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The have-nots usually borrow from those who have. Edward had a no-borrowing policy. He refused to borrow even the smallest thing. From experience, he found out if he borrowed something, for sure it would break, and he would have to repair it and fix it up better than when it came to him. We had a neighbor who liked to “borry.” Edward always had a big shop, well stocked with everything he needed to repair the many mishaps that happen on the farm. “Jim” would come over and “borry” some air from the compressor, and “borry” some tool while he w...
Whoever would have thought that we would have four bathrooms in our new town house! We, who grew up with a 2-holer and a path in the backyard. Some folks mention corn cobs, but we were rich enough to always have a Sears Roebuck catalog on hand. Many tales have been told about such privies. It was especially a hardship in the cold dark nights of winter. One year of heavy snowdrifts, our little boys dug a tunnel through the snow to the outhouse. What an adventure for them! (This was our first month after moving home from four years of city...
The stroke left her paralyzed and stole away the present, leaving her mercifully living in the past. When I came to visit, she would ask me if I had seen “Mama”. I would tell her that Mama was really busy caring for the chickens. Grace loved them. She and Mama were proud of the many chickens they had raised over the years. She also asked about her favorite riding horse, Dick, and wanted him brought around so she could ride. When we had her sale that year, we found Dick in the basement truck. Alice told us he was always getting loose so the...
Being a farm wife, I usually started the summer cay by picking the fresh garden vegetables for lunch, and killing 2 or 3 chickens to fry. We had a wire snare I used to snatch one of their legs if I could get close enough. Grandma Shute had a dog that would catch and bring her a chicken. I was not that lucky. Edward’s mom tried to teach me to kill them by holding back the wings and legs, draping their neck over the old stump and giving a big chop with the little axe. Trouble was they would always lift up their head and look at me when it was t...
Mom would have been 114 years old February 28th, 2024. She wrote the last chapter in her book of life at age 96. The church was filled at her funeral service, a testament of her good life and many friends. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren sang and played beautiful music on the piano and violin, as a final fitting tribute to her and the great love of music in our family nurtured by her for a lifetime. The daughter of a funeral director always needing a pianist, she began young as a church pianist and filled that role for about 84...
The scraggly old cedar tree stands on the hill by the side of the road. It has stood there since my childhood, probably wondering if each new land owner would push it down and drag it away. In its younger days, it stood over the new soddy that the young farmer had struggled to cut out of the prairie. Later, as the family grew and prospered, a proud frame house replaced the soddy, which was then used for the chickens for awhile until the snow and rains made it collapse. The tree was strong and straight then, like the young couple. It provided so...
Many of the elderly frail ones die in the winter time. Grandpa A. J. always said, “If I can make it through March, I can live another year.” There were five deaths all in their eighties in one week. Rose, 83, has had Alzheimer’s disease and has been absent from us for several years already, wandering around in her body, confused and lost. Now she is free, free to fly over her dear farm and check on her chickens and baby calves, and see the garden spot now grown up to weeds. Her roses are still blooming bravely by the porch. She catches a whiff...
In earlier times before the people had a written language, it was the duty of certain elders to be storytellers. Their life’s work would be to tell over and over again in the exact words, stories of the history of the tribe. This was regarded of utmost importance. We saw this surface in Alex Haley’s book, Roots, where he was able to trace his lineage back to Africa and be told, “This is the very place where the young man Kunta Kintay was captured and taken away to slavery in America.” Alex’s grandmother and aunts had told the stories repeatedl...
