushing them, but they always waited to go until it they could make the worst mess.

We spread the stalls thick with fresh yellow straw each day, laboriously forked from the huge strawstack in the barnyard and brought into the barn each day. The old straw from the stalls went into the freshly cleaned gutter to soak up the urine and minimize splashing. With stalls bedded and gutters clean, the cows came back into the barn. Each cow knew which order to come into the barn, with the boss cow first, and each knew which stall was home. On the rare occasion that Dad wanted to move a cow from one stall to a new one, it took a lot of chasing and several weeks for the cow to learn its new home. The cows with big appetites walked along the stalls ducking their head in to grab a mouthful of hay from the manger where a picky eater might have left a wisp or two. We checked the manger to make sure the water drinking cups were working and clean; pitched the manger full of hay from the huge haymow above, and then swept and limed the floors behind the cows and adjusted the different doors in the barn to provide enough ventilation for the temperature outside. Cows produce a lot of body heat, so even at 20 below, a little ventilation was needed in Dad's barn, insulated with 30 feet of hay above and foot thick cinder blocks for walls.

With the main barn done, Dad moved to the calf barn where we shoveled and forked out the pens each week. With the manure spreader heaped high, Dad headed towards the field he planned to plant a second year of corn and needed extra fertility. With aggressive field tractor chains, the Super C could haul the spreader through snow up to a foot deep or more, but most winters the time came when it was too deep.

Then we built the manure pile. The manure froze solid from one day to the next, so Dad built smooth trails to the top that let him pile it higher and higher. After a few dives into the wheelbarrow, we boys learned how to push it ourselves and held competitions to reach Pike's Peak with a full load. In the spring after it melted, it all had to be pitched onto the spreader and hauled to the fields. We bought a Jubilee Ford with a loader to help us out in later years.

Grandpa had cows and a barn and the same problems. His barn was equipped with a manure carrier. A long metal track ran from one end of the barn to the other and out the door to a tall post down the hillside. Instead of pitching the manure into the wheelbarrow or spreader, Grandpa pitched it into a metal carrier that lowered to the floor. When it was full, you pulled a chain that raised it to the track; pushed it off and by gravity it went out the door and down the track and automatically tripped at the end, dumping on the spreader or pile. You pulled it back in and refilled it again. It was exciting to help Grandpa and zoom the carrier down the track. We never quite got courage enough to ride the rails ourselves.

By the 1960s, even small farmers were getting automatic barn cleaners. You turned on an electric motor and chains with paddles moved the manure along the gutters and out the door, up a chute and into the manure spreader. The romance of cleaning the barn by hand had disappeared; it is but a fond memory of a few of us old timers

Holding Hands

I belong to the Northwest Wisconsin Regional Writers group. We write a story on an assigned topic each month. The topic "Holding Hands" led to this reminicense.
************* HOLDING HANDS ************
Her name was Denise. She almost got John, Bill and I kicked out of the class we three disparagingly called “Touchy Feely 101 for Teachers.” We were the only guys in the class of 25 prospective teachers. It was required and we suffered greatly as we were prodded to “get in touch with our feelings.”
The previous session had us split into groups of 5, with each member of the group to play a role of a part of a machine. It was described to us that each of us would be part of the machine, making repetitious motions and sounds, interlocked as a group that would look like a flowing graceful sinuous machine from a distance. Sort of like a clock works with gears and pendulum all ticking together, each part critical to the whole, yet each part just a gear or lever of no consequence on its own.
John and Bill took their lead from me, believing the whole class was a lot of crap foisted on us by this woman professor off into women’s touchy feely land. The exercises were down right embarrassing as well as stupid. We guys formed our machine standing stiffly apart from each other, our machine actions being fists poking each other’s shoulders round and round. Denise and Flower didn’t like our machine and wouldn’t participate. They had been permanently assigned to this group with three uptight guys and didn’t like it at all.
Flower was a New York hippy with long hair on her head and legs, who didn’t believe in anti-perspirants or bras. She had unnerved us in earlier group activities as she had claimed that everything that we three had said or done was sexist or a reflection of uptight white male controlling behavior. In those early days of women’s lib it was easiest for a guy to shut up.
The two women tried in vain to get us to loosen up and be like the other all girl groups, forming sinuously, fluid, limb-entertwined machines of grace and beauty with more physical contact than I had had playing football, and without helmets, pads and protection. They looked like wriggling masses of Twister game players to me. I had hated that game too. When I wanted to entwine with one or more strange women, I didn’t care to have an audience, especially if we all were sober! And what would my wife think.
Denise complained to the professor who told us that we must get in the spirit of the exercises or we wouldn’t learn anything; and we would fail the class and never become teachers. I began to dislike Denise even though she did not come across as a male hater like Flower. Denise seemed more worried about getting a good grade and saw us guys and our faulty machine as obstacles to her progress.
Next week brought a lesson in developing trust in others. Long term honesty and trustworthy behavior brought long term trust opined the professor. “There are short cuts that can make trust happen rapidly” she said. “Your next exercise is to spend 30 minutes with another person in the class being led about the Madison campus blind folded; then reversing the roles for another 30 minutes. You must pair up with someone you don’t know or someone you dislike. Before I could pick someone, the prof came over and told Denise and I to partner up as she knew we didn’t get along.
Let me tell you a little about Denise. She was sort of average looking; the type you would call pretty if you liked her; slim, but obviously a woman. She dressed nicely at a time when grunge was in on the campus. Other than having complained about my failure to be a cog in the machine, I had not had other contact with her. Neither of us spoke much in class. I thought that her being black and talking with a southern accent was irrelevant to my dislike of her. Although I had not had much contact with black people in my life, as they were rare even at Madison, and since I harbored the same ill feelings for Flower, a white girl from New York I attributed my dislike to their insistence we guys had to make fools of ourselves to please the teacher rather than any racism.
Denise and I picked Thursday at 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm to be the time to do the exercise. We met at the student union. She brought a black narrow scarf to be the blindfold. I balked at it, saying that we could just close our eyes for 30 minutes; but she didn’t trust me to do it. We flipped a coin to see who was to be the leader first and she won. She tied the blindfold snugly with enough layers so I couldn’t see anything.
She tried giving me instructions as we walked down the sidewalk, across the busy street, over curbs and up steps together, but I stumbled and rambled in wrong directions until in frustration she took my hand. She had a warm, soft, dry hand that felt nice on the cool fall day. She held it like a mother holding her child’s hand. We continued on our walk, Denise giving instructions and warnings and after a few minutes I could follow her guidance almost wordlessly following her hand, tugging to speed up or slow down, raising or lowering to indicate a curb or stairs. I soon felt safe and comfortable in my blindness.
With no need for instructions, she began a conversation by asking me about my deciding to be a teacher. I told her about graduating 4 years earlier; protesting the War and becoming a CO; getting married and then deciding to try teaching when I felt I couldn’t handle the 5 years of graduate school that I had planned to become an astronomer before Viet Nam took over my future. I told her about working in a nursing home, meeting and marrying Margo and sort of drifting into deciding to try teaching. The 30 minutes was up quickly and we switched roles.
We continued to hold hands as I led her through the campus. I tried to lead her as gracefully and wordlessly as she had led me so we could continue our conversation. We were now holding each other’s hands, fingers entwined like old friends.
I asked her about her background. She came from Alabama; the first in her family to get to college; the oldest of many children, she came north to Madison on a scholarship having graduated from a crappy school system where all the whites had left to form private schools during the integration fights of the 60s. She desperately wanted to get through college and go back and teach in her home town. Being a teacher was the highest calling she could think of.
“How old are you?” I asked. “I will be 21 in December” she replied. “I will be 26 on December 10th .” I answered back. “Amazing!” said Denise, “my birthday is December 10th too!”
The time was up quickly and the blindfold came off. We walked back to the Union still holding hands, still talking. It was, we agreed, for each of us our first real contact with a member of each other’s race, a happy one that relieved us, at least this time, from worry about being unconscious racists. The professor smiled at us as we recounted the experiences. Most of the others had the same result. For the rest of the semester our group tasks went better as we cooperated with Denise and I leading the others.
I never ran into Denise after that semester. I left school to practice teach and then get a job. I am sure she is somewhere in Alabama, now a superintendent in a public school system. I like to think that on one or two December 10ths since that day in 1972 she remembered holding hands with an uptight guy who happened to be white.

