Call Me Little Miss Muffet

I hate spiders.

I'll face a diamondback or a cobra before I'll face a spider. Snakes don't scare me...I wouldn't want to sleep with one, but not afraid to pick up a non-poisonous one on the smallish side.

But spiders are a different story. I know why I hate them and you'd think I could conquer my fear just because I can remember the exact moment I developed it. I was maybe around four. Mom always planted morning glories in front of our porch, training them up a twine lattice she'd make. Down on the ground in the morning glories, a huge web appeared overnight. I knew it was a spider web, but no big deal.

Then as an experiment, I found a large black ant. I mashed him just slightly so he could still wiggle, then I picked him up and dropped him in the middle of the spiderweb. It was an especially sticky web, so he couldn't go anywhere. I swear, that poor ant barely had time for one wiggle when this huge spider came out of his lair. He grabbed the ant and took off with him to his hideout. That's when I lost my mind.

I took off running inside the house, begging Mom to go get that ant. Of course, she couldn't save that ant's life and she had better things to do than try. So I've been apologizing to the ant kingdom ever since (well, I will admit to also cooking a few with a magnifying glass a few years later). And so it began...my nearly lifelong hatred/fear of the eight-legged varmints. When I picked out the clipart for this story, I had to go with a cartoon ant and not one that looked the least bit realistic. I won't even look at pictures of spiders.

A couple of years ago, I was in my favorite spot--my recliner (aka: "tuffet"). I'm a barefoot kind of girl, so no shoes or socks. I reclined my chair, picked up the remote, and just happened to look down at the footrest about the same time this freakin' HUGE spider climbed over the horizon of the very bottom of the footrest--right by my bare foot! With no husband in sight, and nothing to hit him with I figured I had two choices. It was either kick the spider with my bare foot or have him crawl on me. So before I could think too much, I whacked that spider with my right foot--not mashing him, but sending him flying. He hit the wall on the other side of the room and made a very audible *THUD* when he hit. Then he high-tailed it down the nearest register.

He "bought the big one" a couple of weeks later when I found him in the bathroom as I was getting ready to go to work. Then his corpse went for one of those "swirly" Viking funerals. I don't know for a fact that it was the same spider, but I've got to pretend it was--or burn the house down.

My son called me at work one day to tell me about how he'd put his shoes on that morning and felt a wad of lint in his sock. So instead of taking his foot out of his shoe and removing his sock, he just mashed his foot down to flatten out the lint. It helped a little, but he could still feel the lint after he got to work. You guessed it. It wasn't sock lint--it was one of those huge wolf spiders. And Brian's foot and sock were wet with spider juice.

That story made me so sick that day that I couldn't eat lunch. Maybe I should've taped his story to play back before every meal. Before long I'd be down to my 98-pound high-school size.

A Dying Man's Name

I was only a few weeks past kidney surgery, but just had to get back to work as soon as possible. So five weeks after surgery, I was back at my desk. A week later, I had a doctor's appointment in Odon.

On my way back to work from the doctor, I saw something up ahead that took a couple of seconds for my brain to digest. In the southbound lane I saw a large round bale of hay bouncing down the highway towards me. At the same time I saw a farmer on a small open tractor headed down a deep ravine at a 45-degree angle. Then I saw the car come into my lane, swerving around the bale of hay.

The woman driving it sped by me, just making it back into her lane before hitting me headfirst. Just at that moment, I knew what had happened. I don't remember if the car was dented, or if it was just a coincidence that my brain spit out an answer as she barreled by me. She had hit the tractor from behind, and the old farmer got sent into the ravine. I drove a few hundred more feet and stopped on the side of the road to help. I was the second person there--a man was already down there with the farmer. He yelled at me to call an ambulance.

Nineteen years ago, nobody had cell phones. I ran to the nearest house and pounded on the door. Luckily, someone finally answered. I had to try very hard to control my hysteria as I told him to call an ambulance--that there had been a bad accident. Then I took off running again. I knew I shouldn't be running because of my recent surgery, but that was just a passing concern. As I approached the old farmer and the other driver that stopped to help, I knew it was really bad.

The farmer had the "death rattles". I've seen enough pets do this when they had been hit by a car, and I knew it wasn't good. I knelt on the ground by his head. He had beautiful blue eyes--just like my dad's. But they were open, staring at nothing, and full of dirt. He had dirt in his mouth too and was slightly bleeding from his mouth. I started to take off my coat to cover up the farmer, but the other man told me to keep it on. He knew it wasn't going to help.

I wasn't trained in first aid, but I did feel for a pulse in his wrist. There wasn't one. So I felt the jugular vein in his neck. His pulse was there, but very weak; and each time I checked it, it was more faint. All I could do was hold his hand. I wish then I had taken a CPR course.

After a few more minutes, the man who stopped said something about "she's really upset". Then he pointed. I looked in that direction and then I saw the white car that had hit the old man. She had driven the car into the next driveway, which was quite a bit from us--at least 500 feet. It looked as if she was trying to drive to where the old man was laying, but stopped just after getting out of the driveway. She had gotten out of the car and was laying on the ground; and was screaming, "I'm sorry...I'm sorry" over and over.

I had been so intent on the farmer that I had completely blocked out the screaming until now. There was an older couple with her, who I found out later were her grandparents. They had been in a car behind her. It was everything I could do to keep from running over there and giving her a few swift kicks. She wasn't hurt--just upset--and evidently too stupid to realize if you see a large bale of hay going down the highway, you better expect a tractor to be in front of it.

After a few minutes, this old couple joined us. The old woman had an afghan with her, and she kept saying "Chuck! Chuck!". I asked her if she knew him, and she said she did--that he was their neighbor. I asked her what his full name was, and she told me. If I was going to be with this man as he died, for some reason it was important to me that I knew his name. She gave us the afghan and we covered him up.

I continued holding his hand and taking his pulse, but could tell everything was slowing down, including the death rattles. After about 15 minutes, the ambulance arrived. I remember one of the EMTs taking one look at the farmer and making this funny moaning sound. That sound told me the EMT knew there was no hope. They loaded him onto a stretcher and started to climb the ravine with him.

I was handed an equipment case that belonged to one of the EMTs, and tried to get up the grassy side of the ravine. It was a little slick due to some light snow and I wasn't sure if I was going to make it or not. But then I saw two hands reach out, take the case and help me up. It was a truck driver who had stopped to see if he could help.

I got back in my car and cried all the way to work. I worried about the old man for the rest of the day; so when I got home from work, I called the sheriff's department and told them I was a witness to the wreck. They told me the old man died of internal injuries, but they took my name and phone number in case they needed it.

I went to the showing two days later. The old farmer was wearing a brand new pair of denim bib overalls and the casket had a sheath of wheat embroidered on the lining. I thought that was very fitting. A man like that wouldn't want to be put to rest wearing a new suit--he'd want to wear something he'd been comfortable wearing all of his life. I was hoping to meet his wife, but she had left for a few minutes. I spoke to his nephew and told him I had witnessed the accident and was there while his uncle was dying.

