Just Swingin'

When we planned our house over a decade ago, I thought we would use our deck looking out on our little lake a lot. We and guests do go in and out and stand out there often enjoying the view and the air, but we do not use it as much as I anticipated. Only occasionally do we actually sit and have long conversations out there. It so often seems too hot or too cold if not raining.

I thought Gerald and I might eat out there frequently. We don’t. It is easier and quicker to serve meals inside the kitchen than on the outside table; and when Gerald comes in from outside work, I figure he enjoys the air conditioning inside as we watch the view. We can also watch the birds at the feeder from inside, but the birds would not likely gather there if we were sitting outside.

The birds are one of the things we have enjoyed most about the deck, but they are also one reason we use it less. The bird droppings are not always as attractive as the birds—especially when a splatter hits a newly washed window.

In my imagination, I planned dinner parties for the deck, but except for an occasional picnic meal for grandkids, no dinner parties have happened. I thought I would read out there, but the very first summer we lived here, I kept getting rained out when I tried that and, therefore, never took up the habit.

A friend told me she would sip her morning coffee out there, and it sounded so good that occasionally I do that. This week I have a couple of times. I enjoyed as always the martins swooping by with their lovely aerial ballet. I was reminded it was time to cook up some nectar and put out the hummingbird feeders as I always like having them fly close to my head when I sit in that swing in the summer time. So when Gerald and I shopped at Kroger on senior day Wednesday, I picked up a new feeder on sale to go with the ones I need to get out from last summer. Now I must make that nectar.

I talked by phone with Katherine at the Rehabilitation Institute of St. Louis last night. She asked how her dad was, and I was able to give her good reports since he spent Wednesday going to appointments. First he had a dental appointment and they checked out his new partial with a wax mold. The dentist and his father (who makes the dentures) will refine it further, and Gerald was well pleased. Then he hurried up to Benton to get a part for our son-in-law Brian who is working night and day with the planting right now.

We’d agreed on an early lunch, but Gerald had to eat hurriedly so we could leave for Carbondale for his two appointments there. I traveled along so that I could recycle the stuff accumulated in the garage. I’d packed both the trunk and the back seat of the car the afternoon before with newspapers, cardboard, tin cans, plastic, and glass. I was able to accomplish that unloading task while he was pronounced in good shape by his cardiologist who monitors his atrial fibrillation. I also had time to take my Birkenstocks to Shawnee Trails to be sent off and resoled.

We had a little time before an appointment at The Hearing Place, so we visited the near-by air conditioned McDonnell’s and Gerald treated us with a cup of ice cream and diet cola. I had Darrel Dexter’s book I am reading to entertain myself while he saw John Reimbold, and then we had time for two more errands before we stopped at senior day at Kroger. Gerald helped me get the trunk load of groceries (a month’s supply of many items) inside before we ate the on-sale tacos we’d picked up at a Marion drive-in window. Then he did another task either in his shop or for Brian I cannot remember which. Anyhow I felt the busy day should prove to Katherine that her dad was in good shape.

Today Brian has finished planting our farm and our sister-in-law Opal’s farm, and Gerald is helping him move machinery over to the acres that Brian rents near Harrisburg. Everyone will breathe a sign of relief when all the crops are in for everyone. Of course, by then I think Brian’s wheat crops will need harvesting. Those fields are beautiful right now.

It is a busy time for farmers, but I may go sit on the swing again tomorrow and see if I have attracted any hummingbirds yet.

A Rainy Day Ride

Although we share the same house and usually lunch and supper every day, with all the busyness of Christmas and family coming and going, Gerald and I haven’t really spent much quality time together. So I was pleased when he invited me to go with him to Carbondale yesterday for the standard check-up for his new hearing aid. Then we were to meet friends Bill and Mickey Tweedy for lunch at Denny’s.

It had started raining lightly at midnight the night before when I went to bed, and it continued damp and soggy with light rain all day long. At supper last night, Gerald went out on the deck and checked the rain gauge and found we had accumulated nine-tenths of an inch.

