No great news

I should tell you stories about my mom.  One day in late winter my mom went outside to talk to the neighbor but didn't come back for a long time.  My parents got a dog that was  rather large puppy and all black.  Turned out after he grew up that he was a cross of a Saint bernard and a black lab, black color with st Bernard  temperament. A big loving playful  dog. This dog delayed my mother by rolling knocking her down and rolling her around in the snow, the more he aged, the more she laughed and couldn't get up. When she finally came in she was covered in snow and still laughing. 

One of the times she was in the hospital we stopped and got her breakfast and donuts with all the layout to make it fancy.  She started to laugh and the nursing staff thought she was getting hysterical, came on the double just to see her all happy and enjoying her breakfast. 

During on visit we decided to pull an all nighter, which excluded a trip to an Embers, where we sat with friends enjoying the chatter.  

Finally writing

Been busy and couldn't think of anything to say. Fell last week on the ice under the snow, messed up my knee. The cool part was two passing cars stopped to help me up, had to crawl past the ice before I tried to get up.  My neighbor took care of the snow and I had a brace for my leg so I  have been wearing it since. 

When I get up in the morning go to get the coffee started, I look out the window at the neighbor's roof.  I remember having to get the torch to thaw out the galvanized pipes at the farm so we could have water.  Old farm house was not insulated and had single layer glass in the windows, the frost would get almost 3/8ths of an inch thick. If you wanted to see out you'd blow on the window till the frost became clear enough to see through.  

Heating with wood means having to get up in the night to fill the furnace which is no fun. Hate getting out of bed in the middle of the night.

Christmas I Remember

The Christmas I Remember most is when we were really broke. Dad found some old toy trucks, fixed them up for my brother. Made a kitchen set from salvaged parts making cabinets for it. I remember helping him, what little I could as a young child, dad did not have the patience to work slow enough for kids to help. I know from experience that a kid helping is often more work than doing it yourself. I don't remember what I got that year I just remember working with him.  

One year we got so excited about what we might get that we opened everything on the 23rd, made Christmas day a let down. 

Hope you all had a good holiday.

Things I Remember

I remember a barn raising after a storm took the roof off.  A cattle drive to get our just bought cows from a few miles away.  A crop harvest for a farmer who was ill.  A wall phone that requires you to crank a certain way to get the person you want (one long crank, two short sort of thing). AN ice house where you put the ice you cut off the lake in the winter.  A time when calling on the phone to someone out side your town often required an operator and cost according to the distance.  A one room school house where I had first grade.  No emergency services so going to the ER ment driving fast.  Single pane windows so the frost could get to be a quarter inch or more thick.  Winters that are sooo could, I remember a winter with a wind chill hit -59 degrees.  The DNR had an orange truck that someone had to go out and run every hour, they forgot and slammed the truck door shut, hear a crack, looked out to see the snow turned orange....make truck.😉

Trips

Growing up my family took trips, mostly to see the extended family. Grandparents and cousins in Wisconsin and Minnesota, had reunions on both mom and dad's sides. I remember dad miscounting how many ice cream cones to get, shorting himself. Once he didn't realize the drivers window was up and smashed the cones I to it.  One time we could find an ice cream place but found a place that had milk in bottles like soda pop, we thought that was cool so got lots of chocolate milk.  Visiting dad's sister's in southern Minnesota we lost my brother out the car door when we did a quick turnaround, boy did he look surprised sitting there on the ground.  We lost mom's purse on this trip going down the road.  When dad got the new van he got home late on Friday and we walked down the driveway through the snow just to ride around in it.  We wanted to show it off to the grand parents and dad in his worked all day then drove two hours home drove the four hours to see them.  

I was suspected of murder

We moved into our first house in 1978, after we moved in the giant elm tree in the front yard was marked for removal by the city.  Dutch elm disease was spending across the country, ours had it and removal was the only way to stop the spread.

One day I came home from work work and the tree was gone, leaving a big stump.  A few days later I came home to find a huge pile of saw dust and wood chips. Julia had hired a guy with a stump grinder to take care of the stump.  My day off job was now to clean up all the grindings.  After I got them shoveled up I noticed that the roots were still there just below the surface, going down lower.  Julia went to work in the back yard while I started to dig. I had a nice two foot wide about six feet long trench with me standing in it up to my knees.  I noticed that people going by were looking at me weird.  I finally caught them looking down the driveway into the back yard then looking at me and taking off. Julia was laying on the ground, her back was bothering her from all the yard work.  My words to Julia "you can't lay in the yard, people think I killed you and are burying you in the front yard".  

Mom

Stories of our mom.  

Mom once wanted to walk from the front of the property to the back through the woods. She figured it would be cool as it was out of the sun but it also out of any breeze. It became a phrase that you don't go walking with mom or riding with dad.  When I went to school in Superior WI mom went up to talk to the financial officer, his last day in that office.  When he got to Spooner Wi mom was the first person there, so I got the aid.  

We had a Plymouth with a push button transmission so she would let  my sister drive us to the lake to swim. 

I don't know how she managed the chaos in the winter with us playing in the house. Sometimes we would chase around the middle of the house on little trikes. When we got older dad had brought home a pool table that we set up in the living room, got pretty good at it.

Once we were going somewhere in Roseville MN, following mom's direction she had me take a right on this country road then left on the that road. This had me going through a bank drive through back out on the street we stared from, all she said was that's the way we went before. I wonder why dad would get upset on trips.  Mom like to have extra people around, she would take her friend along when they went to a reunion by Brainerd to be dropped off 100+ miles southwest of there. I don't think she understood distance. I did this run once just to find out when we got to where she wanted to be that the people where not home they were in the second town we passed through on this trip.  Yeah like I really wanted to drive an extra few hundred miles out of the way.