Later on, his widow found out about me through people at work since she worked on the same base I do. She called me and we talked. I told her I wanted her to know that her husband was with people that cared about him and that he didn't feel a thing.

A few months later, a lawyer called me. The woman that had hit the old farmer was suing his widow because the tractor didn't have a slow-moving vehicle sign on it! The lawyer was "Chuck's" widow's lawyer. I told him the story, and offered to testify any time they wanted me to. I was more than ready to tell a jury how stupidly this woman was driving. I had been that direction many times since then, and had counted down the seconds she had to react if she'd been traveling the speed limit. 17 seconds is way longer than she needed to slow down when she saw that large bale of hay.

I was never called to testify, even though the widow was sued twice by this woman. The driver lost her lawsuit both times. Why she thought she should sue is still not comprehensible. She wasn't hurt, and her car had very minimal damage.

A year later, I would again see very similar beautiful blue eyes "staring at nothing"...and I was taken back to the day when I saw another pair of beautiful blue eyes belonging to a dying farmer. Only this time, the sky-blue eyes belonged to my dad as he lay dying of cancer.

Maybe God was trying to tell me something a year earlier.

Rumors...

Mom just wasn't the type to be able to comfortably tell us about the birds and the bees, so she just never did. Sooner or later we all learned, probably from our friends. When Mike and Mark were young teens, Mike still didn't know the facts of life--and he was the older brother. Mark, being the more "worldly" one of the two, decided to enlighten Mike about the mechanics of men and women, and what all that equipment was for.

Mike said, "Oh, that's just a rumor somebody started at school."!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What do the above two objects have to do with each other? Can't figure it out? Neither could I. I was ten at the time, and being the oldest and a girl, Mom thought it was her duty to tell me about the birds and bees. One night she kept me up after the other three kids were sent to bed. I could tell she was nervous, but didn't have a clue why.

She began by saying something about Jesus Christ, and then moved on to light sockets. She held up two fingers on one hand and then inserted them into her other hand--you know, in an kind of obscene gesture! And then she moved on to Jesus Christ again. I thought the woman had lost her mind. After about ten minutes of "Jesus and light sockets" and my puzzled looks, she gave up and told me to go to bed.

Six months later, she decided to try again. When she started with the Jesus Christ and light sockets speech again, I let her off the hook. Since the first speech, I had figured it out for myself and told her that. I'll never forget her reaction. She put the palm of her hand to her forehead and said, "Oh Thank God!".

Hot Fun in the Summertime

Living in Smith Valley, we created our own fun most of the time. But during the heat of summer, we had no air conditioning and we weren't able to get to Center Grove Lake very often. So one day, my brother Mark decided to make his own swimming pool. At least this time he checked with Mom before beginning his construction project. Obviously, Mom wasn't really listening to what Mark asked, or she just didn't understand the extent of the project.

We owned five acres. A couple of acres were always set aside for a vegetable garden, but the back portion usually had tall grass growing on it. Mark decided to dig his pool in the back near the barn. That would give him some privacy should he decide to go skinny-dipping, I guess. Mike tried to warn Mark, but Mark wasn't hearing any of it. After all, Mom said he could. By the time he pooped out for the day, he had a good sized hole dug. Probably within a couple of days, he'd be ready for the concrete trucks to begin pouring--or so he thought!

When Dad came home after work, for some strange reason he didn't stop in the driveway. He drove straight out into the back of our land. The boys watched as he headed straight for Mark's swimming pool. Because the grass was tall, Dad didn't see the hole--but he sure felt it when his truck went into it! The boys had been outside watching Dad overshoot the driveway and head towards the hole. When he hit it, Mike said you could see the front of the truck dip down while the taillights went up! The hole was deep enough that Dad had some problem getting the truck out of it. But when he got it free, he launched that ol' truck back towards the house. I'm sure Dad knew as soon as he hit that hole who was responsible.

Mike sized up the situation, and told Mark, "We better go get Mom!".

Scarlet Ribbons

I had planned this moment since she was a baby.

As her daddy put her down for a nap, he'd lay her down in her crib, remove her high-top baby shoes, and massage her pudgy little feet. As as he rubbed her feet, he sang a song to her. It was the same song every time, "Scarlet Ribbons". He never knew I listened, but I did...and I swore then that this would be the song they danced to at her wedding.

At the reception, Carrie and Nate danced their dance, and then it was my turn to speak. I had kept this whole thing a secret from everyone, except for telling Carrie that I was picking out the father-daughter dance song; and if she wanted to pick out her own song, she'd just have to dance with her dad twice. She decided to go with my surprise.

It was my mom's idea to have this special person sing the father-daughter dance song, but she had another song in mind. I told Mom it was a good idea, but it would be another song, "Scarlet Ribbons". The special person we asked to sing the song was my husband's 88-year-old father Charlie. So after a lot of secret practicing, we were ready.

I took the microphone and told the story about how Leroy sang this song as he put her down for her nap, and how I had decided that would be the song for their special dance. Then I announced who would be singing the song. Charlie came up to the dance floor and I handed him the microphone. Carrie immediately started crying.

Charlie sang the song with no accompaniment. He said that's how Leroy sang the song to her, so he was going to sing it the same way. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house. I believe it was the most touching father-daughter dance I've ever seen. Luckily, we captured it on video and I still cry when I see it.

Last June we lost Charlie. He peacefully passed away in his sleep at the age of 92. He was in his own bed in his own house, and I'm sure this is just the way he wanted to go. I'm so glad that 150 people got to witness this sweet man giving such a special gift to his granddaughter and his son.

Bless you, Charlie. We miss you.

Sister Nasty

My brother Mark nicknamed her two years after I had her as a first-grade teacher. Her real "nun" name was "Sister Ernesta", but "Sister Nasty" fit her so much better. All three of us stairstep kids had Sister Nasty in first grade. We had moved away by the time Rita got old enough to hit first grade, so she missed the warped teaching we received in first grade at the hands of a deranged nun.

We didn't use pencils in first grade. We used these big, clumsy Eversharps. Sister told us that we were never to turn them (advance the lead) ourselves. She said we'd go to hell if we did. Honest to God...that's typical of the things she told us. And six-year-olds pretty much believe everything they're told by someone wearing a habit.

I did as I was told concerning the Eversharps, but then my friend Gerarda Edwards showed me how to "turn it" and talked me into doing it. I was doing a great job advancing the lead. Then one day I dropped my Eversharp on the floor and what little lead was left in it fell out onto the floor. So I took it up to Sister.

She took one look at it and started screaming at the top of her lungs at me. I remember backing all the way to my seat. I wasn't about to turn my back on her--hard telling what might happen. Oh, she also told us that if we stuck our Eversharps in our mouths we would die.

There was one girl in our class that had obvious "issues". She flunked everything. She would get up from her desk, lift her uniform over her head, and walk up and down the aisles. Looking back now, I'd say she was mildly retarded. We didn't know what was wrong with her, but we did know that she couldn't help it.