Chicken Pox Christmas by Russ Hanson

"Mr. Sazma says his kids have chicken pox" said Mom at the dinner table as she dished out some hand packed Sterling Ice cream she had picked up at the Cushing Coach. "I suppose it's going around."
"I hope the boys don't get it over Christmas vacation. It would be hard on them having to spend vacation cooped up in the house," replied Dad. We four boys didn't pay any attention to them.
"How can we get chicken pox when we don't go in the chicken coop?" stated Everett authoritatively. It was already the week before Christmas vacation. We were too busy studying our "pieces" for the school program and "being good" to worry about the neighbor kids being sick if they were too dumb to leave the chickens alone at their place.
The Sterling Ice Cream was made in Dresser, WI, and was the best we could buy. It had local farm eggs and cream in abundance and with a little canned strawberry sauce from the basement, made a dessert that a half-century later I still think can't be improved upon. The storekeeper, Sazma, had wrapped the ice cream in newspaper from his attached home, to keep it cold on the trip home.
The last week of school was over with the Friday night program at Wolf Creek School. We had a big spruce Christmas tree that we had decorated with red and green paper chains, cranberries strung with a needle and thread, and cutout snowflakes, stars and tinsel. We painted the school windows with Santa Claus, reindeer, snowmen and Christmas trees with bright colored tempera paint. We learned how to paint Merry Christmas in reverse on the entrance windows so it would read right from the outside. The program night came and the first graders stumbled through their poems and the older kids with skits and songs. After thunderous applause from the room crowded with adults, a local pianist sat at the piano bench and led the whole crowd in Christmas songs ending in Silent Night. The kids picked up their small paper sack treats; an apple, some hard and soft candy and a handful of peanuts. The adults each got an apple—all supplied by the School Board out of their own pocketbook as a return to the community from their small salaries.
Everett had complained that Friday to his brothers "I itch all over" but didn't say anything to Mom so he wouldn't have to stay home from the program. Well, on Saturday we all itched all over including the youngest, Byron, a first grader. Mom looked at our spots, consulted with Grandma, and gave us the diagnosis "you all have chicken pox."
"It's good they all get it at the same time," commented Grandma, "it's a lot less work to have them all down at once." In those days, measles, mumps and chicken pox were all childhood diseases that had to be gotten over sooner or later. No one ever wasted a doctor's time about these diseases. You just comforted the patient, got out the home remedies and waited a week or two to get over it.
Chicken pox were treated by making dire threats to the sick one what would happen if you scratched the pox. "You will leave big holes in your skin that won't heal if you scratch." We had seen the results that small pox had left on our neighbor Raleigh, so we thought that must be what we would get. Home remedies included "mix vinegar, baking soda, and mineral oil and apply it to help stop the itching", "rub wet oatmeal on the pox" or "wash with a weak boric acid solution" all while making dire predictions of what would happen if you scratched. Another trick was cutting the scratcher's fingernails so short they couldn't scratch. Kids really don't feel very sick with chicken pox, so it is a hard disease to have to be stuck inside for a week or two waiting it out. In those days, you made sure you didn't have visitors or go anywhere, because it was so contagious—and if an adult got it, they could get very sick.
"What are we going to do with the kids stuck in the house for the next two weeks?" asked Mom. Grandma thought we could play games. She always loved playing games with us, but had to be at her own home for Christmas. We had Chinese checkers and regular checkers and an old game of Grandma's called "Bring Home the Bacon." We quickly tired of these.
Mom went to the store and bought a game she had heard of called "Monopoly." A neighbor, Lloyd Westlund, told her "the games last hours and it teaches you arithmetic!"
"If you behave, I will give you one of your Christmas presents early," Mom told the four of us. "We'll be good!" as we clamored for a Christmas present. We knew that our relatives gave us some presents in addition to those coming from Santa, who only gave his out on Christmas night. (We found out Santa Claus didn't exist when one June, we found a bunch of Christmas presents hidden and forgotten in the old piano, labeled "from Santa." Santa wouldn't be hiding presents in our piano we reasoned so it must be Mom, who we knew could have hidden and forgotten them).
The Ben Franklin store in St. Croix Falls had wrapped the game for Mom. We tore off the wrapping and saw the game. Marvin, the oldest, said he had heard of it before. We cleared the big dining room table, unfolded the board and got out the parts.
Marvin, always a stickler for following every rule, carefully read the instructions: "Pick someone to be the banker. Shuffle the Chance and Community Chest cards and place on the board. Pick your own piece to move around the board. Throw the dice and move ahead from Go the amount you throw. If you land on a property, buy it from the bank..."
There were lots of rules, but that didn't bother us. Marvin read more rules as we ran into new conditions. We learned how to buy houses and hotels and to charge rent. Marvin knew percents and quickly taught me, whose favorite subject was arithmetic, to use paper and pencil to calculate everything exactly. After a few learning games, Byron dropped out—it was too hard for him. Mom gave him another Christmas present, a big yellow road grader that steered and had an adjustable blade. She cleared an area on the floor for him to play. "I need some dirt to grade," he complained. Mom took a big 25 cent cylinder box of Quaker Oats and dumped it on the floor for him to grade.
"Yuk!" complained Everett, who liked oatmeal, "it will be all dirty to eat."
"The chickens can have it when he is done," replied Mom, "I have more in the pantry."
It seemed to me that the oatmeal was a little gritty later that week, but Mom assured us the chickens got the stuff Byron graded. Maybe some of it ended up soothing our pox scabs.
Marv, Ev, and I got down to serious Monopoly. We followed all the rules, no matter how hard the math—by Marv's insistence. We learned the strategy of trying to get the right group of houses and stick hotels on them. We understood that Park Place was really for the rich people; railroads were useful to have; sometimes it was better to sit in jail than pay rent, and all of the interesting twists to the game.
Games lasted at least three hours, and if we happened to get evenly matched properties, could last from one day to the next. Sometimes we ran the bank out of money and printed our own. Sometimes the banker was tempted beyond his self-control to help himself from the till. Sometimes, with shifting alliances, one player would offer wildly favorable terms to another to keep him in the game and run the third out of business. Cheating was rare, but often enough that we watched the banker like a hawk to keep him honest. Everett preferred to have lots of money, Marvin lots of property, and I liked a few properties fully loaded with hotels and the rest mortgaged to the hilt.
Christmas came and went and still we played Monopoly all day and into the evening—only stopping when Dad brought out ears of popcorn for us to shell and him to pop. He was fussy; making popcorn was a carefully followed ritual. He shook only freshly shelled popcorn in a dry frying pan over the stove burner turned on high. He watched the kernels plumpen and turn golden brown as they rolled back and forth on the skillet bottom. When the first kernel popped, he stuck on the lid, turned it to medium, and continued to shake the pan vigorously to the final pop, holding the pan off he burner near the end to keep it from burning.
"Only three old maid's in the whole batch!" exclaimed Dad, one of the few things we ever saw him boast about during his life. When he had made a whole dishpan full, he melted lots of Cushing Creamery butter and poured it over the popcorn, salted and stirred it and gave it to us boys, but not before he filled the frying pan, coated thick with melted butter, with popcorn for himself. "The person who pops it gets the extra butter!" he stated relishing it as much as I might like the cleaning the fudge kettle.
As a dairy farmer, Dad thought lots of cream, butter, whole milk, and real ice cream were as important to our physical health as going to church was for our spiritual life. He was blessed with low cholesterol, low blood pressure, and a long life in spite of doctors railing against people consuming dairy fat. He particularly liked cream skimmed from the top of his own cows' raw milk on his cereal.
Finally, with only two days of vacation left, Mom said "You boys are all well again. You can go outside and play." We bundled up for the cold weather, and got out the sleds, ski's, skates and our dog Lucky, and headed for the big hill above the swamp to make up for lost time. Most Christmas vacations were spent almost entirely outside on the hills or skating on Bass Lake. We went down the hill a few times and struggled back up, finding out that we were not up to all that exercise. We headed to the barn to help throw down the hay and slide down the hay piles, pat the cats, climb into the silo and watch Dad chip off the frozen edges before straggling back into the house and setting up the Monopoly game for the rest of the day.
School started soon, and with homework and chores, we didn't have time for games except on some weekend evenings. We still played Monopoly on occasion, but it seems to me that after playing it almost all of the time for two weeks, we sort of wore out our interest in it. Sometimes we played with other school chums, but they never like playing with us. "Those Hanson boy's don't understand it is just a game!"

Radio on the farm

Radio on the Farm

We four Hanson boys always pestered Dad and Mom to let us take apart anything that looked interesting. We especially liked mechanical things. Because we were already used to dressing and butchering steers, deer, squirrels, chickens and cleaning fish, we had ample opportunity to study biology close up. However, cases that contained motors, springs, tubes and gears were fascinating and harder to come by. Our parents knew that whatever we were given was destined for the dump after our "repairs", so only passed along things that had no possibility of being fixed or needed in the future (now they would be valuable antiques).

