Good Times

Ever have one of those times when there are too many things you want and need to do than is humanly possible? We have just had too much on our calendar lately—two grandsons graduating from high school, one grandson graduating from 8th grade, end of semester plays, programs and softball games, reunions, medical appointments, and storms, and a great grandson’s 5th birthday party up in Aurora that we could not attend.

In between the rains and storms, our son-in-law is trying to get crops planted. In addition to all his own projects, Gerald wants to be available to help a little bit if Brian needs a ride to another place or something welded. One of Gerald’s most time consuming projects right now is mowing our huge lawn that is growing beautifully because of the excess rains.

I didn’t finish my list of errands nor go by to see Katherine on Wednesday while I was in town because I kept hearing warnings on the car radio that our region might be getting tornadoes at any time. I knew the chance that the tornado would hit in whatever area I might be in was slim, but the constant reports about Joplin made us aware that we needed to be careful. Activities and ball games were being cancelled; students and people were sent home from school and work early. Storm shelters were opened in churches and public buildings for those who needed a place of safety.

I was relieved when our car was in the garage again and out of danger of hail that hitting various spots in our region. And I was glad when Erin showed up to spend the night in our downstairs bedroom that is actually underground. Her car and her dog Sadie were sheltered in Gerald’s shop. I remembered two frozen pizzas in the freezer and fixed those and carried down to our downstairs family room where we ate supper and were glued to the television. Local weather reporting had replaced regular programming. Although we were not really afraid, we were prepared to run into the safe room under our front porch area if necessary. I was worrying about Katherine’s family, and she phoned to check on us.

One tornado was seen over Marion but did not touch down. We seemed to be between the two worst areas that were showing bright red on the screen. One tornado touched down and did a great deal of damage at a little town north of Mt. Vernon named Boyd that none of us had ever heard of before. We heard Union County, our home county, was in path of the storm, but it was Saturday at a family gathering down there that we learned that a tornado had actually touched down and damaged a cousin’s trees and other people’s property in a fairly small rural area there.

We grew bored by weather reports and the danger seemed to have passed, and we went on to bed. Erin was up early the next morning for her and Sadie and her cousin Sarah to head to Athens, Georgia, to visit her family and be there for the Super Regionals softball tournament to start at Athens on Saturday. Gerald fixed her an egg in the microwave for an egg sandwich and she was gone before I got up.

Thursday we both had appointments with a dermatologist way over at Murphysboro, which is why my face is temporarily scarred up from some zapping. But we had a good report, and that is what matters. We had stopped in Carbondale on the way over to empty our garage of all the recyclables and we had to stop by the audiologist in Carbondale on our way home. That night we hurried to Sam’s 8th grade program at 6 p.m. in a very crowded gymnasium with parking spaces all taken before we arrived though we were on time.

As some places do, the school avoided using the word “graduation” but called the evening a Recognition Program. The large class sat in folding chairs and filled the floor of the gym with a row of teachers at the side and dignitaries on a temporary stage. Many many awards were given before finally row by row each youth went forward to get a diploma or whatever you call what is given if it is not a graduation ceremony. Sam was one of the 15 students in the class that had made all A’s their 7th and 8th grade years, so we enjoyed seeing him on the front row although neither of us could hear in the cavernous gym. Evidently no one else could either because the audience kept a lot of conversations going all around me, and for some reason, there was a steady flow of people going in and out.

Gerald and I lost each other in the crowd after he came in from parking the car. I had to literally crawl up the bleachers to one of the few lowest seats available since the lower seats were all taken. I saved a spot for Gerald, but he did not find me even though I stood up and was waving. I began to wonder during this long program how in the world I was going to get back down without a handrail. I get dizzy in this kind of steep seating, and I was concerned. I was on the end of a row, and finally I got up my nerve and reached over and asked the sweet young man across from me on the other side of the un-railed steps if he’d let me hold his arm going down. As I knew he would, he was the perfect gentleman and agreed with a smile to help me. Only then I could relax and watch the graduates, and I clapped for every one of them as they were handed their rewards.

Afterward we hurried home and watched the ending of the first of the eight women softball NAAC Super Regionals strung out across the nation. Our Super Regional was not starting until Saturday night, but we were interested in all these 16 winners of Regionals who were going to be reduced to eight teams for the World Series in Oklahoma City starting at the end of this week.

We wanted to go to Elijah’s graduation up in the northern part of the state and especially so since he would be one of the speakers. We had heard him as an 8th grader give a great speech at that graduation, and we wanted to see him complete the circle. But a seven-hour trip was just a little overwhelming at this time as Gerald has been having some back trouble. So we stayed home, but I believed I’d always feel some pain that I did not get to attend. Of course, there was also that birthday party in that end of the state. (I am greedy about life.)

We were watching whatever softball games we could, but Saturday was the annual reunion of the students who went to the old Wolf Lake High School, which became a part of the consolidated Shawnee High School in the 1950s. We could not go when we were still farming, so Gerald especially likes to go now. This multi-class reunion always brings out-of-town oldsters back to their roots, and the local alumni go all out to give a really nice gathering. Gerald enjoys seeing old friends and catching up on their lives. I have tagged along enough that I know many of his high school friends, so I enjoy seeing them too and always meeting new ones. I happened to sit by Bob and Betty (Millis) Larrison, and I had a great time getting acquainted with them. I was surprised to find out that Betty was a sister-in-law to Gerald’s cousin Marjorie and they were headed there after this reunion ended.

We had just time to buy some flowers and head to the Jonesboro Cemetery before we were to go to a 5 p.m. 25th anniversary party for Steve and Debby Haldeman at her sister Irma’s house. We have talked for years about needing to have another Glasco-Wenger get together, and Gerald’s cousin Irma had invited us all there to do just that. It was a wonderful party with lots of time to see new little ones in the family and to visit with all the relatives. Tender ribs and yummy scented kabobs were carried in and added to the groaning dinner buffet for everyone to help themselves as people showed up as their schedules allowed.

The lovely tiered anniversary cake was made by Irma—something she and Debby used to do together. It seemed impossible that it had really been 25 years since we attended Debby and Steve’s wedding at the Wenger family farm. That particular wedding was memorable to us because Jeannie was doing a lot of long distance local bike riding in those days and had ridden to our farm from Carbondale. During our lunch we watched a show on television about these bicyclists riding across the nation. That afternoon we arrived at the site of the wedding and found out the bikers we had just watched on television were there on their bikes having ridden down from Chicago. They were the groom’s brothers. These young adults went on to start a successful bike touring business and have been riding here and abroad ever since. It was fun to see Steve’s parents again and hear a little more about these bikers that had impressed us so.

We were not very good guests because after dinner several of us hovered around the television set to watch the first Georgia-Baylor game in the Athens Super Regionals. Nor were we very happy when we lost. Since the winner of these tourneys must win two out of three, the final two games for us were yesterday afternoon.

After church yesterday morning, Gerald took me down to my family’s cemetery at Goreville to place flowers on the graves there, and then we enjoyed dinner at The Old Home Place—Pat and Tina Barger’s restaurant. It was good to see my cousin Joe Martin there, and he came and visited with me a long time. (He is a second-cousin once removed.) Like most people, I have great admiration for Joe because he has accomplished a great deal despite difficult odds. As a youth, he was a finalist in Special Olympics and even went to New York because of his ability. He keeps himself in great shape and dresses with crisp neatness and style. He proudly told me he had worked at the local grocery for 30 years now. He has collected thousands of dollars for charity by riding in bike-a-thons, and now he says he has added bowling and karaoke to his activities.

We hurried home to sit in front of the television again as we watched ESPN as Georgia hit five home runs and beat Baylor 14-2 in the second game of the series. We had forced the third game, and we were relaxed during the 30 minutes between games because we felt assured our Bulldogs would beat those Baylor Bears without any problem since we were on a roll. Sadly for us, Baylor came back and quickly pulled ahead and won handily with a 9-2 score. So Georgia will not be going back to the World Series for the third year in a row. Our family felt devastated, and soon remarks came up on Facebook expressing our disappointment.

I went upstairs to clean up a messy kitchen and turned on the television there. A news report was showing Tuscaloosa one month after their tornado. (One of the Super Regionals was held there where the campus had to be closed and graduation postponed till September, but the stadium was ok. Tournament visitors saw and experienced the destruction there.) Although I had rooted for Danielle Miller on Stanford’s team, who is such a great kid, I had to be happy for Alabama’s team, who after that terrible tornado trauma, won the right to go on to Oklahoma City. Seeing that news report about how many are without homes quickly put the softball loss into perspective. As our son Gerry said, “Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you!” Nevertheless, he is already at work for next year.

Leslie started downstate after her brother’s graduation yesterday, and she arrived at Woodsong at 2:28 this morning. I had slept on the couch and been up at 2, but still slept through her arrival when I lay back down. I woke up again at 3 and saw her car in the driveway and the unlocked door now locked, so I went on to my own bedroom. Like everyone, Leslie slept fine in that underground bedroom that is completely dark and quieter than the other bedrooms. It was mid morning when she came upstairs.

We had a good visit before she was back on the road to Nashville and her red-headed boyfriend, whom she was missing. She took a video of Elijah’s speech, so I can look forward to her putting it on You Tube. It won’t be a good as seeing/hearing it in person, but I have my perspective straightened out now. I am through pouting.

Les has worked as an R. A. in the dorms at Belmont the last two years, and she was eager to have her first apartment for her senior year. She and a girl friend have secured an apartment in their youth pastor’s home, and she is working two part-time jobs this summer to pay for it. Her car was loaded down with stuff from Freeport to add to her thrift-store finds, and she was so excited to have today to finish setting up her very first place before she starts back to work tomorrow.

Seeing her joy and anticipation helped my attitude also. I just changed the title of this blog from "Too Busy Times" to "Good Times."

Thinking of those who died in WWII

Memorial Day is coming, and graves will be decorated. But the longer we are from World War II, the fewer Americans remember it. My childhood memories are already dim although at the time our lives revolved around that war. Our days were darkened by knowledge that the war was going on. My mother could not sleep well at nights thinking about her older sister Mary’s sons fighting overseas. Daddy’s sister’s sons were also “over there,” and I am sure they worried just as much about them. Older cousins Dorothy and Kathleen had husbands fighting also, and Kathie lost her husband, and her mother had to tell her while she was still in the hospital after giving birth to their baby son.

The war started for me when I came home from visiting my special adult friend Mabel Perry, who had been my infrequent babysitter and whose mother did laundry and stretched lace curtains for many in the community. Somehow I would be invited and allowed to walk to Mabel’s house, a few blocks away, and I would always be entertained royally. Mable would tell wonderful spooky “true” tales that caused me to be scared, but Mother did not know that. Drinking out of her late father’s mustache cup was a special privilege. Her father had been a lawyer but had been dead many years and the family’s living was made in the wash house just a step away from the kitchen door. Later Mabel gave me the cup.