One day Mother Superior came to our door and said something to Sister Nasty. Then they both came and got this little girl up from her desk. They took her to the back of the classroom and gave us strict instruction not to turn around. Well, you tell me not to do something like that, and of course I'm going to turn around. I was just lucky they didn't see me or I'd have been next in line to get what that poor little girl got.

What I saw was the little girl standing between the two nuns. One nun would slap her in the face, and then the other nun would turn her around and take her turn slapping her in the face. This kid hadn't even done anything that day, but for some reason those mean ol' nuns were physically abusing this kid. Once they finished with her, they took her out of the classroom and we never saw that little girl again. I assume they either kicked her out, or her parents removed her from the school.

The only good things I can remember from her class was being the best one at flash cards and Catechism. As I remember it, our Catechism book was chock full of Catholic doctrine questions and answers. We had to memorize word-for-word every answer in those books--and I had mine memorized. Some of the answeres were a big paragraph long, but some just had a sentence or two. An example of a question/answer would be:

Q: Was anyone ever preserved from Original Sin?

A: The Blessed Virgin Mary, through the merits of Her Divine Son, was preserved from the guilt of original sin, and this privilege is called Her Immaculate Conception.

Sister always held me up as an example to the other kids, making me stand and flipping flash cards at me as fast as she could "flash". Then she'd ask me Catechism questions and I'd answer them without blinking; every word perfect. Nowadays I can't memorize squat, but back then I was a whiz. I'm surprised that she would use me as an example, since I was going to hell for turning my Eversharp; but I suppose I was so good at flash cards and Catechism that she plumb forgot where I was headed, without so much as a stop in Purgatory.

About the only thing I loved in first grade was my angel. Each one of us had a beautiful paper angel and when we did something good, like a perfect test score, we'd get one of those lick-em, stick'em metallic stars on our angels. My angel was absolutely full of colorful stars. But one day in church, my rosary got tangled (yes, Leslie...the rosary you now have). I couldn't get it untangled, but my friend Roseanne Rogers untangled it for me. Then we sort of forgot we were in church and started talking about our dads for some reason.

After a few minutes, Sister walked by with this ominous look on her face, and up came the index finger to her lips telling us to shush. After church, she called both of us up to her desk and told us to bring our angels. She took both angels, retrieved a black permanent marker from her desk, and drew a big black blob on them. I was devastated. It was the only neat thing I had in her class and she ruined it because we were being kids.

Sister always hated this one boy we had in class. I think his name was Dennis and his special trick was turning his eyelids inside out. Sister hated that. But one day she told us a little bit about "pagan babies". Sister told us that if we brought in a quarter for the pagan babies that when we died and went to Heaven (even me???) that our pagan baby would come up to us and tell us "Hi...I'm your pagan baby". I was hooked. I wasn't too sure what a pagan baby was, but if I could have one when I got to Heaven; then count me in! I did know it was some sort of a baby--it was the "pagan" part that kind of had me confused. I guess I didn't understand how a baby could or could not believe in God. But still...at a quarter, it was one heck of a deal.

As soon as I got home, I started hounding Mom for the quarter. She wanted to know what it was for. I told her that if I brought a quarter to school, I'd get a "piggit baby". I tried explaining what a piggit baby was, but she was stymied. She had no idea what kind of varmint I was going to bring home, but she gave me the quarter. I took it to school and gave it to Sister Ernesta. So now when I die, I might not be able to take anything with me; but for sure my piggit baby will be there to greet me when I arrive at the Pearly Gates.

But Dennis...the one that Sister hated because of his inverted eyelids, brought in $5 for the pagan babies. After that, he could do no wrong. He could play with his eyelids all day long and that was fine. So when Dennis gets to Heaven, he will be greeted by 20 pagan babies! Wow! I sure hope they're pottie-broke or he'll spend his days changing pagan baby diapers.

One of Sister's really nasty tricks was something she did to control us when she had to leave the room for a few minutes. She never, ever explained this, but I knew what it was due to my Catechism and my love of Saturday afternoon sci-fi movies. Sister would very quietly go to the blackboard and pick up a piece of chalk. Without saying a word, she would draw a large triangle on the board and then draw an eye in the middle of the triangle. Then she'd put the chalk down, press her right index finger to her pursed lips as if to tell us to "be quiet". Then she walked backwards out of the door.

Well, that ol' nun could've left for the day and we wouldn't have made a sound or moved at all. I don't know what the rest of the kids thought, but Catechism taught me that the triangle was "The Holy Trinity" and the eyeball belonged to God. And I just knew that if I even twitched, a beam would come out of that eyeball and zap me into vapor. I saw it happen too many times on those sci-fi flicks, except the beams came from aliens.

One day during Sister's absence, as usual we all sat like little stones at our desks staring at the triangle. The little girl next to me was so scared that she peed while sitting at her desk. And since our lunchboxes were stored right under our open seats, all that pee flowed into her lunchbox. I did look out of the corner of my eye when I heard the noise, but it was luck that God's eye didn't see me or I'd been dust. That little girl ate her lunch as usual. We didn't have Ziplock sandwich bags either. Our moms wrapped our sandwiches in waxed paper.

Speaking of pee, one day Sister found a puddle of it on the boys' side of the classroom (we were segregated--boys on one side and girls on the other). She asked who did the deed, but no boy in his right mind would own up to that or face a slapping in the back of the classroom. Since no boy confessed, she asked for a volunteer and of course some dumb boy stood up. Sister had him go around and sniff each boy's butt to see who the culprit was. After about three or four boys, the snitch pointed and said, "It's him".

If you think that's horrible, when my brother Mark had Sister Ernesta, she walked by one of the boys' desks and smelled something putrid. It ended up being human feces in an absent kid's desk! How that kid pooped in his drawers, dug it out, and placed it in his desk is beyond me. And evidently it was beyond God's sight and the nun's. Again, Sister asked for a volunteer. My brother Mark stupidly raised his hand hoping to make some brownie points, and was assigned the duty of cleaning the poop out of the kid's desk. A few weeks later the same kid pooped while standing in line on the stairs and it fell out onto a couple of the stairs. Good ol' Mark was assigned poop detail again. That year before Christmas my Aunt Rita said she was going to get Mark a "super-duper pooper scooper upper" for a Christmas gift!

Not all the nuns at St. Frances de Sales were like Sister Nasty and Mother Superior. There was one nun that taught one of the higher grades that shined with God's Love. It was something you could just see. But unfortunately, she didn't teach first grade and I didn't have her for second or third grade either.

I'm sure Sister Nasty died many years ago. She might not have headed straight for hell, but I bet she's still hoping someone prays her out of Purgatory!

Space...The Final Frontier

I've always loved anything dealing with science--even before I had heard of the word. I must've been five at the time, and had listened to the local newscast about something we had not heard about...a sonic boom. They explained it well enough that I basically understood what a sonic boom was. The news guy also said we would hear a sonic boom in Indianapolis the next day.