Old wind up alarm clocks, an old battery radio that ran off of the Windcharger on the roof, old appliances, motors and almost anything that needed radical surgery fell into our repair shop. As we got older, our tools changed from hammers and crowbars to screwdrivers and wrenches and amazingly we actually started getting some things to work again, or at least to understand what was wrong with them.

The Sterling dump was a wonderful place to find things to take apart. We tried to make a weekly trip and scavenged for everything mechanical and electronic. As our reputation for an occasional miracle repair grew, our relatives and neighbors passed along things for tinkering.
Uncle Lloyd said he had a crystal radio that he had gotten as a soldier during World War II. He used the clothesline in the barracks for an antenna and his metal cot for a ground. It didn't use batteries or plug into the wall current. It had an earphone. He said "Don't take it apart, just try it out. It worked the last time I tried it in the barracks 20 years ago."

In those days we had two radios: the barn radio entertaining Dad and the cows with WCCO Cedric Adams, Joyce LaMont and Halsey Hall and the house Radio playing Eddy Arnold and Mairzy Doats. The idea of having our own radio was exciting!

Dad helped us hang an antenna wire from my upstairs window to a nearby tree using electric fence insulators and the old wire from the yard light pole. We pounded a rod into the ground and ran another wire, the ground, from that to my window and into my room upstairs.
Lloyd's radio had four connectors: two for the small earphone and one for the antenna and one for the ground. Lloyd had told us the sound would be very faint. On the top of the case was a knob with several metal points to tune it and something he called a cat's whisker crystal. It was an adjustable tiny spring wire that you poked into a galena crystal trying to find a hot spot. All of this was totally new to me, but Lloyd had demonstrated how it worked so I followed his instructions.

I could just barely hear a faint hint of a radio station on the earphone. I wasn't sure if it was real or my imagination. Lloyd said it worked best at night. Late one night I managed to poke the cat's whisker into a hot spot and got clear channel stations from Little Rock, Chicago, along with WCCO; stations fading in and out. Then it quit totally. I thought "maybe it is just a loose wire inside the box." I carefully took the 4 screws that held the black Bakelite top to the small wood box and carefully lifted it off. I knew better than to do anything more than just look with Uncle Lloyd's radio. I saw only a coil of wire wrapped around some cardboard tubing, with some of the wrappings having come loose.. I guessed that might be what was wrong.

I carefully put the top back on and gave it back to Uncle Lloyd on our next visit. I just told him I couldn't get it working, not wanting to admit to looking inside the box for fear he would think I wrecked it. He said, "It worked pretty good. They didn't let us have a radio when I was in the Army, but this little one let me hear the news and helped me get through some long nights. I suppose the crystal is bad."

I was fascinated by the idea of a radio that didn't need any power. I looked in the Sears Christmas catalog and sure enough there was a plastic Crystal Radio Kit for $8.00. That amount was in the range for a Christmas present--so I said that I would forgo all the underwear, socks, and clothes and just wanted this Radio Kit. Mom and Dad were always encouraged when they saw their sons wanted something other than just toys, so sure enough on Christmas morning the kit was under the tree.

It was a blue plastic molded box about the size of two match boxes made to look like a little radio. It had some fine enameled copper wire, something called a diode and a small earphone that poked into your ear.

I followed the instructions. Wrap the wire very tightly and carefully around the coil form sort of like wrapping the fish line on a casting reel only one layer deep and perfectly coiled. Then use a little sandpaper and sand one narrow band along the coil cleaning off the enamel insulation. Then assemble the radio so a little round metal ball slid along the bare wire of the coil to tune the radio. Screw in the diode to one end of the coil and the other to an earphone connector. Connect the antenna and ground and the earphone and then listen carefully as you slide the tuner back and forth slowly.

Miraculously, I heard faint music immediately and as I tuned it I found several different stations! I found WCCO radio out of the Twin cities was the loudest. I got my brothers in and each listened in turn and was amazed too. But they left soon to go back to Marvin's room where he was listening to his brand new plastic 4-tube GE Clock Radio that he had gotten for Christmas. Bill Diehl was playing songs on WDGY from that nice young Ricky Nelson, approved of by the pastor (unlike that wriggly Elvis).

I wanted to learn more about radio. The school library had nothing. Mrs. Irving (Marie) Olsen, my teacher, said that we could write to the Madison to the Free Traveling Library that mailed out books to rural areas not served by libraries. I wrote a letter and asked for books on crystal radios.

A couple of weeks later, a book named "The Boy's First Book of Radio" came in the mail. It told all about Crystal Radios and how to build one yourself and suggested where to get the parts. Everett and I got enthused about the radios and over the next few years worked our way through building radios with tubes into radios with transistors--each time getting more advanced books from Madison. We mail ordered parts from Modern Radio Labs, Allied Radio and Philco. We put up longer antennas -- going from the house to the barn. We set up a telegraph to send Morse Code from my room to his room (poking only a very small hole through the plaster walls). We had to learn electronic circuit diagrams and soldering to build radios, burglar alarms, timers and all sorts of electronic items. We knew we needed better radios.

We had seen some of the old floor model radios from the 30s and 40s that had short wave bands in neighbors living rooms. Everett put an ad in the local paper "Wanted: Old Floor Model radio with short wave band." He got many replies often like "Help me get it out of the attic and it is yours." We collected several and with our extra supply of Sterling Dump Radio Tubes, soon each had a good radio working. Later Marvin and Byron also got into old radios too--so we each have a few too many now!