As usual we had trouble getting away from the farm precisely at 9:15, our planned get-away time; it was more like 9:25. Nevertheless, we made it to The Hearing Place at exactly l0 a.m. right on time for Gerald’s appointment. I didn’t join him for a few minutes because I was in the car putting in my own hearing aids that I had grabbed as we left the house. I’d learned on our last visit that it helped one adjust and profit from the aids if they were worn every day, so I have been trying to do that. I have trouble remembering to take that extra two or three minutes to put them on after I have combed my hair and before I put on my glasses and dash away from the bathroom mirror. So just in case someone asked me if I had them on, I lingered in the car to finish my day’s attire.

Of course, they didn’t ask; and after we hurried to get there on time, there was still a 30 minute wait before Gerald was seen. That was okay. They have great magazines, so I thoroughly enjoyed the wait while he was seen and wished it had been longer. I hadn’t quite finished the National Geographic article I was reading.

We had an hour before lunch time, which was also fine since we needed gas and I had loaded the trunk down with all the Christmas cardboard and other recyclables the night before. Southern Recycling at 300 West Chestnut Street is the most comprehensive recycling business in our area because they take glass, electronics, and almost everything. They are even open on Saturdays from 8:30 in the morning until 1:30 in the afternoon. I had a terrible time finding them when they first relocated, and no one I knew could tell me where they were. It is easy to get there. After the railroad tracks as you arrive from Marion, turn right and go north on Route 51 just a little ways down the road almost as far as the Southern Illinoisan office. There’s a sign there on left.

You get to drive your car right in the building to unload, which was certainly nice on a rainy day like yesterday. They do not pay you for aluminum soda cans, and I was surprised yesterday that they had changed the labeling on the huge cardboard holding boxes so that you are asked to put tin can and aluminum cans in the same bin. Hmmm. I wondered why. (I usuallly take our empty soda cans to Cimco here in Marion out on Route 148 and feel smug for the few dollars I receive for my efforts.)

It had been too long since we’d met up with Bill and Mickey, so that anticipated lunch-time visit was very enjoyable. Because of Denny’s nearness to the hearing aid place and the Carbondale Clinic (which now has a silly new name not nearly as succinct as Carbondale Clinic), this was the third time since Thanksgiving that we have lunched at Denny’s after years of not being there. When we took Katherine after a recent doctor’s appointment, all the Christmas decorations were up and she thoroughly enjoyed it reminiscing about her socializing there back in her college days—just as Gerald and I do from our decades earlier times.

Bill was telling Gerald about his grandson in the Marines and now in Afghanistan sleeping on a cot without a mattress. Naturally Bill was torn up about this young man and all the others over there. It was great last night to see grandson’s new-born son in the Facebook pictures that its grandmother—Bill’s middle daughter Glenna Orr--had posted. This new little Billy was an exceptionally beautiful newborn, and both his mother and his grandmother Glenna were quite beautiful as well. I wish his daddy could be back in the States enjoying this time in his baby son’s life.

Reluctantly we ended our noon-time visit, but not before Mickey had given us a bag of yummy home-made cereal snack mix and another plus a pretty tin of candies for Katherine. We had accidently parked side by side, so we were tempted to linger longer visiting in the parking lot, but the damp weather probably encouraged us to get inside our cars and go on with afternoon duties.

Next Gerald and I headed down Route 51 to Anna and beyond as he had to take some more papers to our farm management field man, who is already working on our taxes as well as others in the Illinois Farm Management Association sponsored by the University of Illinois.