The next day, I happened to be out in the back yard playing in the dirt when I heard a loud BOOM! I knew what it was, but evidently the neighbors hadn't listened to the news the night before. Mrs. Keyler from next door came out and so did the Clouses--asking each other what that noise was. I piped up and told them, "Don't worry...it's just a sonic boom". They probably figured I was talking silliness.

Probably around that same time, the boys and I were watching the news--you have to remember...back then we only had three channels and at 6:00pm that's all that was on! Anyway, the news was showing the test launch of a rocket. The boys were three and four at the time; and I was five and more "worldly" than those two. They were sitting there watching that rocket getting ready to fire and then we heard the words, "FIVE... FOUR... THREE... TWO... ONE... LIFTOFF!". The rocket successfully launched. As soon as it cleared the launchpad, both boys took off like a flash. They ran to the window and looked up!

Dumb ol' boys. I had to explain to them that they couldn't see that rocket. Heck, it must've launched clear from Cape Canaveral--probably in preparation for the Mercury missions.

A few years later, 1962 to be exact, Telstar was launched. Soon afterwards, The Tornados launched a hit instrumental to go with it. I remember going out on the front porch at night to see it, and thinking what a cool thing that was--to be able to see a satellite. Wow! Later came the Gemini and then the Apollo missions where we lost our very own Gus Grissom and his crewmates during a simulation for the Apollo I mission.

It's hard to believe that just seven years after Telstar came Neil Armstrong and the first moonwalk. Mom woke us up in the middle of the night to watch it live on TV. Back then, stations weren't on 24/7 like they are now--so it was amazing just to watch something so important that the TV stations would "stay up late" to broadcast the moonwalk.

Following those missions, came the test piggyback ride for the Space Shuttle, then all of the shuttle missions--including one mission that had a horrible start and one that had a horrible finish. Now a shuttle launch barely makes the news.

Stop and think of how things have changed since we came on the scene. As a kid, all I used to see in the sky were airplanes--and occasionally a biplane. Then came that sonic boom that seemed to signal the start of something big. Things haven't been the same since.

Life After Forty

Granny C. used to tell me, "Oh, Helen...don't get old". I'd always ask her if she would rather I died young. (She always ignored that question.) Although Granny was feisty, the last ten years of her life were more or less spent looking at the sour side of life. On a beautiful Spring day, she'd complain that Winter was right behind it. And it is sad when all of your family and friends on your generational level and up are gone. As members of my family pass on, I feel like each life is a chapter. And when I finish that book, that final chapter will be mine.

If we're all lucky, we'll live long enough to have the symptoms of aging. You young "whippersnappers" think these things won't happen to you...and they won't if you die before you hit 40. It's better to just realize most or all of these things will set in one of these days. Here's a list of things I've noticed, starting at around age 40 and going up to my current age of 55--soon to be 56. I've also listed some symptoms and possible "cures".

~Presbyopia (arms getting too short to read the paper...get reading glasses.)

~Graying hair (don't pluck the gray hairs--you're going to need them. See next.)

~Thinning hair (yes, girls--not just the men...don't dye your hair a dark shade, and do experiment with your hair to see how best to cover the thin spots; ie: do a comb-over. Women can get away with this a little better than men.)

~Thinning eyebrows (draw them in, but use a shade lighter than your hair color--natural or not).

~"James Whitmore" eyebrows (as your good eyebrow hairs disappear, long, white, wiry obnoxious ones come in. They won't stay in place and are hard to cover. If they're "keepers", meaning in the area where you want eyebrows, trim them instead of pulling them out. Pluck the ones that stray outside of your eyebrow line.)

~Drooping eyelids (if it gets to the point where they block your eyesight, have surgery; and whatever you do, do NOT wear shimmery or frosted eyeshadow. If you wonder why, slap some on and while in a darkish room have someone take your photo with flash, but if you like that "road reflector" look, go for it! You can also have your optometrist fix you up with a pair of "ptosis glasses". Ptosis glasses have a metal "eyelid-holder-upper" protruding from the frame just below the eyebrow. I kid you not--they do have such things for patients that have severe drooping eyelids, but actually using them was said in jest.)

~Clown eyebrows (this happens when women mistakenly think that if they get rid of any remaining eyebrow and draw real high eyebrows, their eyes won't look so droopy. That's not what happens. Put your eyebrows where eyebrows belong--not halfway up your forehead!)

~Growing hair where you don't want hair (men get gross, hairy backs and shoulders, and women get whiskers. Girls, offer to wax your hubby's back. It's a good way to pay them back for never lowering the toilet seat. As for those pesky whiskers, tweezers never worked for me. I use a pair of small optical needle-nose pliers--ask your optometrist to order a pair for you.)

~Pallor of your complexion (by all means, add some color to your cheeks, but take it easy on the blush!)

~Thinning lips (use a "lip plumper" and a not-so-dark lipstick. Do not apply lipstick where you don't have lips! That means the skin around your lips AND your teeth.)

~Warty growths (after a while, your skin gives up trying to stay smooth. All those free-radicals have had a lifetime to wreak havoc with your epidermis, helped along by all of the suntans and burns you've had in your life, smoking, and poor diet. Know the signs of skin cancers and get to a dermatologist if something looks suspicious. Other than that, deal with the fact that your skin is no longer the skin of a 20-year-old. And dressing like a 20-year-old does NOT make you look younger!)

~Brown spots (hormones and sun...use a bleaching agent for your hands if you have the ability to stick to it. Smear a concealer on facial brown spots, but watch that you don't make them more obvious by trying to conceal them. I hear there are also laser treatments for facial brown spots.)

~Stiffness and soreness (due to arthritis, inactivity, old injuries...walking and exercise! Wish I had the gumption to do some...because when I do get on a regular walking program, I do feel better. My back is not nearly as sore, and it gives me a better outlook on life.)

~Ear lobes starting to drag the ground (gravity...what it does to your chin(s) and boobs, it also does to your ear lobes. Heavy earrings won't help the situation either. Other than having your lobes trimmed like a doberman or growing your hair long enough to cover them, I don't know of an easy way to disguise 'em.)

~Darkening teeth (due to staining foods/drink, smoking, thinning of enamel...ask your dentist! I tried over-the-counter whiteners and they helped, but had the best luck with a tooth-whitening system from my dentist.)

~Wrinkles (I find that layers of fat help to plump out wrinkles. It's the same concept as putting on a pair of wrinkled slacks. If you MORE than fill them out, the wrinkled fabric is a lot less noticeable! All of my skinny friends my age look way more wrinkly than I do, so eat up, girls!)

And if you're interested in seeming young after menopause...

• Keep a sense of humor
• Try new things
  
• Have an open mind
• Don't talk incessantly about your aches and pains unless you are speaking to your doctor
• Learn something new every day
• Work puzzles to keep your brain sharp
  
• Know current events to give yourself something to talk about
  
• Don't just talk...listen!
• Walk!
• Be a friend and have friends of all ages
  
• Volunteer to do something for someone
• Think of others
• Get a pet
• Have fun
• Don't be nosy
  
• Laugh
• Give thanks for what you have and don't worry about what you don't have
• Hand out candy at Halloween, but please...no Circus Peanuts or apples!
  