My favorite was a Zenith table model that came from the Cushing Feed Mill through Uncle Maurice. It had quit working and was 1/2 inch deep with feed dust. A thorough cleaning and a replacement tube and it worked great. Everett liked his Airline 25 tube model that had magic eye tuning and used so much current the whole house dimmed as it started up. We still have have them.

With the short wave bands we could hear radio from across the whole world. We could listen to Radio Netherlands, the BBC, Canada and if we were feeling particularly adventurous, Radio Moscow to get the latest Communist Propaganda. We continued to collect old radios as we got older, only quitting when they got up to the exorbitant price of $10.00 each.

At a garage sale a year ago I ran across "A The Boys First Book of Radio and Electronics" and paid a quarter for the well used copy. It is fun to re-read the book that helped move me to a career in science. I wonder if I can trade two #80 rectifier tubes to Everett for the twenty feet of double cotton covered copper wire and a cats whisker to build the Boys First Radio. The tubes are pristine—haven't been used since retrieved from the dump in 1956.

copyright Russell B. Hanson 2008

Dennis

Dennis Sixth grader, Dennis stood behind the curtain and sang “I’m Overall Jim” as I, a first grader, lip synched it, in response to fellow first grader Susan’s refrain “I’m Sunbonnet Sue.” Susan and I represented the first graders at the Wolf Creek School fall program. Susan (her real name) was sitting in a rocking chair wearing a long calico dress and a sunbonnet. I was sitting next to her in a matching rocker, wearing a straw hat, striped Lee Overalls. Our piece was a duet about being farm kids. I was too timid to use my outside voice inside in front of a hundred parents. Dennis was recruited to actually sing my part, hidden behind the makeshift sheet curtains pinned to a wire at the front of the planks on short sawhorses, our stage. Dennis was 12 years old and a sixth grader. He liked to sing and could carry a tune well. His voice was changing, but he could still sing high like a first grader. I got to know Dennis a little that fall as we practiced the song together. He was slim, light complected with light brown hair. He was quiet, an average student, always polite and smiling. He and his clothes were clean, but patched. He liked the outdoor games, especially softball. He had a very old glove, but could catch any fly or grounder that came to him. He seemed like the rest of the farm kids, but with a serious side. Dennis lived a mile from school. His mother and father were divorced. She lived in Denver and he stayed with his dad, a drunk. They lived in a decrepit old two story house, weathered dark gray with no signs of paint, a few upstairs windows boarded up, and junk filled yard that a few wandering goats trimmed. His Dad did odd jobs when he needed money for beer. Dennis was left pretty much to raise himself after his mother got a divorce and took his younger sister to live in Denver with her. Dennis worked for his farm neighbors to earn money for his own needs starting that year; his school clothes and a bicycle were his first purchases. His neighbors to the north, Mac and Nancy, raised string beans for Stokeleys. Dennis could earn a dollar for a long day, crawling up and down the rows picking beans into a mesh sack. Nancy insisted he join them for meals. They kept his money for him, carefully keeping a ledger of his account. If he needed groceries or other items, Mac let him ride along in the old Model A truck when he took the string beans to Milltown. Dennis and Mac had worked this out to keep his dad from beating him to get his money for beer. His neighbor across the road, Old Man Wicklund, raised 20 acres of watermelons on the sandy River Road land. Dennis earned a little money hoeing melons and in the fall, helping him load the trailer with melons to take to town. He got all the melons he wanted for free. Many fall days he would bring a melon to school, overfilling the basket. He left it sit in a spring emptying into Wolf Creek near the school house, and would bring it out at noon for the teacher and kids to share with him for lunch. Dennis bought most of the groceries for him and his dad and did what cooking and cleaning was done at the home. Dennis pumped the water, heated it on the stove and washed up every morning. He always came to school clean and with clean clothes that he patched himself. The summer Dennis finished 7th grade, he got a job with board from a farmer nearby. He earned more money and took a 20 year old car as part of his payment. When school started he proudly drove his nicely polished old car to school. He kept working for the farmer during the winter. Everyone in the neighborhood knew he was too young to drive and that he hadn’t licensed the car, but as the constable told my dad, “He has it hard enough with out us piling on.” When spring came, he passed his eighth grade exam and graduated with his class. At the last day of school picnic he told us “My Dad say’s I am 14 and on my own from now on. I got decent tires, two good spares, and all my stuff loaded in my car and a little money I saved. I am driving from here to Denver to see how Mom and Sis are doing. If they will have me, I will stay and get a job and try to go to high school there.” He brought out a well folded US highway map and showed us his route. As the picnic wound down, he went around to his neighbors and his school chums and said his thank you’s and good byes. We gathered round as he got into his car, lightly loaded with all his worldly possessions. He started it up, waved a last time and disappeared forever from our lives, south down the Old River Road. We watched until the faint trail of blue smoke disappeared. We hoped he was heading into a better place. (True story written for Wisconsin North West Regional Writers topic "Behind the Curtain")