So it had been a typical happy Sunday afternoon for me when I walked into our house and was told about Pearl Harbor. I must have realized from my parents’ voices and the looks on their faces that this was a terrible thing. I only remember going from the living room into my sister and my bedroom and kneeling down and praying. I knew to be scared. I have no memory of what I thought or expressed to God, but praying in the middle of the day was not a normal thing for me to do. Something enormous had happened.

My parents had already planned a trip to El Paso to visit Daddy’s sister Myrtle and husband William Ball as our one-time Christmas celebration. It was decided to go ahead and carry out those plans, which was a good thing since gas and tire shortages would not allow traveling during the war years. We were not going to have a tree this year nor exchange the usual presents. However, since I was the youngest, I was given my last doll that year—my first “big” doll, which I am sure I had longed for. Our family of five took off as soon as school was out—my older sister Rosemary, brother Jim, me, and “the folks” as we often called Mother and Daddy. Christmas Day dinner was in a diner in Texarkana, and that seemed quite exotic at the time and was probably the only thing open. Eating in a restaurant was rare for us, and the folks always made things fun. The visit at El Paso was good but definitely over-shadowed by Aunt Myrtle and Uncle William’s knowledge that their sons were going to war. I remember the concern.

When we got back to Southern Illinois on the Sunday afternoon before school started the next day, my parents stopped on the Jonesboro Square to pick up their mail from the post office box inside the lobby. There a letter was waiting for my mother to start teaching the next day at the one-room Meisenheimer School, grades one through eight, where the young teacher had been drafted. As a married woman with children, my mother was not considered suitable to teach under ordinary circumstances. But overnight it became her patriotic duty to do so, and she did.

Mother not only taught, but she was responsible for picking up students in her 1937 Ford car, starting the fire in the school stove, and keeping the building clean. (I think she hired one of the older boys for part of this janitor work.)

I hated coming home from the school across the street to an empty house even though Daddy was in his office at my school and I was welcome to go up and see him if I needed to. I was supposed to go home and practice my piano. I did not like to practice anyway, and I would imagine burglers in the basement beneath me, so practice was probably often cut short.

Mother was soon home and had supper on the table by five since Daddy very often had to be back at the school before six. Daddy was the 8th grade teacher and principal; but with the war, he also became basketball coach since the coach was drafted. (At away games, he piled the players into that 37 Ford and was the “bus driver” also.) When our school had a day off and Mother’s did not, I was able to go with her to visit all day, and I loved that. Looking back, I am sure Mother’s teaching career made possible by the changing attitude that the war brought about was a very good thing for our family; but for a third grader, it was a difficult change.

However, in all honesty, I enjoyed most of the exciting things going on with the war— the community scrap drives that Daddy headed up with piles of metal in the school parking lot almost as high as the school building, the war stamps sold at school with our fourth grade class making a little stand with red, white, and blue decorations in the corner of our room, the big rallies where the pig King Neptune was auctioned off again and again to sell war bonds. (Yes, this really happened, and he was buried beside Route 146 with a tombstone and supposedly exhumed when I-57 disturbed his grave. You can see his tombstone now in the north rest stop of I-57 around the corner from Route 146.)

Patriotism permeated the society, and that made just being an American a special virtue to be enjoyed by us youngsters. I made a scrapbook of airplanes although I was not really interested in planes but it seemed patriotic. The main purpose of our two rival neighborhood clubs—the Busy Bees and the Junior Commandos—was to help win the war. We were on the alert and always on the lookout for German spies that we kept hearing about. (Both clubs together had only four regular kid members until we made up, united, and had a picnic with the Junior Commandos’ money contributed by adult friends.)

As the war continued, we outgrew the neighborhood clubs, and I became more aware of the sad side of the war. I knew the limitations of sugar, tire, and gas rationing,, but they were considered part of being patriotic and not sacrificial. I wrote notes to older cousins in service and knew my mother’s worry. I became aware of how many people went to the movies just in hopes of catching a glimpse of their son or brother in the news shorts, which were a part of every movie showing. A short story in The American Girl told of children in Holland having to hide out, and that story deeply affected me and helped me begin to understand that the war was terrible beyond the battlefields in other nations. I felt the grief for the loss of her husband by my cousin Kathleen, way out in California. By the time the war ended in 1945, I was going into the 7th grade and I had learned the horror of atom bombs and knew the world was changed with a threat that would never again allow tranquility even during times of peace.

Celebrating with Trent

The parking lot at Lincolnwood High School at Raymond, IL, was almost full when Gerald dropped me off closer to the door and he went looking for a vacant spot. Obviously graduation is a big deal in this community. As I entered the packed gymnasium, I remembered the heat associated with such programs in my distant past and realized I perhaps should have worn a cool summer dress.

I wondered how in the world we would find seats since bleachers on both sides seemed full and many people were milling around yet. However, Mary Ellen was standing and waving at us and had reserved seats waiting for us. Gerald, Brian, his mother, and I settled into the chairs on the gym floor marked “Taylor,” and I was quite comfortable for the evening. (Some things had come up for Sam, and he had not been able to go with us after all much to his disappointment.) I appreciated the school’s thoughtfulness with making such advance preparation for us.

Brian’s brother Steve and wife Salena and their three daughters—Jasmine, Kaitlin, and Larissa—had come downstate from Sycamore, Brian’s home town, and they had gotten there early enough to find seats on the bleachers. So Trent had a nice size cheering section for him.

Brianna was up front playing in the band. When the familiar “Pomp and Circumstance” started, I thought for a few moments that I might cry. Soon I was eagerly straining my head backwards to catch the first glimpse of Trent as he solemnly marched in but with a smile on his face. From then on, I was mostly happy, but the many tears I saw around us when graduates came to hand their parents a beautiful rose did make me cautious that I did not let them be contagious. Again Trent’s big smile as he gave up his rose to his parents and then hugged all of us one at a time made the joy replace the tears.

It had been so long since I had been to a graduation ceremony that I did not know kids now decorate their mortarboards, and many of these seniors did--including the three top students who gave short speeches. Although the traditionalist in me preferred the solid black caps, it was interesting to see the various designs on the top of their heads, which were most often symbols of colleges they intend to go to or a career they aspire to. One girl’s cap, which I was seeing through the crack of heads in front of me, was a dolphin. Is she heading to Florida? I thought one guy had a miniature football sewed on his cap and I assume he had been on the team. Unquestionably the most interesting and certainly them most noticeable was Trent’s friend Tim Marten, who had lights outlining the edge of his square.

Finally the formalities were over, the kids had received their fake diplomas, tassels had been pulled to the other side, and then the Class of 2011 had their way with hats high in the air and silly string flying everywhere. Trent was really smiling now and that smile lasted as he marched with his class back out of the gym.

It was still daylight outside after the service. Groups clustered around their particular graduate. An adorable red haired toddler had kicked off his shoes and was sunning barefoot in the grass. In the cool of the evening, I was glad I had not worn a summer dress because we took time there for a lot of picture taking of Trent with various groupings of his family members. The large grassy lawn was quite magnificent with many huge trees towering over us, and I commented that I bet not another school in Illinois had such an abundance of enormous trees.

No one had had time to eat before the ceremony. In fact, Brian and his mother had arrived up from Southern Illinois even later than we did because he was in the field down here planting until the last possible moment. I think we were all glad when Mary Ellen said the plan was for us all to drive to nearby Litchfield, where she and Brian treated the dozen of us to supper at Denny’s.When we headed for their house five miles in the country from Waggoner, Trent and Brianna went onto yet another one of the many graduation parties being held.

It was late enough that we all settled down quickly back at their house, which with its finished basement, can hold a large house party. Unfortunately, as life often typically slings at us, company in the house makes things break or causes plumbing to cease working properly. I am speaking from experience. So several were downstairs solving that problem while Gerald and I fell into our bed upstairs and were quickly asleep.

The next morning I slept in and hoped Mary and Brian had, but Brian was on the tractor mowing and May Ellen was already thawing out the many veggie dishes she had prepared for the day’s crowd. While some of the cousins were quickly into the swim pool outside the breakfast nook door, Gerald and I went with Mary Ellen to Litchfield to pick up ice, the special congratulatory cake and other supplies for the afternoon.

Later Brian and Steve were in Litchfield for some farm purpose, so Mary Ellen had them go by for the fried chicken she had ordered. The store told them that Mary’s order was for Sunday, not Saturday, and they came home empty handed. Mary Ellen said that by then with the previous night’s plumbing problems keeping them up to all hours, she simply decided to simply stay calm and not let it bother her although she knew she had ordered correctly.

She thought we’d just have a vegetarian meal. (Frankly, she had so many veggie dishes available that we would have eaten well without chicken.) But then the store called that another family named Taylor had ordered chicken for Sunday, and that her order was ready after all. So Brianna made yet another trip to Litchfield and carried in two huge boxes of wonderful smelling chicken. The feasting began, and other families and kids’ friends kept arriving. Trent was still smiling.

Everyone was eager for Tara and Bryan and their three boys to arrive from Aurora. Aidan, of course, was immediately in the pool with the teens. This was the first family gathering since Easter, and it was somewhat disconcerting to see how much baby Payton had grown up in that short amount of time. He was immediately attracted to Salena’s dog Alex and the Taylors’ Fifi. He was so gentle petting them over and over, and both shitzus were just as gentle with him in return. He still wants to be close to his mother, but he was ready to socialize and soon after arrival held his little arms up to Gerald. Before the day was over, he had so favored others of us, and he even let Gerald take him on a tractor ride in the plot behind the swimming pool although he kept his eyes on his mother watching him.

Maddux, our shy charmer who almost makes people swoon with his shy cutting of his eyes, had a big boy haircut and seemed a year older instead of four weeks older. His latest cuteness is keeping both hands on his hips probably in imitation of Woody or some cartoon character he watches. He still liked riding as much as always though anything with four wheels (all called “tractor”), and he had several men and teens ready and willing to provide him with rides.

Jeannie and Rick’s family arrived from Freeport, and Elijah and Cecelie joined the teen crowd. However, when our natural entertainer Leslie arrived from her long drive up from Nashville, TN, her siblings were eager to come in the living room to hear about her latest adventures including two new summer jobs—one decorating cakes at Kroger and the other as a health care performer who is going to lead children at various gatherings and parties. Evidently she auditioned at a regular event, and the two-year-olds stormed the stage trying to reach her, so she instantly got the job. She and Trent had to do a long standing tradition of some dance moves they perfected long ago at Vacation Bible School together and which Leslie dubbed “The Trent.” Les is always a happy addition to any crowd, and we all liked her excited anticipation of her senior year at Belmont living in her first apartment.