• Smile--a LOT
  

Now, if I can just mark a few things off of that list.

The Only Constant

I was the first of our group to arrive at Schnitzelbank today, about 12:15. I had an appointment to keep with eight or nine very important people in my life. But I haven't seen some of them in six years or so. We had all been members of an IT team at a division of Kimballs, and although we had a lot to learn starting out, we learned. And we ended up with a top-notch IT team.

The guy that hired me, Rich, was indirectly responsible for this lunch meeting. He was my boss, and to this day, the best boss I've ever had. Rich retired ten years ago, and a few years ago got a virus in his heart. He's had to give up everything he loved to do, including fishing. Rich emails "forwards" once in a while, but has never answered me if I reply back to him and ask him questions. But last week when I received a "forward" from him, I asked him if we could have lunch. To my surprise, he quickly answered "yes".

I managed to contact most of our old IT team. We're scattered to the four winds now. I'm at Crane working for a contractor. Don invested 32 years at Kimball when they saw fit to release him during a layoff frenzy. After all, he was getting close to retirement age. Ever notice that companies never lay off one of the many VPs they have? Nope...they tend to get rid of the "Indians" and not the "Chiefs". The work then gets pushed to others, who are already overloaded.

Stan, who was my boss after Rich, is a plant manager, I think--and still at Kimball. Other than some gray in his goatee, he hasn't aged a bit. I actually made a couple of confessions to him during dinner--things I had done during my tenure as a network admin. Hey, when you have that kind of power, why not use it to pay back someone truly "deserving"?

Steve, the tall one of the bunch, is still with Kimball and even in the same building we worked at. Like Stan, his kids are growing up and each has a son in college. When we worked together, Steve would bring in scraps that his little kids left behind. If you entered his cubicle in the morning, he'd have a sandwich bag full of Pop Tart pieces. That year for Christmas, I bought him a couple of boxes of Pop Tarts for his very own--unbroken ones that hadn't been grubbed on by little runny-nosed kids. I used to cut my sandwiches in half when I went to lunch, and boxed up half for him. I never could eat a whole sandwich. And today, I ordered chicken livers. For old times' sake, I boxed up the leftovers and made Steve take them.

Lisa now works for OFS in a town close to Jasper. She was the scheduling expert on our team. She learned the scheduling portion of the software we were implementing, and she knew her stuff. When Kimball pulled her off our our IT team for SAP implementation, it put a big hurt on us. She still looked the same. Actually, other than a few gray hairs, no one has aged a bit--except for me.

Diane sat next to me. I hadn't talked to her since I left six years ago. She quit her analyst job at Kimball and went to work for her church. She loves it. Her daughter is now grown and teaching elementary school. Diane was taking the afternoon off to go help out her daughter's class for a "presidents" program they were doing. Diane didn't look a day older than she did six years ago.

That leaves me. I left Kimball because things were getting bad business-wise, and I didn't agree with the stupid decisions that "management" was making. I loved my job there and hated to quit. But at the time, I was offered another job by another company. The goober we had as a manager at the time was getting rid of people that had been there for years, replacing them with his friends from the defunct unit they came from. When he replaced our HR manager with his old HR manager that couldn't hit her butt with both hands, that's when I left.

So none of us work together anymore. Only two still work for Kimball. We've all moved on--some on purpose, some against their will, and then there's me--who left to make a point. I guess things can't stay the same forever, but I'll never quit missing our IT team and my old job there. It was great seeing everyone and we really need to do this once in awhile.

...the only constant is change, I guess.

Golden Threads and Silver Needles

Lately I've been into doing some research to see how much I can find out about my ancestors. I've been on ancestry.com using my free trial to see how much is out there. I've run across a few interesting things--some I had already found just using a Google search--and some things I have not seen or known. My brother Mike originally found our great-great grandparents, shown above. It appears that Mary is in a wheelchair. She looks like she could just pull a corncob pipe out of her pocket and start puffing away. Both of them look severely malnourished. I can't imagine how hard their lives must've been.

William R. PREWITT was born on 2 March 1847 in Orange Co., Indiana. He was married on 11 October 1866 to Mary HAMMOND who was born in 1843. He died in September 1928.
Mary Hammond was the daughter of Elijah Hammond and Nancy Crook

William R. PREWITT and Mary HAMMOND had the following children:
John Thomas PRUITT
Nancy E. PRUITT
Davis PRUITT
Amanda Caroline PRUITT
Alice PRUITT (Granny Apple)
Elijah William PRUITT
Charles Edward PRUITT
Levi PRUITT

Notice how the spelling of the name PREWITT became PRUITT. Our great-grandmother was their daughter. Her name was Alice and she married Eli Jackson Apple; hence she eventually became "Granny Apple".

Granny Apple lived in Newton Stewart, Indiana--just a few houses down from her daughter and son-in-law (my Grandma and Grandpa Riley; Mary Dana and John Riley). Granny Apple's house was a little one-room home. As you walked into her house, her bed was on the left just to the side of the front door. To the back was her kitchen and I think her little dining table was on the right wall. Granny always had a candy dish full of lemon drops. And her favorite great-grandchild was my brother Mark. That was because Mark had a loud mouth, and Granny could hear him even through her deafness.

Granny died when we were little kids, but I can still remember her very well. The first time I ever saw my father cry was at Granny's funeral. She lived to a ripe old age, and even made my dad a quilt when she was 92.

Depicted in the photo is my dear Grandma Riley, Granny Apple's daughter. I can't recall ever knowing a sweeter woman than Grandma Riley. She was quite a quilter too. And when my Uncle Doyle was near death in early November 08, first he said my dad was in his room. Later he said his mom was sitting in a chair in his room. I imagine both of them showed up to take Uncle Doyle home.

A few weeks ago my cousin showed me the photo below. I immediately knew who the lady on the left was because she's the spitting image of my Grandma Cissell. I knew this had to be her mother--my great-grandma Kidwell. She died when my grandma was 12 years old, leaving behind several children including one-year old Rosemary. Granny Cissell often told the story of how Rosemary took her first steps around her mother's coffin.Knowing my grandma was born in 1898, and she was 12 when Frances Anna died, I figured this photo had to have been taken sometime before 1910. I imagine the children left behind didn't have a pleasant life. My great-grandfather Basil Kidwell was a mean old coot, from what I've heard. He ended up living with my grandparents and their children, and didn't treat any of them very well.

Granny C. is shown enjoying a glass of wine, but her drink of choice was a highball every night--and probably more than one. The embedded photo is Granny as a young girl. Granny outlived all of her siblings. She was 92 when she died. Granny C. was as feisty as Grandma Riley was sweet. I hope when I get (if I get) to be an old lady, I'll have Grandma Riley's sweetness mixed with Granny C's feistiness.