Dennis Edwards obituary is at 

https://www.thedavisfuneralhome.com/home/obit/672 

Ice Cream

Ice Cream in the Winter
(a story written to win a blue ribbon at the Polk Co Fair Yarns competition)
“You girls start milking if I am not back by six” Dad called to us as he and Mom left in the sleigh pulled by Fashion. Grandma had fallen and needed help from Mom. Dad was taking her the 20-mile trip. We didn’t have a car in those days, and the roads wouldn’t have been passable for one anyway.
Sis was 8 and I was 10. We knew how to milk cows. It had been a sad year with Billy, born in winter, getting sick in spring, and lingering into the late summer before the funeral in September. Dad took losing his first and only son hard. He rarely smiled anymore. Mom tried hard to be cheerful, but she often cried when she thought no one was around.
It was dark by five. “Lets get started milking. We can get done in case Dad is late,” I told Sis. We lit the lantern and took the milk pails to the barn. Sis started with Bess, an easy milker and I took Flo, a hard milker, but our best cow of the six. The small log barn was comfortable, filled with the smells of freshly pitched silage, hay and manure—all fragrant to farm kids.
“My hands hurt,” whined Sis.
“If you stick it out, we will make ice cream when we are done,” I replied. “We can mix canned strawberries in it.”
“Won’t Dad be mad if we use up the cream?” asked Sis.
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Soon the milking was done. I skimmed a quart of cream from the top of the morning milk can.
“How do we make ice cream?” asked Sis.
“Mom beats some eggs, cream and sugar in a bowl and then puts it in the ice cream freezer to get cold,” I replied pretending to know more than I did.
Four eggs, a quart of cream and a cup of sugar later, tasting it as we added the ingredients, with Sis cranking the egg beater, we were satisfied with the mixture. We put it in a deep coffee can.
I set it in a pail of broken icicles and snow mixed with salt—just like when we borrowed Neighbor Johnson’s ice cream maker. We took turns cranking the beater. Sure enough it thickened up. We stirred in a pint of canned strawberries without the juice and had just dished out two big dishes when Dad came in.
“The cows are all done,” said Sis worriedly. Looking around sternly, then breaking into a smile, Dad said “Is there some left for me?”
Two week later Mom came home. She was back to her old cheerful self again after her time away. “You don’t look skinny and wasted away without me,” she kidded us, “How did you get along?”
“It was hard, but we managed ,” said Dad smiling hugely as he gathered all of us into a big hug We never told Mom that for fourteen nights in a row we ate freshly made strawberry ice cream.
(It won a blue. I read the stories submitted at the fair for the last few years and decided a mixture of nostalgia, pathos and humor were needed in a simple story-- or else something to do with a wounded veteran!)

A Rustic Lake Cottage

It is Saturday morning at 7:00 and I have finished breakfast and am sitting on the porch overlooking Orr Lake to the west, at our rustic cabin. The lake is 100 yards away and the only activity is our solitary loon calling across the lake. The loon is here for his third year. This is the first time he has a wife and child with him. Our swans have been gone for the same three years—the mother having choked on a dare devil. The rich green of the alders, trees and grass contrast with the rippled silver-blue water and puffy clouded sky.
Each morning a bald eagle flies in and sits at the top of a huge old oak on the knoll between us and the lake, above the spring. Eventually he swoops off and picks up a fish and leaves. I haven’t figured out where the nest is—somewhere in the thousands of acres of woods to the west I assume. Our beaver and otters from the last few years appear to have been trapped out over winter. When you live on a lake, the enjoyment of having a beaver family and an otter family as your neighbors turns you against trapping.
Our lake view is disappearing as trees have taken over the old open cow pasture. For 25 years, when we worked in Rochester, we let the cabin rest, only stopping for brief weekend and vacation visits. Without cattle, the woods try to swallow up the cabin. My favorite tree is a huge maple, well over a hundred years, that has slowly been shedding a large branch or two each year as pileated woodpecker carves ever increasing holes seeking the tasty carpenter ants living in the decaying heartwood. One third of the crown came down in a storm a couple years ago, and the rest of the top, although lush and green again this year, looks like a puff of wind might bring it down. It is our air conditioning tree—shading the cabin from the southwest sun with its branches gently brushing the porch. The trees are close enough so that the squirrels use the cabin roof to rumble their way from tree to tree traversing the whole 40 acres and beyond.
The other trees, mostly elms, have grown up in the years since the cabin was built. One of the biggest, probably 20 years old, is dying this year, the leaves having come out and now have yellowed and shriveled as Dutch Elm disease kills it, already a foot in diameter at the base and in the prime of adolescence. Next year it will be a morel hunting spot and the year after, dry standing firewood, ready for a batch of maple syrup and to keep the cabin warm. The disease will spread to the rest of them in this dozen who sprang up after the cows were gone. In a couple years the grove will be gone.