The winter landscape was dark with barren leafless trees along the hillsides of the highway and the constant rain on the windshield, but it was warm and cozy inside our car making the ride seem snug and pleasant. We arrived at Doug and Beth Hileman’s lovely farm on top of a high hill looking down on pleasant meadows. We were greeted by their friendly dogs when I opened the car door briefly to better grab hold of my book at my feet, which I’d brought to read while Gerald went inside to converse with Doug. The bigger dog escorted Gerald in. This was strictly a business visit, and Gerald had said he’d be quick, so again my reading was cut short when he was back in the car and we were again driving country roads.

I had commented as we drove to Doug’s that I did not think I had ever been to Balcom although I had heard about it all my life when living in Union County. So Gerald took us out through that tiny cluster of houses just so I could know I had visited Balcolm. If there was ever a post office or village store there, you could not tell it now, but I imagine that once upon a time there were both and probably a country school house also.

The day was pretty well spent by the time we arrived back at Woodsong and I fixed us a bite of supper. Gerald commented that it probably would be snowing when he got up this morning, but he expected it would have quit before I woke up. He was almost right. It started snowing on him as he walked down the lane to the mailbox—his first activity every morning. But it has continued snowing all day long, so I have been able to enjoy it also. It is truly beautiful and was quite slick out when I took Thursday night supper into my daughter’s family as I try to do each week. I was glad to be safely back home to enjoy the beauty looking out the windows with inside comfort.

Seasons

Rainy weather has been replaced this week with sunny days giving just the right amount of warmth to the breezy air. Everyone has felt their spirit lift although the great fall color has greatly diminished.

Yesterday I was scheduled to speak at Nine Mile Baptist Church’s women’s retreat at Lake Sallateeska, and I enjoyed the drive up to north of Pinckneyville and the beautiful lodge after I got there. Their retreat theme was “Seasons” built around the scripture that for everything there is a season.

Since these women live near Mulkeytown (one grew up there), I was asked to speak on the life of Priscilla, the slave girl freed to live in the Silkwood home. I tried to show the various seasons of her life and how despite the very difficult times and many deprivations caused by prejudicial nineteenth century laws, she was able to live a useful life that blessed others. And there seem to be many indications that she lived a happy life at Silkwood Inn. With little education, no career, and no children of her own, she is probably the most famous of anyone who ever lived in Mulkeytown. (Abe Lincoln’s son Robert and some elephants came to town to build the railroad through there, but he didn’t actually live there.)

Musing over the day’s theme scripture, I did some heavy reflection on that as I drove home and realized I need to face and plan for the new season of life that I am now in. I don’t like change, so I don’t reorganize life easily. Nor do I like to discard traditions, friends, acquaintances, or possessions. Especially I do not like to discard paper or books. Yet maybe the time has come to simplify my life and my office. Simplification may mean cleaning out some things. We’ll see.

I am not an inveterate hoarder. I know I can honestly say that because I have hauled trunk load after trunk load of clothes, household stuff, and other things to give away when I could no longer use them. Gerald has cooperated by hauling truck loads of furniture or mattresses to the household give-away in our nearest town. I also have hauled countless trunk loads of refuse to recycling centers. So I know I won’t be written up in the newspapers when I die for having a house with mounds of old newspapers and magazines with only narrow lanes to walk through. It also helps that as long as I can stay out of second hand book stores and away from beautiful dishes at Salvation Army, I am not much of a consumer.

Nevertheless, I seldom see a newspaper that I don’t want to clip and save information—just in case I write an article or know someone who needs that information someday. I struggle to pass on magazines even though I know I will never have time to finish reading them. I think part of my affection for the written word was passed on to me by my mother. As a motherless child on the farm with her daddy at work in town, she looked forward to a daily newspaper or any periodical or letter that came to their mailbox. Unlike today, the printed word was a scarce and precious possession in that time. We are inundated with newspapers, long begging letters from countless organizations, and inexpensive magazines. Mother never got over being in love with publications, and a favorite phrase of hers was, “I read an article that said…” If it was in print, she was inclined to trust the words even though she was not a gullible person.