Both of these wonderful ladies helped to shape me. I have Grandma Riley's penchant for quilting and putting housework dead last on my list of things I like to do. And I got my cooking and baking abilities from Granny C. I make my pies from scratch, just like she did.

I sure do miss these old gals, but I imagine right about this time Grandma Riley is using golden threads to piece a gossamer quilt. And Granny C. is having her nightly highball as usual.

Michele

My niece Michele was the second grandbaby of our family. She was born after a frantic trip to the hospital, which was just ten minutes away. My brother had even gotten stopped by a policeman for speeding, given a police escort to the hospital, and then passed the police car in an effort to try to keep her mother from giving birth in the car. They made it, but just barely. I think Michele must've been eager to start experiencing life. She hit the ground running.

Michele's the quiet one in our family. She gets that trait from her dad. Like the rest of us, family means a lot to Michele. She's married to one heck of a good guy, and both of them are doing a fantastic job raising their son.

After Michele had her son, she decided to go back to school to get a degree. She graduated a couple of years ago, and has a very rewarding job as a radiation therapist where she gives radiation therapy to men fighting prostate cancer. Her heart is in this job.

Michele has a nickname. She got that nickname when she was still a kid and like a good family, we never forget anything. She was curling her little sister Christen's hair with a hot curling iron, and as all good beauticians, she kept talking to her "client". Michele went on and on about how good she was at doing hair, and I think her last statement was, "Christen, when you get older maybe you will be able to do hair as good as me!"...and family, please correct me if I have any of this story wrong.

Well, it ended up that Michele got Christen's long hair hopelessly tangled in the curling iron. She finally had to give up and take Christen and the embedded curler to her dad. Even he couldn't get Christen's hair free until he completely dismantled the curling iron. OK, ready for her nickname? "Miss Clairol"!!!

Michele, you know your family is very proud of the girl you were and the woman, wife, and mother you've become!

Goin' Creekin'

Nothing felt better on a hot summer day than to put on your swimsuit and "swim" in the creek. This is probably about the deepest our creek ever got unless we were in the middle of a flood. To introduce you to the gang; Rita, Mike, and Mark are my siblings. Penny was my neighbor and tough friend who could whoop up on boys older than she was. Robin is Penny's little sister. She was pretty tough herself, ending up as a state champion arm wrestler. "Beetle" was also a neighbor. She came from a family that none of us were too sure about. Her real name was Carolyn, but her folks nicknamed her "Beetle" after a dog. That alone makes a person wonder. Beetle ended up getting married at 13, and it wasn't a "have-to" sort of thing. Heck, we didn't even know she was dating at the tender age of 13; then suddenly she got married. One week we were playing with our Barbie dolls, and the next week she was a wife. I doubt that she ever went back to school.

The creek (It was either called "Sugar Creek" or "Honey Creek") bordered our land. The creek was spanned by an old iron trestle bridge. Later on, it wouldn't have been safe to hang out around the bridge. Besides the pollution, drug deals went on there. Once in a while, we'd go creekin' up-creek. At a certain point this crabby old man would come out and tell us he owned the creek and he wanted us out of there. Once when Mom was along, the crab came out and started yelling at us about it being his creek. Mom yelled back and told him "his creek" kept flooding our property. Then he yelled back that he doesn't own the water--only the land under it!

Speaking of flooding, our creek flooded a few times a year. Normally, the water was probably ten feet below the bottom of the bridge. If it flooded enough to start coming over the bridge, snakes would slither up on the bridge pavement from the water. If it got that high, we'd expect within a few hours it'd be on our property. At one time the water got so high that it flooded clear up to Mary Sutton's place, probably a quarter mile up from the creek. For some reason, we never really worried too much about it--not even when one flooded night we heard a knock at our front door. When we answered the door, we found two men in a boat who said they'd gotten a call that we needed to be rescued. "Not us!" We were fine, and flooding up to our front step was something we were used to. So they backed up and left.

Our side of the creek always flooded because the other side of the creek had a levee. One year the levee broke and the "lower" neighbors got all of the water (I say "lower" because the land was quite a bit lower than the bridge, where our side was level with the bridge pavement.) A few of our neighbors ended up having to fill in their basements due to that flood. I don't think the levee was ever fixed. I don't remember any flooding on our side of the creek after the levee break. They may have even dredged the creek to alleviate the flooding.

The old iron bridge was eventually replaced by a non-descript concrete bridge. There was nothing wrong with the old bridge, based on how much effort it took them to tear the old one down. I haven't been near there in fifteen years or so, ever since Mom sold the place a couple of years after Dad's death. I don't think there are too many of our old neighbors left in the area--they've either passed away or moved.

We have a lot of good memories of our place on Paddock Road and the creek. I don't recall ever being bored growing up. You don't need a lot of toys when you have five acres in your back yard and a creek in your side yard. There was always something to do, and many times it would involve the creek. We'd take our dog there to cool off, and a couple of times a day we'd walk our ducks to the creek for a swim.

Kids, dogs, and ducks need a simple pleasure like a creek.

Anything Can Be!

"There's too many kids in this tub.
There's too many elbows to scrub.
I've just washed a behind
I know wasn't mine.
There's too many kids in this tub!

~Shel Silverstein

I can remember these triple baths just like yesterday. In the photo, Mark was maybe one or less. That would make Mike two, and me three years old. We grubbed around the back yard of our place on North Rural Street with our Matchstick cars until there wasn't a blade of grass anywhere. I imagine we were pretty grimy during warm weather when we could stay out and play. I can remember how my own son looked after a hard day at play and we had grass. Sometimes I could only recognize him by his smile!

But the main purpose of this entry isn't about bath time or my life on North Rural. It's to pay a small tribute to a very talented man that we lost in 1999 to a heart attack.

I loved Shel Silverstein's work even before I knew who he really was. Remember "The Unicorn Song" by the Irish Rovers? Shel wrote the song--lyrics and music. He also wrote "The Cover of the Rolling Stone" and "A Boy Named Sue". Besides being talented at writing songs, he also illustrated his books of poems. I've got two of his CDs--one is the songs of Shel Silverstein and the other is a CD of Shel reading his poems. He just doesn't recite his poems--he puts his wonderful personality into it.

Check out Shel's website at http://www.shelsilverstein.com/. And here are two more of my favorite Shel poems.

Listen to the MUSTN'Ts, child
Listen to the DON'Ts
Listen to the SHOULDN'Ts
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'Ts
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me -
Anything can happen, child
ANYTHING can be!



All The Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin' In The Sun,
Talkin' 'Bout The Things
They Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda Done...
But All Those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All Ran Away And Hid
From One Little Did.

A Sorry Cat

Another Mark story from our Smith Valley days...

Alley Cat had just delivered another litter of kittens. We found that beer cases--the old-fashioned kind that the glass bottles came in--made great cat-having-kittens boxes. You can close the cat up with her kittens, pick up the box by the handles, and carry them anywhere. (But take the dividers out first...those tend to be uncomfortable for the cat!) That day, Alley Cat was on our concrete back porch in her beer case cat house nursing her kitties.