While the kids were mostly in the pool, we relaxed in the beautiful high ceiling living room and watched NCAA women’s softball regional tourneys, which Tara’s knowing comments made more interesting. (She has coached so many of the girls on Southern Force before their college days, so she had memories and anecdotes to share.) University of Georgia games weren’t televised, but Tara had kept up with them for us, and we knew before Trent’s graduation ceremony that they had won their first game. And by the time we were eating lunch yesterday afternoon, we knew they had won their second game, and that one more win today would give them a regional championship allowing them to host the super regional this coming weekend at Athens. (They did win today.)

The teens eventually piled into a car to head to a movie, and some of the men were busy with the plot behind the house. Others were swimming, while adults sat around the pool visiting. It was darkening, and Gerald and I realized it was past time we should be starting the long trek back to Southern Illinois. So we grabbed another piece of chicken to eat for our supper and shared with Fifi who had joined us on the concrete steps going down to poolside.

Reluctantly we made our goodbyes and were grateful when we back home safely to Woodsong in our own bed once more.

Spring Activities Keep Us Occupied

This week went by way too fast for me. Less scheduled than usual, so I would have thought it would have gone slowly. Ah well. I did get my INR and catch up on laundry, but I really can’t claim anything else done. Our irises are blooming beautifully, and I picked one bouquet, which had already turned ugly this morning except for three tall blooms I saved for a smaller vase. One thing I did do last night that I have been wanting to do for a long time. I read Tori Huftalin’s posts for the last three months in Haiti:
http://heartforhurting.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-love-until-it-hurts.html]
I was both inspired and awed at the work this beautiful young talented nurse is doing there taking care of malnourished and orphan babies—and doing it all with great joy. I had checked her blog once after the first entry, and she had not yet arrived and entered her first post from Haiti. She is home briefly right now as her blog originally explained, and when she goes back, it will be for a year. This morning I wrote a couple of bread and butter notes for last weekend, and I have started laying out clothes to put in the suitcase for this weekend.

Mary Ellen posted pictures of Trent as a toddler on Facebook this weekend, and I want to reach into the computer and hug that adorable little guy. How can he be walking across the stage as a grave old senior tonight? We’ll be going up this afternoon after we pick up grandson Sam to travel with us. (He graduates from 8th grade next Thursday night.)

Tomorrow Mary Ellen and Brian are throwing a come-and-go all afternoon party in Trent’s honor at their house from 2 to 8. It is supposed to be a poolside party, but with 70% chance of rain, we may be inside listening to ball games or playing charades. Brian’s mother flew in Wednesday for Trent’s baccalaureate and was up at the farm with Brian yesterday and today at the camper while he worked feverishly to continue spring planting.

Jeannie and Rick are coming down with Elijah and Cecelie for the Saturday celebration. Leslie is driving up from Nashville after getting settled in her new apartment and summer job there. She will be at Freeport with her family next week. Tara is coming down, I assume with her sons, although I don’t know that. She was once a summer live-in nanny for Trent and Brianna, so she feels especially close to her cousins.

University of Georgia is hosting the softball regionals at Athens, and they play Georgia State tonight. We’ll probably not learn that outcome until after the graduation. Gerry’s cousin DuWayne and his Vickie are on their way down to the game right now. When Gerry phoned his dad this morning, he already knew about his cousin Bryce’s son Lex hitting the winning home-run yesterday in Johnston City’s baseball regionals. Keeping up with everyone’s spring activities keeps the whole family occupied. Elijah’s high school graduation is next Sunday afternoon, and I am hoping we can get up there for that. We are hoping that Mary Ellen again gets to celebrate her birthday in Oklahoma City while the Women’s College Softball World Series is there. Sam is planning on going with her and his cousins if Georgia gets to go again.

The outline of my glasses with bruises on my face is beginning to dim, and I hope to look presentable for this weekend. I will definitely be looking down on any concrete pads I walk on.

Falling Flat on My Face

When I turned off of Route 39/51 and onto Route 20 going west to Freeport in northern Illinois, I was greeted with bright clusters of blooming redbud trees—something that had faded from our southern end of the state a month ago. Arriving at daughter Jeannie’s house, I saw Rick mowing the side yard. Their big lilac bush was blooming beautifully behind him. Then I opened the car door, and in between the driveway and the neighbor’s yard was a carpet of short green grass decorated with multitudes of tiny blooming violets. I had to hope that Rick did not mow that far, and because he didn’t, I was able to enjoy the violets all weekend.

Gerald was not feeling up to driving the long length of our state, but my desire to see grandson Elijah in his last high school theatrical performance gave me the courage to make the drive. (I am always nervous and unsure of myself when I leave the comfort and simplicity of driving familiar roads.)
When I got up the nerve to decide I was going, I threw clothes in a suitcase and carried outfits on hangers to lay in the back seat and head out for a road trip. I have been wanting to see my brother Jim and wife Vivian at Mattoon; and for years when I stopped to see them, I wished I had a little more time to run over to nearby Charleston and visit my childhood friend Shirley Karraker. I decided to treat myself to those two visits, which would make a nice break in the long trip up to Jeannie and Rick’s.

I left on Wednesday—later than I meant to, of course, since my last minute planning caused me to have a list of things I needed to do before I left the farm. Gerald was tied up with Erin, who had brought her dog Sadie over to stay while she went by bus to their conference tourney, and Gerald was to take her to the team bus and her car to her Uncle Louie’s who was going to fix her brakes while she was out of town. So despite my dislike for GPS gadgets and all the ugly things I have said about them—yes, there are some stories that caused that dislike—I decided I better drag the GPS out from under the seat and put my friend’s address in.

Gerald wasn’t home to help me, but anyhow I wanted to feel competent and independent enough to travel on my own. I thought surely I could figure out this ubiquitous 21st century guidance technology. However, the problem was that I could never figure out where to plug the thing in.

But what are cell phones for? I could call my friend when I reached Charleston and let her give me directions to the retirement condominium she and her husband had moved into shortly before his death a few years ago. (I had been to their other home, although I could not have remembered how to reach it either.)

Shirley was out to morning coffee with friends when I phoned that morning, but I talked to her daughter and the daughter thought there would be time for a visit before an evening appointment. Long before I reached Charleston, Shirley had called my cell and said that the directions to their new place were simple. I said I’d call when I got to town and let her direct me.

I arrived in Charleston in plenty of time for a long afternoon visit. However, I went into town a different way than I had thought I would when Shirley and I talked on the phone enroute. Thus, when I told her I had pulled into a shopping mall to phone her with my pencil and paper in hand, she thought I was further west than I was. (Or was it further east? I am directionally challenged.) Anyhow because I was not where she thought I was, when she said make a left turn, I should have made a right turn on to University Drive. There were a couple more confusing phone calls with her saying, “Sue, where are you?” and me saying, “I’m not sure.” But I did make it to her home, and once I did, I could see she was correct that the way there was simple.

Our visiting time was reduced, but we still had a good catch-up visit. I enjoyed this new place that exhibited so well Shirley’s decorating finesse just as their earlier family home had done. I can remember a time in high school when she wanted to be an interior decorator, and she certainly would have been good at it. But she was good in many things and became a chemistry major. Then came her housewifery years, but when her daughters were older and computers were new, she had headed up the computer lab at the university where Robert taught. She explained to me once that career was the reason she deliberately chose to have little to do with computers afterwards. She was bored before many of us had our first computer.

In retirement, she and Robert had always gone to way-down south Florida after Christmas each year where he relished the abundant bird life. (Some of the sleek birds this chemistry professor had carved were there in their new retirement home.) During the grandchildren’s spring break each year, their daughter in New Jersey would bring the children down to enjoy the Florida sun and sand before Shirley and Robert came back for the summer and fall and holidays at their Charleston home when they were not away on travels or Elderhostel activities. Shirley continues the Florida tradition, so I was able to hear about her new first-floor condominium there, which of course she had enjoyed decorating.

Reflecting on this more than 70-year friendship, I drove back to Mattoon to visit my brother, a retired school administrator, and my sister-in-law, a retired elementary teacher. An added bonus was having my niece Judi Jines there when I arrived. Judi has done considerable free lance writing, so I have always felt close to her. She has helped her daughter and son-in-law with their daughter Willow while they were at work. Jim and Vivian were chatting excitedly about Willow’s recent musical program to celebrate her moving from that building which houses only pre-school and kindergarten children and onto first grade. So I am eager for Judi to find time to freelance again, but we had so much to talk about that I failed to even mention that.

There was much anticipation of their other great grandchild’s second birthday party coming up, which was being held in conjunction with a graduation party for his parents, Sean and Payge Jones, both of whom just finished their bachelors at Eastern Illinois University, while holding down multiple part-time jobs. A beautiful hand-made quilt, which Vivian had just finished for him, was displayed on the sofa waiting to be wrapped for little Vincent Indiana Roland Jones, better known as “Indy.” Judi finally had to go, but we three talked until almost midnight knowing we’d sleep in the next morning although they had appointments and I would have to get on the road again.

In the guest bedroom, I enjoyed the framed baby photo of “Indy,” whose mature vocabulary I had heard about and which made me eager to meet him one of these days. Of course, I heard news about the other children and grandchildren also.

The next morning I enjoyed cereal with fresh strawberries and a choice of pumpkin, banana, or apple nut bread with the coffee Jim made for us. He and I visited while Vivian kept her appointment, and she came in as Jim had to leave, so we had our girl talk too before I needed to leave if I made it in time for Elijah’s play. I made it and even settled in before we had to leave for the Jeannette Lloyd Theater. I soon heard Cecelie in her bedroom practicing her violin, and I enjoyed that all weekend, but I knew not to ask for a performance.

A deer head on the wall above the fireplace was spotlighted when we entered the theater and found our seats after collecting the tickets Jeannie’s friend Jean Kimpel had picked up for us. . A stuffed turkey and a scary looking bear skin rug with the huge bear head intact made us know we were in a hunting lodge. Elijah was playing Charley Baker in Larry Shue’s The Foreigner, and we did not have to be told he was pathologically shy when he fearfully entered the lodge behind his old army buddy Froggy LeSueur.

Froggy had brought him over from London, to give Charley a respite from his hospital duties attending to his dying wife. Froggy knew the talkative warn-hearted widow running the lodge, a long and dear friend, would take good care of Charley while Froggy fulfilled his assignment teaching explosive devices to men on a nearby army base there in Tilghman County, Georgia. He had not anticipated that Charley, his former army officer, had become so painfully fearful of ordinary conversation after twelve years as a magazine proofreader that he became panicky when it was time for Froggy to leave.