A spreading century white oak provides a perch for the bald eagle who visits us each morning, sitting in the top for an hour or more before swooping to the lake and carrying off a fish. White oak acorns are food for the deer, turkeys and squirrels. They seem to have heavy acorn loads only every few years, a strategy to keep squirrel populations down and leave a few left over acorns for seed.
Margo, Dad and I built the cabin 33 summers ago when I was still a teacher with summers off to help on the farm. We moved into a bare spot amongst the huge maples high above and back from the lake. We built back from the lake to try not disturb the otherwise uninhabited lakeshore. We sit on the last hillside before the Sterling Sand Barrens that extend 10 miles west of us to the St. Croix River. One time this was the shore of Glacial Lake Lind, a huge lake that encompassed the area north of Wolf Creek in the St. Croix River Valley, according to a book published by Doug Johnson ten years ago, then a U of Wisconsin geologist. We built as cheaply as we could. My teaching salary was $10,000 then, and Margo wasn’t working that year being pregnant with Scott. We cut jackpines, poples and basswood logs, took them to the 100 year old sawmill that Byron and Dad had setup a years earlier, sawing boards and 2x4s. We put Penta treated foundation posts in the ground on a steep slope and built a 16x24 floor on them. We added 8 foot walls and above that created an upstairs by framing two 11 foot rafters joined at the top by a 3 foot wide flat roof top—sort of a modified A-frame on the top of the first floor to give us an upstairs loft area. We used real rough sawn boards instead of plywood for the roof, floors and walls—just like the houses in the old days. Our costs were mostly the nails and the roll roofing (replaced now by shingles).
We had no electricity and no tools of our own. We bought a new handsaw, square and a hammer for me and one for Margo and 50 pounds of assorted nails. We had never done any carpenter work before. We proceeded with advice from Dad and with much creativity and trial and error! This was in the days when Sterling was still free from building permits, zoning and the rules that make creative building impossible anymore. A pitcher pump on a point driven into the spring near the lake furnished water.
Having no money for windows and doors, we went to an auction and bought a bunch of old church windows –the framed glass panels for a dollar each and at an old school auction bought a big old half-glass school room door. We got a few more windows here and there, all just pieces making our own jackpine frames.
We put Aunt Glady’s old wood cookstove in the kitchen and a used barrel stove on the other end for heat. We never kept anything in the cabin worth stealing and credit the absence of break-ins to the gate at the road and the total lack of anything that would bring more than $5.00 at a garage sale. In the summer we cooked with Coleman stove. The few weekends we stayed in winter were comfortable with the two wood stoves heating the uninsulated building, too hot in the sleeping loft and too cold on main floor.
We built an outhouse from rough jackpine boards and lumber, sided, like the cabin, with rough sawn ¾ inch boards. For a feel of luxury, we insulated it and paneled the inside and added an old stained glass and a figured glass window from the auction. The cows soon poked the stain glass window apart with their nosy curiosity and appreciation for fine old artisanship—so we put a plastic fake replacement in. Making a double walled and insulated outhouse was really not a good idea out in the middle of the woods. Squirrels and mice soon chewed their way between the walls.
After a few summers, we paid $1000 to get the electricity brought in ¼ of a mile. We drove a point in the spring and got an old pump from Margo’s parents cabin at Weyerhauser. Our hot water was heated by the sun with black hoses spread out on the on the west hillside connected to a black painted tank salvaged from a water heater to make a solar water heater. By late afternoon we had plenty of hot water to take a bath in the big old clawfoot tub on the porch—overlooking the whole lake yet mostly invisible to the occasional fisherman. We did put up a curtain when we noticed that every Saturday evening at five when Margo took her bubble bath there seemed to be several boats finding the fishing good right off of our dock.
In the spring of 1980, after a tough year of teaching at Amery HS, we moved to Rochester where I was hired as a computer scientist for Mayo Clinic. We were now three hours away from the cabin with no more summers off.
We didn’t use the cabin much after that except on some weekends in the summer and a week of vacation each year and some spring maple syrup making. The cows still grazed up to it and kept the rest of the 40 acres looking like a park (with a few cow pies for contrast). Dad and Mom were cutting back on the farming and number of cows and suggested Margo and I buy on a land contract to supplement their retirement income. They got rid of their cattle in the big cow buyout that came along about 20 years ago and the 40 hasn’t been pastured since.
Retiring two years ago we decided to stay at the cabin for the nice part of the year. To me that is March to December! Long ago I had started a porch to the north, but never really gotten it finished. I had intended to glass it in with recycled patio doors as the walls, and make it weather tight enough to use as a summer bedroom rather than the loft above. I still haven’t done it, but have been thinking much more seriously about getting started on it any day now.