Our Uncle Carl, Aunt Marie, and cousins Steve, Jimmy, and Danny Joe had just arrived with their dachshund. As dogs will, the dachshund went over to the beer case and stuck his head in to check out the kittens. Our dog Rebel was very protective of the kittens and didn't like that other dog checking them out. He lunged at my cousins' dog and attacked him.

We knew the little dachshund wouldn't stand a chance against Rebel, who was a fairly large dog. Rebel had one big weakness--he was petrified of gunshots and firecrackers. My little brother Mark ran into the house and grabbed a firecracker and a lighter. He ran back out, lit the firecracker and threw it onto the concrete porch in an attempt to break up the dog fight. My dad poured that porch, so it wasn't exactly level. The firecracker rolled directly under our other cat's butt and KABLOOEY! It couldn't have been timed any better.

Fru-Fru (yep, that was the cat's name) went straight up into the air about five feet. All four legs were stretched out and up. Every hair on that cat was standing on end, and she really did look like the illustration to the left. As Fru-Fru was in the air, she let out this horrible wail. And at the same moment, Mark said, "Sorry, cat!"

"Sorry, cat"??? That's all he could come up with after nearly blowing the poor feline's rectum to smithereens with a firecracker? You know, that cat seemed to hang in the air forever. But as soon as that cat's paws hit the ground, it was off like a streak of lightning. We didn't see that cat again for several days.

I bet I have some "toothpaste" that would've healed that cat pretty darned fast.

Read the Labels!

As Britney sang, "Oops...I did it again".

Last week I was thick into my morning routine. The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth. Due to some medication I'm taking, I have an extremely dry mouth. So a few weeks ago I found a toothpaste that is supposed to help fight the bacteria that loves to grow in a dry mouth. That morning, I picked up the toothpaste, opened the lid, and squeezed about 3/4" of the stuff onto my brush.

Something seemed a little strange that morning. I didn't remember the opening to the toothpaste being smaller than a normal toothpaste's opening. I nearly had the toothbrush into my mouth, when I picked up the toothpaste tube and turned it over.

Another half-second and I would have been brushing my teeth with hemorrhoid ointment. That's not the first time something like this has happened to me...or rather, I caused it to happen to me.

As a teenager, I stayed at my cousin's house quite a bit. One morning, I grabbed a tube of their toothpaste, squeezed it on my brush, and started brushing away. "Gawd!", I thought..."What in the heck kind of toothpaste do these folks use?" It tasted absolutely horrible, with a greasy feel to it. I picked up the tube--I sure didn't ever want to buy this stuff. Well, folks...again, it wasn't toothpaste. It was Groom! Groom was men's hair cream. And it sure made a nasty-tasting toothpaste.

When I was bike-riding age, I had hopped onto my bicycle to take a ride. I don't remember the circumstances, but this bike had a couple of spokes that were broken on one end. I ended up having a bike wreck in which I wouldn't have even gotten hurt except one of those broken spokes somehow completely punctured my right Achilles tendon. That left me with two holes on either side of that tendon. The first thing I thought about doing was running into the bathroom to get some Mercurochrome or Merthiolate to hopefully keep the wound from getting infected.

I grabbed the little brown bottle out of the medicine cabinet and quickly applied the stuff to the two punctures. AND THEN I YELLED! I expected either one of those antiseptics to sting a little, but not like this. When I looked at my foot, I didn't see the usual red of either one of those antiseptics. What I saw was the medicine thickening into two waxy lumps over the wounds. I grabbed the bottle and THEN looked at the label. I hadn't used either Mercurochrome or Merthiolate. What I used was Compound W--the wart remover! I think that stuff was eating my flesh from the inside out!

Some years back, I took a shower (and washed my hair) using dog shampoo. I wondered why it didn't lather very much. Needless to say, I didn't have fleas for a couple of weeks, and my coat was soft and shiny! And, yes, it was an accident.

Probably 30+ years ago, we were visiting Mom and Dad. My little sister was still a teenager, so she was also still living at home at that time. Before she got home, I had found an unlabeled bottle of nail polish on a kitchen shelf. Just to see what the color looked like, I painted my toenails. After a half-hour that stuff hadn't even began drying! So when my sister got home, I asked her what kind of nail polish that was on the kitchen shelf. She told me it wasn't nail polish--it was her lip gloss!

I try to be very careful with my medicines, but even as careful as I am, I sometimes mess up. The last time I did this was a few months ago when I took my usual morning dose of blood pressure medicine, Verapamil. By the time I got to work, I was so sleepy that I thought I'd fall asleep at my desk. When I got home, I picked up the medicine bottle from the kitchen counter to put it away, and happened to glance at the label. What I took that morning was not Verapamil like I thought. It was Hydrocodone (acetaminophen and codeine). The dosages of Verapamil and Hydrocodonee we have are identical unless you look close enough to see the imprints. So now I keep the Hydrocodone buried deep into the cabinet and my Verapamil in a separate location with my other meds.

I'm not the only one in the family to not be careful at times. My granny was famous for her homemade pies. She made a couple of pies for my uncle and aunt who were coming to visit from Alabama. As always, she sprayed the pie pans with Pam and finished making the pies. After she got them baked, she realized she had not sprayed the pie pans with Pam, but had instead sprayed them with Lemon Pledge! I suppose that might not taste too bad with a lemon meringue pie.

There is one thing I make sure I check each time. I usually keep a bottle of eye drops on my nightstand since I have very dry eyes (especially at night). I always, always read the label to make sure I'm not putting Super Glue in my eyes.

A Grandpa of the Heart

Probably the first people we met when we moved from the big city of Indianapolis to Smith Valley were Olen "Ode" and Katherine. The Perrys were the sweet old couple across the road from us. Little did we know how much they would come to mean to all of us. It wasn't too long after we moved in that the Perrys became our "grandparents". We loved going to Ode's house. Katherine crocheted beautiful bedspreads; and Ode's passions were woodworking and gardening--both vegetable and flowers.

Within a year or two of moving to Smith Valley, we had come home from visiting our grandma in Loogootee. That was early on a Sunday morning. We had no sooner gotten into the house when we heard a knock at the front door. It was Ode. All he could manage to say was, "Katherine's gone". He started to break down, so he turned and headed for his home. Katherine was Ode's second wife. (Ode had also lost his first wife Dessie, but that was long before we knew him.

After Katherine died, the only things I wanted to remember her by were her crochet hooks, thread, and instruction books. She didn't have much in the way of crochet supplies, but that was all I needed. I was given her crochet supplies, and I taught myself to crochet. I was probably in fourth grade about that time. And to this day, when I see pastel variegated crochet thread, I think of Katherine.