To solve the problem, Froggy told the widow, who wished she had traveled the world like he had, that Charley was a foreigner who could not talk English. The widow was thrilled with this exotic guest and intuitively believed the louder she yelled, the more likely the foreigner might understand her. This ruse seemed unethical to Charley but before he had a chance to tell the widow this was all a mistake, he overheard various private conversations of other lodge residents and only having the widow explain that he had not been able to know what they said saved Charley from their fury.

The predicament provided one hilariously funny episode after another because these kids under Tim Conners’ direction are marvelously talented. All six of the play’s characters were main characters, and all six had the ability to take an audience with them wherever the improbable script took them. We were sad, happy, shocked, and most often laughing with these performers just as they wished. When the Klu Klux Klan entered, we were even afraid just as the late playwright Larry Shue wanted us to be.

But even that scene too soon became hysterically humorous as Charley put the bear skin rug on and scared them away with made-up sorcery. The sweet-talking fiancé of the beautiful young woman, who had just inherited big money, was revealed as the evil plotter he was and ordered away. Charley, whose wife in far-off London managed to get up off her death bed and wire him of her latest and 24th dalliance explaining she had run off with the hospital proctologist. Charley got the beautiful girl, the widow’s lodge was saved from the scheming fiancé and building inspector and everything ended hunky dory except our sides hurting from laughing. We knew that Charley’s extreme shyness had been cured.

My desire was to be able to attend all three nights of the production, seeing the difference in audiences’ reactions, hearing the funny lines that I didn’t catch the first or second night, and watching the cast grow increasingly adept with both the slapstick and the subtle character development.

On Friday afternoon after a long week of her very difficult teaching schedule in different classrooms at different schools, Jeannie learned at 4:30 that Elijah was planning a cast party at their house after that night’s performance. Rick was away coaching at the sectional track meet, so there was no parental help there. Jeannie pulled it off with amazing ease, however, after feeding us homemade potato soup. She hurriedly made her signature chocolate chip brownies (chocolate chip recipe spread in a pan and baked to just the right gooeyness) to go with other store bought cookies, everyone’s favorite burger/cheese, salsa dip in a crock pot for chips, iced-down colas, and a generous order of pizza delivered to the house after the play.

We hurried off to the play where we were to meet Jeannie’s mother-in-law and her special friend who always drive over from Rick’s hometown for the grandkids’ plays. We were almost to the door dashing through the rain when somehow one minute I was walking uprightly and the next minute after stubbing a toe, my nose was down on the concrete, my glasses thrown off ahead of me and my Birks somewhere behind me.

Jeannie looked around and saw me lying on the concrete and was horrified. Seeing and hearing her fear, I was quick to assure her I was okay. I knew I wasn’t exactly okay with a slightly bleeding forehead and skinned nose, but I also thought except for the breath knocked out of me that I was probably okay and that was what she needed to hear.

Jeannie said with relief, “Oh, here is Dr. _____...” (I never did get that name, but hearing that felt good.) Immediately a man and woman were hovering over me along with Jeannie, retrieving my glasses that fortunately did not break, helped me upright, and put the shoes back on my feet. (Jeannie blamed the Birks and she may be right about that although I have worn them for years because of nerve damage in my foot and I have never fallen with them before.)

When the woman asked me if I had hit my head, I was still addled enough to say no despite the skinned place on my forehead. It was only while Jeannie and I talked and watched television in my bedroom that night while the cast laughed and enjoyed the living room that I learned the man and woman were not a couple but two individuals who just happened there at the same time. And the woman was the doctor--revealing my own sexism that I had assumed the sweet caring man was.

Jeannie provided me with antibiotic cream and tried to give me something for pain—but as long as I did not touch my nose, I had no pain whatsoever. I slept very good when Jeannie left to put up food and hang around until the last guest left. They were still laughing in the living room when I drifted off around midnight. Cecelie and her over-night friend were playing music and giggling in their bedroom.

Saturday was restful with late sleeping in for everyone. At noon it was off to Jeannie’s friend Jean Kimpel’s RN pinning at Highland Community College. We picked up their mutual friend Diane, and after the pinning, they presented her with a beautiful bouquet Jeannie had acquired that morning from her favorite florist. (Watching her skillful work is an artistic treat Jeannie gives herself.) Jean’s daughter Lauren was the comical widow in the play and she along with the beautiful girl were Elijah’s leading ladies. That afternoon Elijah went after the other two lovely bouquets Jeannie had ordered since his tradition was to give flowers to his leading lady and in this play there were two equally important cast members.

Rick took us all out to dinner except Elijah who was already at the theater long before that. Again it was raining lightly and we hurried in, but I watched that I did not fall flat on my face a second time. Cecelie looked very pretty carrying the two bouquets in to the theater for Elijah. Once again I had a great time watching the show with perhaps the most enthusiastic audience yet.

The final handclapping and standing ovation ended and the audience dispersed. In addition to the relief and great happiness that the play had been successful and that six weeks’ work was over, it was sad as always back stage after the final performance—especially so for the seniors. I heard sadness too in Tim Conners’ voice as he walked among the cast and said his last speeches to these very special kids he has worked with for four years. After the hugging, visiting, and flower presentations were over in the hallway back stage, the cast traditionally goes back on stage for cast pictures, and we watched that too before separating with Elijah going to the Saturday night’s cast party.

Again on Sunday we slept late. In fact, I slept so late that Jeannie had to wake me and I did not have time to pack my car trunk as I had planned to do before church. I’d told them the night before that I’d like to leave immediately after worship so that I could be on the road and use the lunch time as a break from driving since I was planning on driving home without stopping over night at my brother’s or Mary Ellen’s as I did last year.

By now my face is not only skinned, but quite discolored with bruises. The outline of my glasses, which evidently only flew off after I hit the concrete, is etched on my face with bruising under my eyes and across my nose. Maybe by tomorrow, I can cover it up with enough makeup that I won’t get the sympathy that my face now inspires. I will miss that.

Flowers and Flooding

The doorbell ringing yesterday morning started my Mother’s Day early since the local flower shop in our village was delivering me not one but two bouquets. One lovely multi-flowered one in a unique square-shaped vase with clear glass outside and wine inside is now on the dining room table for me to enjoy each time I pass, which I do several times a day. (Since the wine will also look beautiful in our living room, I expect I will be filling that vase with flowers for years to come.) That was from Katherine, David, and Sam.

The gorgeous dozen red roses were from my husband, and they were placed in the living room where I also pass each time on the way to the kitchen in our very open upstairs. By the time I walk by the two bouquets, I am brimming with joy because of their beauty and the love they represent.

The owner of the flower shop was in high school with my two older kids, and knowing LaRonda created the arrangements make them even more special to me. She is very talented, and she and her sister Melody, who has opened a restaurant, have begun a business renaissance in our village. Cards, phone calls, and Facebook messages completed my continued celebration today.

Just as joy-bringing were reports on the grandkids’ lives. We have two high school senior grandsons this year—one living in the middle of our state and one about as far north as you can go without crossing into Wisconsin. Knowing they both had successful proms last night was happy news. Next will come the photos. And Sam’s eighth grade band did great at super state in Champaign on Friday, and I will be checking his friends’ photos of that trip on Facebook too.

While the instant communication with loved ones is one of the many blessings in today’s world, the knowledge of all the suffering around us keeps us aware that life can be very difficult and many people are in sorrow or trouble at any given moment in time.

Shortly after the doorbell rang yesterday with the flowers, a phone call came from our pastor A fellow pastor in our community was sending out an invitation to collect food this morning for flood refugees in our town—with the admonition that these people had only a microwave to prepare food in—no fridge or stove. Evidently the facilities with food being supplied or with better kitchens are now full.

So we made a stop on the way home from Southern Illinois University Carbondale softball double header and tried to thoughtfully figure out a variety of non-perishables. With everyone’s contributions this morning, our pastor had a job to take all of them to add to the other offerings from our community’s congregations. Yet I am sure there are tremendous needs all our area not being met.

We were shopping for the refugees next door to the empty parking lot where a tent city is now set up with a row of outdoor latrines. These state-of-the-art tents were extremely roomy and neat looking, and, as I understand it, are for the National Guard and other volunteers who are down at this end of the state helping with sandbagging and other rescue efforts. The explosions of the levee at Bird’s Point, MO, saved the levee at Cairo, and water levels here are going down. Yet the citizens there and in many small towns all over our area are still kept out. Water systems are not functioning, and many homes, cars, and fields are flooded. Now the mighty Mississippi River is headed to Memphis and further south, so all those people are frantically preparing for the floods as people here try to recover from them.

SIUC split yesterday’s double header with Drake, and we got there to see the end of the first game and the entire second game, which we won. Before we went, we’d taken time to watch the video taping of senior day for the University of Georgia’s softball team. Georgia had lost to Mississippi State on Friday night, but it won yesterday and again today, and we enjoyed watching today’s game and the homeruns in Gerald’s office as we ate lunch sandwiches.

I’d planned to surprise myself and get this blog written and posted before we went to evening services at Katherine’s church. But I was pleasantly interrupted by a visit from granddaughter Erin who had somehow found time after today’s game to come over and see her Gma Shirley and me. Now as I finish this blog, I also have a beautiful dozen white roses in my living room. Knowing Erin has to leave with the team Wednesday morning for the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament at Springfield, MO, makes the roses even more appreciated. And with all the attention I’ve received today, I feel appreciated too.

Face Tag and Dixie Barbecue

Smokey sweet smells of barbecue greeted us when Gerald and I stepped out of his pickup at Dixie Barbecue just west of the Jonesboro Square. Dixie Barbecue is locally famous and it has fans of former residents all over the country who deem a visit to Dixie a necessary part of any trip back home. It opens at 10 in the morning, and it is soon filled with retired men gathering to discuss the day’s affairs and exchange banter and reminisces.

I’m a late sleeper, so I was still at the breakfast table drinking my second cup of coffee and absorbing the news as I simultaneously read the Southern Illinoisan and listened to CNN when Gerald came in from his shop and suggested we go to Union County to meet up with his brothers and the coffee drinkers at the Dixie. Then we could go on down to see the river overflow from the Mississippi.

His knees and back were objecting to the long day he put in on the concrete floor out at the shop yesterday trying out his new log splitter. He achieved a woodpile for his new heating stove, and he was having so much fun that he wanted to keep at it today, but decided that would not be a very smart thing to do. He knew if he stayed at the farm, he’d spend the day out there again so he decided on a drive to the Bottoms. So faced with the choice of doing the housework I ought to do or to run around with him, I chose to tag along to the Dixie.