Susan

It was the first day of class. She gracefully walked into the room and found a seat near the front. She had golden brown hair, large brown eyes complementing her flawless tanned skin—a natural beauty without makeup. She wore a knee length dress that showed her slim athletic figure. Her name was Susan, I soon found out.
By the end of the week, I finagled an assignment to work with her on a project that put us together for many hours over the next few weeks. Susan was bright, open, and laughed easily. As we worked, we compared our backgrounds. My happy childhood on the farm with her broken home, passed from parent to parent and grandparents finally landing with a strict, cold maiden aunt.
She did well in class. I often ate lunch with her we were soon great friends. She asked, “Do you like me?” “You are my best friend” I replied, and later decided that for the first time, I was in love. I liked being with her more than anyone else.
The last day of school she brought a picnic basket with lunch for both of us. We shared a sandwich, chips and drank from the same thermos of milk. She brought out a single chocolate cupcake with white frosting decorated with the outline of a heart. Taking turns with the same fork, we slowly ate it, enjoying the thick sweet frosting.
“Thank you Susan, it was wonderful!” I told her as we cleaned up and prepared to return to class.
Susan turned to me, “I won’t be back. My Mom wants me to join her in Denver, and I have to go right now. Thank you for making this year my first happy one” She put her arms around me and kissed me on the lips. I stood dumbstruck as she smiled and said “I love you Russell. Please remember me. I have to leave right now.” She walked away and got into a waiting car that sped off before I could react.
I never saw her again. I never have forgotten her. However life goes on, and next year I met Richynne, a slim, dark, beautiful girl. We were best friends all that year of my second grade in school and Susan and first grade were just fond memories.

Falling Leaves

Falling Leaves
It's been a quiet week on Orr Lake. Two heavy frosts killed the
rest of the garden and chased the lady bugs from the bean field into
the cabin. They keep us company during the fall and on our weekend
visits during the winter—coming alive each time we start the wood
stove and warm up the cabin. They thaw out, crawl around wondering if
it is spring and time to dehibernate.

Margo and Mom sold a lot of pumpkins, squash and apples on the
River Road Ramble, more than double the previous year. The Ramble
and Autumn Fest in St Croix Falls made a fun Saturday. Eureka had a
great turnout at the old town hall, with lots of old tractors, cars,
pictures and artifacts. The new town garage was a popular stop with
all the details of building the new building laid out. Wolf Creek
had a choice of lunch at the bar with 1890s costumed waitresses or a
home made lunch by the Ladies Aide at the church, both welcoming
sinners to the fold.