I still giggle when I remember the first time Gerald, as my fiancé, went with our family to our beloved Mount Airy Farm, my dad’s childhood home. He was eagerly reading from a Popular Mechanic from a large stack on the wicker table in the living room. Suddenly he noticed it was twenty years old. I don’t think our family ever subscribed to that magazine, but a friend had passed them on, and rather than throw them out, Mother took then to the farm. I understand.

Magazines stack up at my house. File cabinets are full. I made family scrapbooks for years, but that hobby disintegrated into filling boxes of family ephemera with the idea that maybe in my frail elderly years, I will have time to make scrapbooks again. Both our old farm house and our new one have had the delightful characteristic of having nooks and crannies, and that has encouraged me to make use of them with various saved items. Our grandkids know if they need some item for a project (clay, toilet paper roll, cardboard box, construction paper, gold foil from a Christmas card, you name it), I will probably be able to find it somewhere.

However, so our children won’t have to go through some stored boxes looking for lost stocks or savings bonds (don’t have any), I have boxes of former teaching files or other projects marked: “Throw out when I die.” But maybe it is time I start throwing out some of the stuff myself. Maybe this should be a winnowing season for me.

Weather Cooling and Excess Sharing

When the preschoolers said in Sunday School that we’d be having our annual dinner honoring fathers down at the picnic shelter rather than downstairs, I thought surely they were wrong. Surely we wouldn’t eat outside because surely it was too hot to eat there, but they were right and I was wrong on two counts. We did eat outside, and it was extremely pleasant.

I imagine our church hostess and husband, Shirley and Butch, checked it all out for us and made that great decision. Not only was there a wonderful breeze, but I had forgotten that the shelter is usually much cooler than the lawn surrounding it. (I’ve had to get a sweater more than once.) Butch reminded me that a barn’s open-ended outer hallway also always seemed cool. It has been many years since I’ve been in a barn’s hallway, but his comment brought back memories. Not only was it cool, but the aromas there were always marvelous—leather lines and bridles hanging on the wall, the warm pungent smell of the horses in their stalls, and redolent straw underfoot.

Our main dish for the fathers (and blessedly for everyone connected to a father as everyone is) was barbeque and Italian beef that Patrick had delivered to us The Old Home Place, his and Tina’s great down-home restaurant at Goreville. Then there were the great variety of salads, the multitude of vegetable choices, and a dessert table laden with everything from fruit to decadent choices. Because it was so quickly gone, I didn’t get a piece of Don Boyd’s coconut cream pie, but I heard it was good.

Yesterday morning I had quickly baked a cake from a mix to add to our luncheon sandwiches at our Clean Up Day at church. There were so many desserts there that most were left over, so I just left mine for today’s dessert contribution. Over 20 of us were there emptying long neglected storage rooms and pitching out papers and equipment no longer used or needed. We bought a lot of space that way! Tracy spent the morning just organizing and placing left-over art and educational supplies in a new cabinet for that purpose. (Over and over volunteer workers will buy supplies and leave the extras, but no one knows where they are when needed.) Tracy suggested our new slogan: Shop here first!

The men got the worst of that work because they were outside in the heat loading heavy items on trailers—a load for the dump but everything possible to be recycled, one load of no-longer needed but comfortable furniture to be shared at our homeless shelter which takes donations for when folks move out and need furnishings in their new place. A set of metal folding chairs went to the Ministerial Alliance’s household give-away. Kitchen chairs often go before the kitchen table does, so extra chairs are always welcome.

When I worked with families, I became aware not all families had enough chairs for family members at their table. I also saw young mothers use magazine pictures to decorate their living room when they lacked framed pictures. I was touched by their efforts and bragged on them for doing so. I always remember this and pass on any “pretties” or accessories I no longer use. One of our members, who is a teacher, knew children with head lice whose pillows had no pillow cases—let alone clean pillow cases. She was always collecting extra bed linens for such homes.