I hurried and got ready so we would arrive not too much after the place opened. I knew I’d see my as my brothers-in-law Garry and Keith, who would be taking a break from their morning’s work. Like Gerald, they are early risers. I also knew I would see my buddy Harlan.

Harlan is the youngest of the six Coffman boys who lived in our neighborhood behind the school house on a small farm. I remember when Harlan was born. I woke up one day and my mother was not in the house—perhaps for the first time in my young life. My sister Rosemary or my daddy or someone explained that Mother had gone down to her friend Zella Coffman’s house to help her with a new baby.

The Coffman family was entwined in many of my childhood memories. All the neighborhood kids gathered in their front yard to play Kick the Can. There were week-long Monopoly games in the summers and wonderful games of Sorry in their living room when the boys got that game one Christmas. Their family took the daily St. Louis Post-Dispatch and we took the Globe-Democrat, so every Sunday we kids exchanged the two papers so that we could read the two sets of colored funnies and I assume our parents the editorials.

My brother Jim and the Coffman boys had marvelous adventures together, it seemed to me. I can remember going to sleep with the night-time sounds coming in my open window of a game the older kids played called Barbaree Lost Trail as one group hunted for another group by hollering that phrase back and forth. Jim and the Coffman boys built a telephone out of tin cans and wire out in their barn. Jim kept his horse Tony that he rode up from Goreville in their pasture. Since Harlan and I were the youngest of both families and not always welcome in the older kids’ activities, we hung together.

At some point in our lives, we started playing Face Tag. When our mothers would call us to supper or our time together was over, we would each try to be the last one to see the other’s face and yell triumphantly, “Face Tag!!” We played it for years in our neighborhood and after evening church services at the Baptist church. While the adults visited in the evening after church, we would run in and out hiding behind the parked cars along the street trying to be the last one to see the other. Then being about five years older, I left Jonesboro and went off to college. Harlan played great basketball for Anna-Jonesboro and then went on with a scholarship to play college ball in New Mexico.

When Harlan and Carmen moved back to Union County after his career in the FBI, he became the county sheriff and I would see his name in area newspapers often. Finally we all retired and we began to see one another occasionally, and the game of Face Tag resumed. I knew I would be at risk today, but planned as we drove down that I must be alert at leaving time.

By the time Garry and Keith arrived, there were probably a dozen guys at pushed together tables, and Harlan was at the first table quite away from us although we spoke when we came in. We had been there quite awhile when a waitress came to our third table and handed me a neat white sack. Inside was a saran wrapped pack of sliced pork and a cup of Dixie’s sauce. I waved my thanks to Harlan because I knew who had sent it.

Quite awhile later, the first table began breaking up. I was really expecting Harlan to come back and sit down at our table and was slow to realize he was leaving, and of course he won our Face Tag game. I was left holding the bag and knowing I had lost.

We went on down to the Bottoms and gasped at the fields flooded from the recent rains which cannot run off into the already full nearby river. We drove around Gerald’s old Wolf Lake High School building now vacant and surrounded by the sprawling Schaefer enterprises that engulfs the village with its enormous inventory of huge machinery parts spread out on every inch of ground available—something you have to see to believe and as ugly as anything can be if you are not a machinery buff. Nevertheless, an impressive sight to know that people all over the world through the Internet find the part they need in that small village. Boys were riding bikes through the village streets among the houses crowded by the metal carcasses of dismembered machinery since Shawnee schools were called off with so many roads closed by flood waters.

It was now past noon. And we spotted one of the few remaining businesses in the town—a very small restaurant with a sign saying they served lunch. I love to go to non-chain eateries, but I have gotten us into some real dumps a few times—some dirty and a couple where we really weren’t sure we were safe as locals eyed us. But I like being in the midst of the hometown people who know where the coffee pot is and are at ease walking into the kitchen to visit with the cook. This clean Rendleman restaurant proved to be a winner filled with men in jeans who had either been sandbagging or perhaps dismantling heavy equipment for the Schaeffer business.

Despite its small size, there was a drive-up window where people who had ordered ahead could collect their food. With pennants of school colors, patriotic decorations, a couple of retired high school sports uniforms on the wall, and plenty of Cardinal paraphernalia, local sentiments were aptly expressed. The large folding tables had metal folding chairs saying they belonged to the Wolf Lake community center down the street.

Without much thought, I ordered a hamburger. The lone waitress-cook who worked at a fast pace with a pleasant expression despite no time for chitchat during this rush hour delivered us the biggest hamburger I think I have ever seen. It had taken a long time to be delivered, but I understood why when I saw the size of that patty cooked well done and leaving no fear of food poisoning. With onion, pickle, lettuce, and tomato on top of this humungous piece of beef, our mouths could not widen enough to encompass the meal on a bun and we had to start out nibbling the edges.

Next we drove up into the Pine Hills, a part of the Shawnee National Forest that is found throughout our river region. The narrow well-kept graveled road wound ever upward through magnificent tall trees as we looked down on the tree-filled leafy ravines on one and sometimes both sides of us. The green was encompassing until we came to the Lower Magee lookout past the Magee campground area.

We pulled off to look at the flood-filled LaRue scatters below and the Muddy River and the Mississippi River beyond. We went on to stop at Crooked Tree lookout and Horse Saddle lookout with their astonishing displays of the swamp lands below filled with the overflow. We watched the tiny cars going up Route 3 and the train on the track beside the highway all protected by the levee systems with roads on top of them.

We avoided the poison ivy ground cover but enjoyed the patches of violets (only one bloom that I saw) and the May Flowers with pristine white blossoms hanging beneath the bright green leaves. There were a few other small wild flowers I don’t know the name of. The only time we met anyone was fortunately at one of the wider lookout areas. The lady was talking on the phone and her large German shepherd was in back looking over the cab of her pickup obviously enjoying the forest sights and birdsong as much as we were. We went back down to Route 3 and traveled through Grand Tower and then on through Murphysboro and Carbondale and finally to Marion, where we split the grocery list and gathered what we needed for the coming month since seniors get a discount on this first Wednesday each month.

Erin, her dog Sadie, and a friend had been over fishing at Woodsong yesterday, and she came back tonight to get a load of clothes out of the drier she’d left. She got to enjoy one of Harlan’s Dixie barbecues with us at the supper table. Afterwards she listened and watched the Texas A&M softball game against Texas on Game Tracker with Gerald despite her disappointment that our part of the nation chose the Cardinal game on television instead of the softball game close to her heart. Since A&M won, there was quite a bit of hollering at Woodsong and she left a happy granddaughter when it was over. I’m still pouting a bit that I lost at Face Tag, but my sister phoned me tonight, and all in all, it has been a good day.

Two Days at Dixon Springs and Tough Times in America

Rain has finally stopped, but more is expected. Large areas of Southern Illinois are inundated. People in Cairo, at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, have been told to evacuate by midnight tonight. Floodwalls there were built to protect against a 64 foot water level, and the river is likely to reach over 60 feet tomorrow. The long period of stress there, however, creates danger of the levees breaking. Our state is holding our breath that this historic town with close to 3,000 citizens will not be flooded.

Meanwhile, two barges with 265 tons of explosives are waiting to possibly break a two-mile stretch of the levee at Bird’s Point, Missouri, if the Army Corps of Engineers deems it necessary to save Cairo. If this happens, 130,000 acres of prime farm land may be flooded making the land unusable for perhaps as long as a decade. I have read estimates of from 75-l00 homes in this area. I am holding my breath for these people also.

A lawsuit was settled quickly when Missouri tried to block Army Corps of Engineer plans. The federal judge in Cape Girardeau ruled in favor of the Corps of Engineers, who have been given responsibility and authority by Congress to make such decisions.

Sandbagging has been going on in many areas of our state including Union County, where Gerald and I grew up. Although Tuesday and Wednesday had to be cancelled, we did get to have the last two days of Stewardship Week at the Dixon Springs Agriculture Center, where school children come in for the day and experience the out-of-doors walking from station to station and learning about many environmental and nature topics.

Despite the fact that their home in Karnak had to have its water shut off in these unpleasant times, Scott Morris, who became interested in Indian languages when he was just 15, kept his commitment to help me at our Trail of Tears station. He taught the children some Cherokee words and sang “Amazing Grace” in Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek. When Scott told how Cherokee boys used blowguns to help obtain game for the family table, we saw some little boys’ eyes light up.

Today’s kids are so well behaved and polite (thanks to conscientious teachers whom we heard reminding the kids before they came into our station), and it is a joy to share history and information with them.

We were in a tent this year, and the ground inside stayed muddy—very muddy. I brought an old piece of carpet the second day to put down after I had a shoe stick in the mud on Thursday. Teachers had advised kids to wear boots if they had them, and many did. I cleaned a great deal of mud off two pairs of Birks first thing this morning —but I noticed after they dried, that I still need to give them a second cleaning.

I am not about to complain, however, knowing how many people in our area are suffering and that a large part of the southern states are devastated by tornadoes. It was interesting on Facebook, that one young woman from our community, was serving as“information center” with her daughter and friend at Tuscaloosa where there was, of course, no electricity or land line phones. She was watching damage and weather reports on the web and sending the information down to them. Somehow she and they were able to text each other on one phone (not the other) during the scary ordeal when the friend’s parents were missing. (They were safe.)

It has been a difficult week for so many people, and I am glad it is over. I told the kids at our Trail of Tears station about the Cherokee kids who were their ages and walked a 1,000 miles under terrible weather conditions. Those Cherokee kids proved that humans can do tough things if they have to, and I tried to impress on these school children that they too can do tough things if they are required to do so. I wish I were not hearing thunder right now.

An Easter to Remember

A co-worker with the preschoolers yesterday during the morning worship service asked me how many were at our house. I went blank and realized I had no idea. People were coming and going, so I really could not keep up with them.

Since Tara had phoned Thursday night that they and the three little boys would be leaving Aurora soon and would arrive around 2 a.m., I decided to follow her instructions to go on to bed and not wait up. I was almost in bed shortly after midnight and heard people in the house and was confused since I knew the Archibalds could not have gotten here that quickly. When I saw the edge of a blond head, I thought maybe Leslie had arrived, but it was Brianna and also Trent. Their dad had brought down their new camper and was sleeping in it outside although it was not completely set up yet.

When I woke up the next morning, not only were the Archibalds there, but Vickie and Geri Ann had also arrived and had picked up Leslie at Nashville. Jeannie, Elijah, and Cecelie had come in also around 3 a.m. Everyone has to take responsibility to find a couch and linens when the bedrooms ran out.