We had fifty people stop by the Cushing Museum and visit. Lily
Larson's old scrapbooks borrowed for the summer from Lavern and Doris
Jean were a hit. We even sold a Cushing History book or two. You can
buy them to send as Christmas presents at the Cushing Bank, At-las
Antiques and the Luck Museum or order them from SELHS, Box 731
Cushing, WI $15 plus $2.50 postage. We only have one more payment to
make to the Leader for the printing costs! All money goes to the
Sterling Eureka and Laketown Historical Society.

We have two freshly resurfaced roads! Hwy 87 from Bass Lake to
Grantsburg and Hwy N from Cushing to Luck. I think they put down 3 or
4 layers of blacktop after having ground up the old surface to recycle
it. The roads were re-done in about a month and never really stopped
drivers from using them. A piece of Hwy 35 in the Luck area is being
resurfaced now too. The smooth roads tell us our tires need
balancing, maybe the wheel bearings are a little noisy and the
suspension is wearing out. Rough roads hide that. Brother Everett
says to turn up the radio and the problems will all disappear. He went
for his leukemia treatment followup test last week after a year of
treatments and is clear of any cancer! He has to continue tests
quarterly to see if it comes back. The Doctor says you can knock it
down, but not get rid of it.

Margo's mom, Myrtle is being kicked out of the private Alzheimer's
home near her home in West Bend, WI., after a year. Myrtle walks
around most of the day, up and down the halls, looking for open doors
so she can leave and "go home", where home is the place she lived as a
little girl. She needs constant watching, something her family could
not do at home and this home couldn't support. After a long search, a
new place, a nursing home, much farther away, has been located. The
move comes this week. As the family has agonized over the loss of a
wife and mother and lately over the move, Myrtle is unaware of family
and surroundings. Myrtle has moments of joy and pleasure with Margo
(whom she accepts as a sister) when they go for a drive, watch the
birds, have an ice cream etc. They are immediately erased from her
memory. Nevertheless, Margo is satisfied that they help both of them
get through the loss. Modern medicine has managed to keep people
physically alive and healthy so that they can die in even more painful
ways.

We were to the funeral of Linda Harris, our old friend from Wolf
Creek School, last week. Linda was only 60 when she died from bone
cancer. The Harris family was one of the pioneer families in West
Sterling, and continued to live there when most of their neighbors
left. Linda was buried in a beautiful homemade pine box, befitting
the pines along Evergreen Avenue where the Harris family once owned
the west end. The large funeral procession left the old Wolf Creek
school building, now the Methodist Church, following a tall wood
wagon pulled by two black horses. We all walked to the cemetery
following a musician playing guitar and singing the old church songs
of loss and hope. Linda was buried in the cemetery where her
ancestors rest. Fifty years earlier on the same autumn Friday, Linda
and I would have been at our desks in the same Wolf Creek School; she
a lovely young girl, her life ahead of her, probably dreaming of what
it would be. Rural schools with kids from a half-dozen families made
those school chums seem like part of our own family; they are hard to
lose. Linda had chosen not to carry the fight with cancer through all
of its phases, saying she was ready to go to heaven.

My favorite reading in the newspapers are the opinions. They come
as editorials, in some columns and in the letters to the editor. I
like it when someone clearly and briefly gives their opinion. I like
ones that make me think about something in a new way or teach me
something. Some writers always do this and some never do.
Last week in Gary King's editorial page he included one of those
emails that gets forwarded around the world and is supposed to make
you think. I started to read it and immediately got bothered with the
math. It does some estimations of populations and then says "divide
200 million adults (in the U.S) into $85 billion (support for AIG, a
big bankrupt insurance company being bailed out) equals $425,000"
indicating that each of us would pay or could receive that much if it
were distributed. The math as calculated by this old math teacher is
$85,000,000,000 divided by 200,000,000 which by my calculations is
$425 (cancel out eight zero's from each and you have $850/2) The
whole premise is totally off, and thus the whole email bogus. I can
guess the author used a normal calculator rather than a politician's
calculator--normal ones can't handle such big numbers. Of course,
with last week's newer government bailout which with the pork included
could reach $850,000,000,000 we get up to $4250 per person for that
deal. I take my debts seriously. To pay Margo's and my share of the
latest bailout, $8500, I plan to write a two checks; one directly to
one of those poor bankrupt Lehman Bros. and the other to a lobbyist to
pass along to a politician for saving me from something or other.

Margo is going back to work to help us pay the $100,000 of our
share of the national debt of 10 trillion dollars. ($10 trillion / 200
million adults x2). In the last eight years we have seen $4 trillion
added to our national debt. Margo and I would be on the hook for
$40,000 for the two of us. I think that includes $10,000 to invade
Iraq, $10,000 so the rich could get a tax cut, and some miscellaneous
items like bridges in Alaska, non-negotiable prices Medicare pays for
drugs and tax breaks for oil companies.

We are enjoying the political season, especially the TV
advertisements. It is particularly interesting in our neck of the
woods where we only get MN stations but live in WI. We are pretty
much up on Coleman and Franken, but in the dark as to if anyone is
running in WI. With our new HDTV converter, we tune to a different
channel, adjust the rabbit ears, and then watch the picture come in
and out like a bad dvd. It seems if a butterfly flaps his wings
outside, it interrupts the signal. Oh well, now instead of getting a
small number of somewhat snowy channels all of the time, we get a
large number of mostly unwatchable channels all of the time. Margo
better get that new roof antenna up before the snow flies more than in
the TV.

I had three of my computers quit on me in the last month. Two
were old ones, living on borrowed time. The other was my nice two
year old laptop. It suddenly started using only ½ of the screen. I
tore it apart thinking that the cable between the screen and computer
had worn in the hinge area. I managed to get it apart and together
again, but had no luck in getting it to broaden its view. If this
column seems only half thought out, you can blame it on my computer.

It is pretty tricky to write a column seeing only half of what you are
writing! (From my weekly column in the Inter-County Leader Frederic WI).