Over the next few months, I would run over to Ode's and cook for him. Of course, we had him over to eat with us, and we always took leftovers to him as well. But I still enjoyed cooking for him too. I can distinctly remember frying chicken for him; and looking back now, I hope I got it done! Within a few months, Ode didn't need for me to cook for him any more.

Ode had a new ladyfriend. And the first thing he did was introduce us to Romanza. It was important to Ode that we liked Romanza and approved of her. Although Romanza was as different from Katherine as night and day, we soon came to love her as well. She was from the hills of West Virginia, and it was nothing for her to trap a raccoon and fry it for lunch. Romanza was a salty old girl who spoke her mind and cheated at her favorite board game Aggravation. If you went over to Ode and Romanza's, most of the time you would get talked into staying to play. And if you did something during the game that didn't quite suit Romanza, you knew you would be getting a little kick to the shin!

Ode loved singing hymns. We three older kids would sit at his feet, and my little sister would sit on his lap. To this day, I don't care for the new Christian songs that are popular at a lot of the new churches. I love the old standard hymns that Ode sang to us. Ode always wore coveralls around the house. He had a cow to milk, pigs to feed, and a garden to tend. But every Sunday, he would wear his best Sunday-go-to-meetin' suit to the EUB church in the valley. Many Sundays he sang his hymns in front of the congregation.

Ode was a water witch! He used two metal rods, bent to form "L" shapes. Ode held one in each hand pointing straight out and simply walked. When he passed over water, the rods crossed (or moved out--I can't remember). Everyone said he was good at it too.

When we came home from school, we always had our bus driver Harry drop us off at the corner down the road so we could get home sooner. Our dog Rebel would meet us there every day and walk us home. One day as we were walking home, we heard Romanza calling us from the garden. All four of us ran to her garden to see what was wrong with her. She was sitting in the middle of the cabbage right where she had fallen hours earlier and broken her wrist. Because she had bad hips and the broken wrist, she couldn't get up on her feet or even crawl for help. We got her to her feet and into the house. Before the night was over, she was sporting a cast.

When we were in high school and again walking home one day, there was an ambulance in Ode's driveway. They had Ode on a gurney and were putting him into the back of the ambulance. We ran home and watched from the front door, all four of us sobbing like babies. Thankfully, Ode was released that night. He'd had a seizure, but was ok. It sure scared the heck out of us kids.

Ode ended up in a nursing home after I got married and moved away. I did a little research tonight and found out that he died in October of 1977. Census records indicated he was born in 1889, so he would've been around 88 when he died. After his death, Romanza moved back to West Virginia. Mom and Dad made a trip to see her at the nursing home. She died in West Virginia in October of 1981, four years after Ode.

Following is what my little sister wrote about Ode. I couldn't top her story, so I chose to write a few facts about our proxy grandparents.

I Believe

It’s going to be rainy tomorrow. The date is in some unknown time in the early sixties. How did I know it would be rainy? Because the weather dog told me. The weather dog sat on the window sill in Ode and Katherine’s house and changed colors according to the weather. I remember looking at the weather dog one day when one of his “weather specks” came off in my hand. I carried it back to my house so I would always know what the weather would be. Katherine died when I was very young, but I still remember one thing about her. When I would go across the road to visit them, she would say, “Olen, go get her a candy bar.” I can still hear that voice to this day. They kept Mr. Goodbars in their refrigerator.

Ode was the “old man” across the street. I loved him. By the time I arrived on this earth both sets of my grandparents had way too many grandkids to care much about me. To be honest, I probably wasn’t the easiest little girl either. I remember being much too whiny and sensitive. And my grandparents lived over an hour away. Ode lived just across the road. I don’t remember Katherine dying, but I know she did and Ode married Romanza.

Also on the window sill was a small white church. I remember also loving that small church. I don’t really know why, except that it embodied everything Ode was. He was a good Christian man, the old fashion kind. As a very small child I loved going over to their house. As I remember it, there were only four or five rooms in the house. One of the bedrooms was actually a hallway into their kitchen.

What I remember most is that I would sit for what would seem like hours with Ode on the couch. He had old spiral hymn books and he would teach me the songs. Old-fashioned hymns that I had never heard in the Catholic church. “I’ve got a mansion, just over the hilltop, in that bright land where we never grow old. And someday yonder, we will never more wander. But walk on streets that are purest gold.” I loved Ode and I loved those old songs books.

Most of the songs that we sang together were from those old songs books. “As I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore. Very deeply stained within. Sinking to rise no more. But the Master of the Sea heard my despairing cry. From the waters lifted me, now safe am I. Love lifted me. Love lifted me, when nothing else would do, Love lifted Me.”

I can still hear Ode’s creaky voice singing those last few high versus. He taught me those and the old time song, “Oh do you remember a long time ago, two poor little babes whose names I don’t know. Were stolen away on a bright sunny day, and lost in the woods, I’ve heard people say.”

I don’t know why or how, but there was an evening at EUB church where Ode was a member when he and I got up to sing in front of everyone. I couldn’t have been six at the oldest. I still remember the two of us getting up and singing in front of that church. I was a little nervous, but I also felt safe with Ode leading the way. I was proud he wanted to have me sing with him.

In hindsight, I can just imagine what the people in EUB church thought. I mean, really how cute to have an old man and a six-year-old singing old songs that he taught her? I would give anything for video cameras back then so I could have that memory forever. I suppose the memory I have inside my heart is better than any video could have been anyway.

When I was a teenager, they took Ode away to a nursing home. I probably hadn’t visited for years and I felt bad. My mother would go to see him and tell me how “out of his head” he was. I could not force myself to go (today, I would know better). I believe he was in the nursing home for a few years and I never visited him, I justified it by saying he wouldn’t want me to see him like that. I believe he died when I was 17 or 18. I was all full of myself and thought that in my mind he had already been gone for years, so I also didn’t attend the service either. How sad.

He and Romanza really didn’t have a lot. They had lived a simple life in that tiny house. But when he died, it seemed that relatives came out of the woodwork wanting the simple things they had in the house. I remember feeling so upset that these people who hadn’t bothered with either of them for so long were now raiding their house while Romanza was still alive, and just grabbing what little they had.

I think about those song books and the white church and weather dog. I would have given anything to have had them. They meant something to me. Ode and the song books formed a significant part of my life, my faith. I knew those small items were not worth anything and probably ended up in the trash. It’s the “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” truth. The songbooks were my treasure. They were something I shared with a man who was significant in my young life. His grandkids lived just next door, but they were busy being kids and didn’t realize how special it was to have your grandparents right next door.

I miss you Ode. Thank you for teaching me a quiet faith—one that doesn’t require looking down at people “lesser” than you. Thank you for showing me that while some families are created through blood, other families are created through the heart. I’m sorry for not visiting you in the nursing home or attending the service. I was young and selfish and I regret not getting to give you a proper goodbye. Thank you for giving me some of the most pleasant memories of my childhood and for politely sharing your amazing faith with me. What I wouldn’t give now to be able to tell you what an impact you made on my life. You will always be the grandpa made from my heart. I loved you so much.