Jeannie although sleepy was ready to go biking if the weather had cooperated. She and Leslie went shopping instead. Afterwards, they ran by to pick up Sam, who wanted to get out here with the other cousins, and David had Leslie bring Sam to the farm in David’s car so the teens had an extra car.

There was a softball double header on Friday at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, so several were headed over there. Jeannie went with her dad, and after the game, she helped him finish up the last-minute grocery shopping for me. When the teenagers took off for the Dairy Queen in Marion, little Aidan who had stayed behind just to play with them, might have been upset. But Leslie put aside her home-work book and entertained him so well that he did not miss them. After all, he had an exclusive date with a beautiful blond giving him all her attention.

After rain cancelled the Saturday noon game, two groups had left to shop and/or meet other relatives, and I realized as we sat down for lunch that there were nine of us at a table that only sits eight. Gerald went downstairs to listen to Georgia’s game at Fayetteville, Arkansas. That game series was keeping Gerry away from Woodsong, and a track meet in Freeport prevented Rick from being able to join us.

Brian had gone back to Springfield area on Friday, and he and Mary Ellen came down late that night travelling through terrible storms—Brian with a trailer of farm equipment behind his pickup and Mary following in their car. (The plan was for Brian to plant this week and to stay down until he finished, but the continuing storms made that impossible.)

Because everyone had to leave Sunday afternoon to get back to school and work the next morning, Gma Shirley (Vickie’s mother and that set of grandkids’ other grandmother) was kind enough to have the Johnson family Easter celebration on Saturday night.

It was a full weekend and lots of fun and with some scary moments as well. We thought one of the visiting dogs had run off after two stray dogs in the storm when searches could not find her--actually she had crawled back in her bed after hiding from us. Aidan woke up with pain sobbing on Saturday night and told his mother his jaw hurt. Very bad. This is a child with a very high pain tolerance and who never complains even when seriously hurt. It was after midnight when Tara drove to town to get Tylenol for him and much later when he finally got back to sleep. By the next morning, he was no longer in pain, and we all relaxed and assumed it was perhaps a tooth coming in.

Gerald was kept busy giving Maddux tractor and boat rides. Payton, who is in a clinging-to-his-parents phase, made Gerald’s holiday by putting out his arms and going outside with him and riding the tractor also. Although just not quite five, Aidan is already blending in with the older teen cousins, and they are great to include him in their activities. The teenagers died the eggs and decorated the Easter bunny cake this year. I’d boiled extra eggs to make deviled ones since I know Erin especially likes them. Jeannie made those eggs for us Sunday morning before church. Leslie and Elijah sang for our village church’s morning service although none of us made it to the sunrise service. Somehow Mary Ellen and Brian arrived home from church before the rest of us and turned down the oven and saved the ham, dressing, and scalloped potatoes before they burned. Mary Ellen’s made the green bean casserole and fixed her store-bought corn casserole (not as good as her own) and the mac and cheese casserole for the kids (that we all liked) in the oven in the camper.

I think by now you understand why I did not know how many were at our house. But there were twenty-one for Easter dinner. Vickie and Geri Ann had taken Vickie’s mother and gone to her brothers’ church at Stonefort, so she brought Gma Shirley to our house to extend their visit with her just a bit. Erin, of course, had been coming and going after the Saturday game was cancelled and she had Easter surprises for her three nephews. David and Katherine were finally able to come out despite the rainy weather, which of course made placing her in the van more difficult, and despite a cancellation of an aide to help that morning. She and Shirley are special friends and were happy to be together. We were able to sing “Happy Birthday” to Katherine since her birthday is tomorrow. They were on their way to another family dinner with David’s family, so Elijah drove their car loaned to the teens back to the Cedar house in town as the Eilers left for Freeport.

We won’t forget this weekend, but neither will the many in our river region called “The Land Between the Rivers.” Although our lake has never been higher and is running steadily out the emergency overflow pipe, we are on a hill and have no danger of the house ever flooding. Yesterday was very frightening, however, for many in the Ohio and Mississippi River bottoms as the rivers rose. Some highways are closed, and the flooding has started. I am praying that levees don’t break. I was supposed to tell the story of the Trail of Tears to school children this week at the Forest Service Stewardship Week in the Dixon Springs area. This is an outdoor event. The first two days have been called off, and I expect Thursday and Friday will be also. Ten inches of rain down there in seven days has the ground saturated and some areas closed, and heavier rains are predicted.

Gerald had an eye appointment this morning, but I was able to go to a neighbor’s funeral held in Carterville. We have known this farmer’s four sons ever since we moved here, and then watched as these boys grew up and married. Now we know most or the grandchildren and some of the great grandchildren. His wife Mary died a year ago after 64 years of marriage. It was raining again as we left the funeral home. Although a beautiful sunshiny day for a funeral is helpful, I always think that nature is weeping with a family when the rains come.

After the funeral, family and friend were going back to the G. B. Morris home for a final dinner there in a now empty house filled with memories and the vibrations of years of family gatherings. A house where grandchildren and visiting neighbors were always welcome. For the past decade, the sons and their wives have kept careful watch and finally a constant vigil as the two parents grew progressively weaker and incapacitated with numerous serious health problems.

Three sons live in houses on land on the farm and one son lives in nearby Marion. Often twenty-four seven care was needed, and these families supplied it by taking turns when hired help was not available and by coordinating and cooperating with the outside help when it was. The sons’ wives have had care responsibilities with their own families during all their time as well. It has been a challenging and demanding responsibility for the four couples as they have lived through their own health problems and surgeries and with their own growing families.

As someone from down the road a ways and only vaguely aware of all the illnesses, problems, and stress they have endured, I am inspired by their faithfulness in dealing with the pain and suffering even as they rejoiced over all the good things and the good example that their father and mother provided them.

Bouncing Between the Past and the Present

When I first read that this year’s annual Illinois State Historical Society Symposium was to be at nearby Southern Illinois University Carbondale, I knew I wanted to attend. Before I found the misplaced newsletter with registration form and wrote my check, emails began arriving saying that SIUC alumni and students could attend free, so I phoned in my registration as directed and prayed nothing prevented me from enjoying this rare opportunity. Amazingly, I was able to attend all three days.

One of the attractions for me was the subject of this year’s Symposium: “Sacred Oaths, Shallow Graves: Illinois in the Civil War, Part 1.” There are many mysteries among the veterans of that long-ago war which took the lives of over 600,000 and some experts say perhaps 700,000. I have many questions about the service of my great grandfather in the infamous 109th and also about the death of his baby brother who supposedly died at Andersonville. Nine Martin cousins volunteered for the Union army despite their Tennessee roots.

Any time you explore a topic, the information needed immediately broadens, and so presentations included slave spirituals,the Metropolis ship building industry, use of archives, our Mound City National Cemetery, life stories of individual soldiers whose lives became examples of many more, various ethnic groups in the Civil War, free black settlements in pre-Civil War days, emancipation Baptists, Oberlin’s anti-slavery agents, and on and on so that it was terribly difficult to have to select which break-out sessions to attend. I wanted to go to them all. The credentials of the presenters were impressive and their broad knowledge very rewarding in terms of how much one could learn in such a limited time.

There are always off-topic offerings too and I especially enjoyed Kara Allison’s report on “Chicago Convention 1968” when she was one of a panel of three students from Milliken University. The other two panelists spoke on Camp Douglas in Chicago, and women, slaves, and Indians in French Illinois, which I missed part of by arriving late. I always want young people to study history, so I was delighted this professor engaged his students for this fine presentation. The three young women fared very well in comparison to the majority of presenters who were recognized history scholars—both academic and independent scholars.

On Thursday, I wanted to hang and talk briefly with Ron Nelson, whose research is fresh and will be seminal for future abolitionist scholars. But he was surrounded before I could get to him. It was five o’clock and I needed to get home for grandson Sam’s 14th birthday surprise party. I stopped by Katherine’s to leave our card and money gift hoping this would throw Sam off a bit. I was also checking to see if Katherine needed me to help set up at the scheduled restaurant, but she had everything under control and urged me to go on to Woodsong, so that Gerald and I could come back to town together.

With fresh lipstick and a quick brushing of my hair, we were soon back at Mackie’s Pizza where a delightful fireplace area was reserved for Sam and his young teenage friends.

David had taken Sam and his neighbor friend Josh out to buy Sam new shoes for his birthday, and then the plan was to meet Katherine at Mackey’s. Since Josh and Sam frequently go out with each other’s families, this seemed normal to both boys—neither of whom knew about the party. (Katherine did not want Josh to have to try not to leak the surprise.)

A few balloons tied to a sports bag, crepe paper streamers and the carried-in birthday cake all in University of Tennessee orange increased the festive feel of the attractive area. (Since our grandson-in-law was one of the SIUC architecture students who participated in planning and decorating Mackey’s, our family feels pride in the pleasant results of their class project.)

A table-full of his friends were there to greet Sam and yell, “Surprise!” and soon they were digging into the cheese sticks and pizza. Both sets of his grandparents were there, and we went through the annual amazement at how our grandson had grown. Food and pitchers of cola were laid out by the fireplace in buffet style and a salad served in a huge lovely glass serving dish was absolutely delicious. Sam’s youth minister and family came, and one of the kids’ mother worked very hard handing out plates of pizza and drinks while the kids cavorted, laughed, took cell phone pix, and generally enjoyed themselves.

We adults were all sitting in booths surrounding these junior high students at the center table, and it was fun to see how comfortable they were with each other. These youngsters are very close, and I am sure last weekend’s 8th grade band trip to the Chicago Heritage contest, where they did very well, contributed to their obvious affection for one another.

I hurried to bed afterwards, so I could be up to drive to Carbondale for the second day of the Symposium. And Friday night I did the same although I mentally started planning for our weekend trip to our grandchildren’s home in mid-Illinois about 30 miles south of Springfield. Brianna, a sophomore at Lincolnwood High at Raymond, was participating in their school musical Oz. I missed their play last year with Brianna and Trent, and I was determined to be there this year for this adaptation of the famous story.

A dark cloud followed me from Smalls Store to the farm Friday evening. I’d bought sandwich fixings for our supper because we were going to be in Gerald’s office listening to Georgia play softball against Ole Miss. I had just reached our garage when three or four hail stones hit the top of our car and many more banged on the concrete garage floor with deafening noise before I could get the door closed. Hail was huge and lasted long, but the only damage we think was a torn screen door out to the deck.

Gerald reported after his Saturday morning walk down the lane to get the paper that it had turned cold. I was so tempted to hunker down and stay home, but I really did want to hear the Saturday morning presentations at the Symposium. I was glad I did, and we finished packing, listened to Georgia softball again, and took off in time (barely) to reach Mary Ellen and Brian’s country home out from the little town of Waggoner (population: 200) and ride over bumpy rural roads to the musical.

The kids in their high school at Raymond (with around 250 students) showed an abundance of talent with their singing and dancing as well as acting. Their music and drama teacher has been there for four or five years and done a good job doing a play one year and a musical the next. She was emotional as she said goodbye to the seniors who were in their last production, and I knew her affection and passion had influenced these students to willingly share their talents.

Gerald was amazed at the scarecrow who stood stock still and unblinking for probably 10 minutes or more before Dorothy freed her from the wooden post holding her. We loved the cowardly lion and tin man and, of course, sweet Dorothy and all their solos. And as Brian said, the girl playing Toto never missed a line: Arf arf! There was also a wall display in the auditorium by the art class, and we were pleased to see Bri and Trent’s work as well as the other students’. It was so good to have the rare treat of seeing these two grandkids in their high school milieu with friends we have heard about.

Mary Ellen had sloppy Joes and fresh banana bread waiting for us to indulge in before and after the musical. And Trent had the Apollo movie set up and ready for us to watch on the big screen in the living room after we’d had table time after the show.

I slept late this morning even though I heard Gerald visiting with Mary and Brian downstairs and would sleepily think it might be nice to be downstairs with them before I turned over for more sleep. But I joined them for Mary Ellen’s good breakfast. The exhausted kids were still sleeping, but we adults were able to get to l0:15 worship at their church in Raymond and had a wonderful lunch at the very attractive buffet where locals gather at a scenic motel.

One of the interesting aspects of this park-like place was a large steam boat replica sitting in a small pond, and we enjoyed that view and the rest of the scenery out the generous windows as we ate and had out final visit. (Mary Ellen told us that this was the site for a gathering of college friends for someone’s wedding. Mary Ellen was singing at the wedding and she was concentrating on preparing. Neverthelss, she and Brian, who had dated in college, did have some time for visiting and updating their friendship while there before he went back upstate and she went back to Tennessee. When they moved here two years ago, she realized that this was the town and the motel for that long-ago wedding gathering. I thought that was very romantic.)

After our drive home with lovely weather observing folks fishing in the bar pits along the highway, it was good to learn SIUC Salukis had swept Indiana State and that Georgia had swept Old Miss. Georgia Coach Lu Harris-Champer had earned her 750th win during her 15-year collegiate career as a head coach.

Now the Dogwood

The redbud are dropping off their pinkish blooms and are greening for the rest of spring and summer. Meanwhile the flowering white dogwood has come into its own and has decorated lawns and the roadside woods. Gerald’s tulips have replaced the hyacinth, and the iris bed is getting ready to strut its stuff. A large circle of mayflowers in a neighbor’s meadow promises that soon there will be a white flower beneath those green umbrellas. People have been bouncing between turning on their heat and then the air conditioner. Today it was likely to be air on. Schedules are full with end-of-school plays and concerts, graduation events, and bridal and baby showers postponed for pleasant weather. For many of us, softball and baseball games keep us busy.

My friend Marilyn Schild and I exchanged notes on our Christmas cards that we must get together for lunch as soon as the Christmas rush was over. It seems to me that we’ve not really had much slow time since even though winter is usually a breather before spring. So finally on Monday, Marilyn and I met up for lunch. Usually we meet at a Mexican place in Marion, but I had been wishing to try to the new bed and breakfast in town that serves lunch for the public. Marilyn had not been there yet either but had heard good reports from her neighbor, so we met up for our usual two-to-three hour lunch there.

The historic house at 1414 Main Street has always been attractive to me. After standing empty for a few years, it was offered for sale with a large enticing sign on the lawn. Each time I would pass that corner on the way to pick up our grandson Sam at the junior high, I would fantasize about how much fun it would be to live there. It was not a real desire—just something fun to think about.

Then I read it had sold to Debbie Hayes last March and she planned to open a bed and breakfast there. I can’t remember if the feature article said she had Marion roots, but she came here from the East with some New York recipes to share. The name Jasones was in memory of her son Jason Rowcliffe who died on Christmas Eve 2002. Jason had a dream of someday opening a 5-star restaurant after he attended Jjohnson & Wale Culinary Institute to become a Master Chef. Debbie explains on her menu: “All my love and passion has gone into this house, and I am pleased to share with you the joy of Jasones Bed & Breakfast.”

We had the tomato soup with basil first. We both tried the Beef-On-Weck so we would not have to envy the other one’s choice as we might if we had ordered different items. The sandwich was labeled a New York delicacy with this description: “Tender and juicy aged angus beef, sliced thick, soaked in au jus, piled high on top a kimmel weck roll, served with a side of au jus, ketchup and horseradish." Our waitress thought we must try the white pie, and Marilyn ordered a piece with the idea of splitting it with me. I said I’d just take a bite to sample it, but she insisted I needed a half. I am glad she did because it was good, and that also gave me an excuse to ask for the third coffee fill-up as we continued our conversation catch-up.

Even though we did not get around to talking about politics as we usually do, we had a very satisfying conversation. We shared problems and sympathized with each other. And I was thoroughly entertained hearing about Marilyn’s latest adventures and activities which are always interesting and vastly different from mine. There is nothing like a long talk with a good friend to brighten one’s life and to stimulate one’s mind. I left Jasones refreshed and hoping (probably vainly) that we would not have to wait as long the next time to meet up for lunch.

SHOWTIME!!!

Freeport is covered with SHOWTIME signs and other recognitions of this long-time tradition that combined with the outstanding speech and drama department makes Freeport one of the best cities I know about for high school kids interested in the arts.

Although the trip upstate is getting more difficult as we age, I could not keep from having some sadness knowing this is the last Showtime I will probably ever see since grandson Elijah is a senior this year. The lasting hold that this annual show has on its city was developed in the filmed skit of some of the parents of 2011 Showtime kids. These parents too once walked the boards and now claimed they were addicted to Showtime and burst out singing to prove it. Likewise, I am convinced that the Showtime experience will stay with these kids for a lifetime and boost their self esteem every time they remember just how talented they were.

After the annual excellent jazz band concert directed by Bill Petersen and a brief intermission, the magic lights come on revealing this year’s set for Showtime. Every year the elaborate set is visually stimulating and satisfying. The show band is revealed high above in the back of the stage and it blasts forth the Showtime theme. The audience expectantly settles down for over an hour of music, dancing, laughs, and an ending with some important serious messages that will endure and enhance the lives of these young performers as well the viewers.

The most impressive thing director Jeff Lehman does, in my opinion, is to get this kind of cooperation from this many kids year after year. I doubt if many or even any of the guys in the show ever had a dance lesson, yet they are so good. They throw their hearts into each skit that will feature their singing and dancing, and the result is true theater with each face and muscle expressing the song.

Another impressive aspect is the rapid timing that never lets the audience feel impatience. By the end of the men’s song, they will have probably be joined by the young women dressed in new costumes and without a break, the audience will take in the new aspect of whatever theme is then being explored. Kids will have seamlessly changed props and backdrops if needed. There is never a lag or time for boredom.

Once again there was a three-screened photo report on the Showtime’s annual trip during their spring break, a trip where they perform at other schools and often notable venues. This year’s destination was Colorado, and they sang in the chapel at the Air Force Academy and climbed mountains and had the usual annual working vacation that demands more organization than I can imagine.

Finally, after multiple skits and songs that allow many different students to have their turn in the spotlight with solos or key roles, the final segment caused us to remember the upcoming l0th anniversary of 9/ll. I consider myself very patriotic, and for me, part of that patriotism is not getting silly sentimental. I judge patriotism by pitching in to help your neighbors and the community to succeed as well as doing your best to use your own talents and strengths. I judge patriotism by voting and willingly paying taxes to keep this nation healthy and solvent and our stupendous highway system in good shape. I do not like huge flags being used to pull people into a gas station to buy gas there. The flag is too important to be used in that way.

So although I expected to appreciate the students’ patriotic endeavor, I did not expect them to stir my emotions as they did with their high-powered renditions of songs with national importance while the giant screens reviewed September 11 for us. Suddenly, local uniformed fireman and police marched solemnly out on stage, and the audience instantly rose en masse with wild applause to show their appreciation for those public servants and for their New York colleagues who served and sacrificed so much on that fateful day. There may have been some dry eyes in the house, but mine were not among them.

This was followed by flag-bearing veterans marching in one by one down the aisles – many showing their age as well as dedication to our country. Balloons and confettti thrown down on the audience at the show’s conclusion to enchant the children was a remembered tradition, and this year added the sudden appearance of multiple huge red, white, and blue star-studded banners to hang over our heads.

We had driven half way up state the night before to Mary Ellen and Brian’s country home south of Springfield, and grandchildren Trent and Brianna were up and ready early the next morning for the long drive to Freeport. We arrived a little later than hoped for at the Eiler residence to pick up Cecelie, and we were delightfully surprised to have Elijah come out with her as he was unexpectedly free to spend the afternoon with us. (Jeannie was in a workshop at the Chicago Art Institute and Rick at Moline for a track meet.)

We checked into our hotel and went in search of lunch and a ESPNU station showing Georgia softball team playing Kentucky.
The manager where we ate was kind to search but reported they did not have that channel. Trent saved the day for us by finding the game on his new I-Phone and we kept up with the Georgia Dawgs’ success. (Both Georgia and the SIUC Salukis had 3-game sweeps this weekend.)

It was after 3, when we finished eating lunch, and we took the kids back to Jeannie’s house where they planned for a walk to Krape Park while Gerald and I rested. We’d prepared to take Lige to the theater at 5:30, but a college friend was home and he ended up going with her. I knew we had plenty of time to go back to our hotel to change for the evening show. I was relaxed because Jeannie had chili going in the crock pot and a fridge full of sandwich goodies, so I did not have to worry about kids getting hungry.

Then Rick came in from Moline and he could take Trent, Bri, and Cecelie to the show. Jeannie, who would be arriving late from Chicago, had secured tickets for us and Rick had a teacher friend usher us to our excellent seats. After the show, Elijah was involved with the cast party, but the rest of us headed to the Eilers for chili and food. The kids still had not eaten, but they were more excited about being together than eating. They grabbed sandwiches and were quickly off to their own projects in another room while we lingered at the dining room table and caught up with Jeannie and Rick’s news.

We left them to cope with the teens and we went back to our room in the landmark hotel in downtown Freeport instead of our usual home away from home, where a wedding in addition to the Showtime crowd make rooms scarce. It was late, and we slept extremely well until late the next morning where breakfast on the house and a newspaper awaited us downstairs.

We met up at the Eilers’ church and worshipped together before picking up the kids’ suitcases at Eilers and going out for a final meal together. I’d offered for Trent to sit up front on the way up, but he preferred whatever he was doing on his
I-Phone and Bri was glad to sleep going home since the cousins had stayed up a lot longer past midnight than Gerald and I had at the hotel. We made the trip back to First Road leading to the Taylors without incident despite a high wind making steering difficult and making us nervous of swaying vehicles.

We were greeted by Fifi when we dropped off Trent and Bri and quickly headed back to Woodsong since Mary Ellen and Brian were not home. We ate at Mt. Vernon, and were relieved when a call to our next-door neighbor told us the electricity was back on shortly after their return from Florida. Earlier in the afternoon, another neighbor had kindly called and warned us of the outage. Gerald laughingly told Sonje we had been thinking we might have to sleep at a neighbor’s since we had forgotten to take a house key and our garage door can’t be opened if the electricity is off. I am sure she was more relieved than ever that their lights were shining brightly and our pole light was back on. We slept good again last night.

Redbud Are Aflame in Southern Illinois

Jeannie and Cecelie did pull of the highway to get a few hours’ sleep here. At midnight Saturday night, they still weren’t here, so I went on to bed with lights left on for them. Jeannie had phoned and warned me it would be quite late when they arrived and they had to leave very early the next morning to get back to Freeport for responsibilities there. When I woke up at 5:20, there was no van with bicycle attached parked out front. My heart skipped a beat wondering if they had trouble. Then I was relieved to see things laid on their bed for them to take home were gone, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I just didn’t expect her to pull that off as early as she did, but I had to be impressed.

Almost all day Sunday the winds were wild. In over nine years living here, I had never seen white caps on our lake, but they were there that afternoon. Rains came, which was good for the grass seeded Gerald planted Saturday. After morning church, Gerald and I snuggled down all comfy and dry downstairs in his office to eat quickly prepared hot dogs for our lunch as we watched on Game Tracker as Georgia won over Tennessee Martin. (SIUC split up at Iowa.)

Katherine had an aide helping her that afternoon, but I had told her I’d be glad to come in if she needed me. So before David took Sam to his youth meeting and the aide home, he called about 4 to see if I could help Katherine with her hair after a shampoo. I ran on to town, and Gerald said he’d come in later. I have never had hair talent, but we all made it to the 6 p.m. service at Katherine and David’s church where our friend from college days is preaching as an interim pastor. Wendell and his wife Mary come down from the Belleville area and stay at a local motel on the weekend.

While getting out luggage that afternoon, the wind had been so strong that it had blown the trunk lid of his car down on him. He had to start his participation in the service with an explanation for the small but noticeable bandage on his bald head. He said he was just grateful the trunk lid had not decapitated him. After the services, the Cedars needed to pick up something, and since we were in separate vehicles, Gerald and I came on home. I fixed us soup and a bite to eat. It seemed quicker and simpler than meeting up somewhere in town with the high winds that did not make getting in and out of the car very inviting.

The winds brought more cold temps back, so Gerald has worked this week with his coat on. He finished up the lawn work this morning by rolling one small area that he had not yet rolled. Then he kept a routine doctor appointment, and when he returned, we took off for Cape Girardeau for some things he needed there.

He had invited me to go along saying he’d drop me off at the mall. I am not much of a shopper, so I grabbed Don Barnett’s novel They Shall Take Up Serpents that I have been eager to start reading. It is a good thing I did because when I started to get lunch at the mall I discovered my billfold with credit cards and money was missing.

The check book that usually is inside the billfold was in my purse, and I found enough change thrown to the bottom of my purse to buy a huge muffin at Barnes and Noble. So as I ate my muffin, I was soon engrossed the Barnett’s story. I am really wanting to get back to it right now.

I still had most of my Christmas gift Penny’s gift card left, and I found a very soft warm cuddly jacket on sale with nice spring colors, and I paid for it with the gift card that was safely in my purse.

By this time Gerald was there to pick me up and we did a few more errands that allowed me to continue reading in the pickup before going back over the breathtaking Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge to Illinois. We stopped for supper at the Lake of Egypt and picked up our mail at the end of the lane. We switched over to the car from the pickup and went to vote a couple of country roads away. Then I came into the house hoping to see my billfold lying somewhere on a table or desk. So far I have not found it. I am totally puzzled. I would not worry about the few bills if there were not two credit cards in there.

It’s been a good day. The red bud is at the height of its glory in Southern Illinois right now, so the drive to Cape was lovely, and I continued to enjoy its colorful pink/purplish flowering on the way to and from the polling place. I still need to fix the morning coffee and put a few things away before I get back to They Shall Take Up Serpents. I would enjoy it much more if I knew what I had done with my billfold.

Spring Break for the Freeport Family

Jeannie was able to ride the bike trail here quite successfully although not altogether pleasantly since it remained cold most of the time she was here. However, when we waved her and Cecelie off on Thursday after lunch to head to Nashville for a visit with Leslie at Belmont University, it was quite beautiful and considerably warmer, Weather has a frustrating way of being perverse that way.

Spring breaks have been less than cooperative weather-wise this year. All of our grandchildren have had breaks at different times, and that has also been less than conducive for their visiting here at the same time. I read on Facebook that Geri Ann has break this week, so I hope it is warm for her. Trent and Brianna will have a break at Easter time, which to me is the best time for a break since families often want to travel that weekend. And with Easter coming late this year, I hope we have warm weather.

Although in school, Sam was able to come out Tuesday when Cecelie and I picked him up after school after taking him by his house, which let Cecelie visit a minute with her Aunt Katherine. Later all of us here at Woodsong returned with Sam to Marion to the junior high school to hear his special 8th grade concert. As usual, he looked stunning in his black tux matching his black hair. After dropping off Sam, Cecelie, and Jeannie at the school, Gerald and I went on to Katherine’s house and picked her up since David was away on a business trip.

Sam’s band will be heading to Chicago this coming weekend for contest, and Tuesday night was a workshop-type dress rehearsal. A visiting music professor from Southern Illinois University Carbondale was there to critique and give them suggestions. It was an interesting format.

Jeannie was impressed both with the band and also the art class self portraits displayed in the school cafeteria that we have to pass through on the long way to the cavernous second gym. The gym, as you can imagine, that has less than good acoustics, so we were unable to hear all that the director and the visiting professor said, but the music was outstanding for this age students. Jeannie was more than a little upset that there is no planning or welcoming arrangements for family or friends to sit with those in wheelchairs. It seemed unfair to her that anyone in a wheelchair had to sit alone on the gym floor many feet from the rest of us.

While Jeannie was on the bike trail, Cecelie was enjoying getting to drive the Gator around the farm by herself for the first time. Gerald was impressed by her driving, (She even chauffeured Sam the afternoon he was out.) She was also working on a big school project that involved writing and typing up her autobiography. I did hear her practicing her violin downstairs where she sat up her music rack in the kids’ den, but unlike her older siblings, Leslie and Elijah, she does down like to perform by herself, so I only heard her from a distance.

In fact, one of the reasons Leslie wanted her mom and sister to come down to Nashville, was to have them in the audience when she sang at a fellow student’s junior recital. Leslie was performing from the time she was a toddler as her mother said she never simply told you something, she always acted it out as she told you. She and Elijah have both been very generous in being willing to perform almost anytime requested because they are very comfortable in front of any size crowd.

Gerald has been busy all week working on our yard and reseeding it. Now he is waiting for rain to bring up the seed. I thought it already looked lovely when I came in last Friday night and saw how green it was. But the unwanted presence of crab grass had been bugging him, and he had seed stored and ready for spring planting. I have been teasing him about tearing up and yard and making it look ugly, but in the near future, I am sure I will like the lush grass that he has worked so hard this week to provide.

I certainly was grateful yesterday for his beautiful bulb garden when I needed spring flowers for a centerpiece for Women’s Club. I had missed the last two meetings and had not opened our year book when another new member phoned and left a message that yesterday was our day to be hostesses.

Thankfully, when I called her back, she had already bought all the needed tableware, soft drinks, and the ingredients for an absolutely yummy cake. I was so glad she had been alert to our responsibilities, and I said I’d bring the centerpiece and coffee fixings. I also took my signature grapes since that helps anyone unable to eat sweets.

Coming home from picking up Sam from his trombone lesson on Thursday afternoon, I stopped to pick a couple of sprigs of white pear blossoms off the John Combes property. The ancient tree has been damaged by storms, but the remaining limbs were abundant with blossoms. I liked thinking how the ground used to be covered in the fall with pears off that tree, and how Mr. Combes had made our young son Gerry welcome to eating a pear from the roadside tree.

I want to write his daughter and my friend Joyce a note and tell her I used her blossoms. When she left our neighborhood to teach at a Virginia college, I grieved her leaving. And I am sure she grieved departing from her ancestral home where her great grandparents had farmed and where the two-story house was finer than that of most black families had at that time. Now that farm house is no longer there, for when Joyce left, it was beyond repair at a reasonable cost. Typically, Joyce donated the house to the local volunteer fire fighters to use as a practice in fire fighting. I grieved again when I saw those flames. When we first moved to this neighborhood, my mother-in-law recalled that as a little girl coming home from visiting grandparents in Creal Springs, their family had a break down. I have assumed this would have been a wagon in those days. They stayed there with the Combes family who welcomed them until they were able to travel the next day.

Yesterday morning I picked a few more sprigs off an ornamental tree awash with white flowers in our front drive-way circle. Then I went down to see what was left of Gerald’s early blooms. There were a couple of tall white and yellow daffodils and I picked one of each. Then a pink, a bright blue, and two white hyacinths. And some of the “Throne of Buddha” wild flowers that had sneaked into the edge of the bed to place in the bottom of the bouquet because I like this little flower that some might call a weed. I ended up with a sweet smelling flower arrangement that I was pleased to take to our meeting. Now it is in the front hall giving out nice aromas.

I had no intention of joining the Women’s Club when Jari Jackson asked me to speak there on the Trail of Tears. I explained to her that I was in the process of getting out of organizations—not joining new ones. When I saw the lovely older ladies who belonged, however, and realized that the “young ones” my age were keeping the meetings in the afternoon just so those dear women could continue their monthly outing, I wanted to know these 90 something inspiring women. So I joined with the warning I would be a poor member, but I would attend when I could. I am so glad I did.

I’m not sure if Jeannie and Cecelie are stopping back by here on their way home from Nashville or not. It will depend I guess on how much time they allow for a return to Freeport and back to school on Monday morning. Elijah and the high school Showtime gang were already back in Freeport on Wednesday night after their annual trek giving performances and seeing sights. This year they went to Colorado and were able to visit the Air Force Academy there. We are all feeling the mix of sadness and joy as Elijah and Trent finish up their senior years of high school.