A great majority of Americans have much too much stuff (hence the storage building industry). Many people do no realize how bare and needy some homes are. A lawyer, who has generously volunteered down through the years at the household giveaway, which is housed in his church building, told me about a time when almost everything donated had been claimed after many winter fires. On that unusually scant day, only one old couch was there with one missing cushion. He told how thrilled the children were with the mother who claimed it because they were going to have a couch to sit on.

Most of us aren’t exposed to that kind of need. We sometimes forget that no one should burn or dump furniture or clothing that someone else needs. I have city friends who are able to simply put giveaways on the sidewalk and know someone will claim and use it. We can’t do this in the country, but with a little effort we can usually share our excess and spare our landfills.

Paper, Paper Everywhere!

Sometimes I feel as if I am drowning in paper. I actually love paper. I love messy desks, over-flowing magazine racks, and over-stocked shelves of books. However, sometimes there comes a day of reckoning and every surface I see is covered with undigested pieces of paper.

I will start to write. . Suddenly I am stymied, however, because I need to double check my facts. I know that a copied paper with the facts or a saved article I need is here somewhere, but I can’t locate it. When I start going through a pile, I find things I’ve been looking for in ages past—but not what I need today.
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Today was such a day. I had a rare day with a few hours to write. (I would have had more time if I weren’t wasting it grating that blamed zucchini for the freezer.) I start writing and soon begin to doubt myself. I know what I am writing is probably factually correct, but I need to double check my facts to be positive. (This is the same feeling that makes me need to go back and check that I turned out the stove at the very moment Gerald starts to back out of the garage.). Where did I read that story that told these dates, names, or facts? Am I spelling that name/place/object correctly?


So instead of getting that article done, I have instead spent those hours looking through a huge stack in a magazine basket that was somehow turned into an impromptu filing cabinet. No, that is not accurate. Nothing was filed in there. The wide basket was merely a holding pen for a foot of stuff that needed filing. I emptied the basket, and I deliberately carried it to another room, so I would not fill it again.

I managed to throw away a few papers in the wastebasket. (I have already explained that I love paper, and it is very difficult for me to throw away cherished pieces of information. Never mind, that even when and if I get papers filed, I rarely need 90% of them again.)

After some clipping, I did have a stack of saved newspapers to carry upstairs for recycling. (Who can resist also re-reading these months-old newspapers as one clips?) A few items did get filed. Many got put in little separate stacks for me to file soon. (What a fantasy that is!!)

I am one birthday card richer to send someone. (Why was it in the middle of newspapers?) And there was the scrap of paper with an address and phone number I needed a few months ago. Mixed with the ephemera were several magazines that I had never opened. There are a couple stacks of those to carry into the other room.

I am also behind on recording anything that needs to be recorded. That desk (an old door on top of two short filing cabinets) is so cluttered that I know it will take a week to make sense out of the clutter. I love records, but I am a most unfaithful record keeper.

I found and re-read a number of pages of information I found and copied last January at Southern Illinois University’s library annex that is being used to house the Special Collections. I had gotten them encased in clear plastic ready to be stuck in loose leaf binders—but for some reason they had been placed in the bottom of the basket and soon covered up with months of paper debris. Now they sit on the large folding table in the middle of my office.

With all the little stacks of sorted papers still lying around, I cannot say that my office looks much better. I still have not found the copy of the magazine that started my search. But I do feel a little smug about emptying that magazine basket. (Now I only have a half a dozen or so boxes with even more papers to someday look through. When I get through going through them, I have some boxes of my mother's papers stored in the tornado shelter and saved for me to have a project when I am in my frial-elderly stage of life and can't get out of the house.)

But tomorrow I better start again on my article for the Writers Guild anthology with the September 1 deadline. I may have to find an alternate source of information to make my needed factual checks. Sometimes I can find what I need on the Internet, but yet if I don’t immediately use it, I must either write it on a note card or piece of paper to save it. You know what happens to those at my house. Ah well.

Chatting About Daily Chit Chat

Gerald and I took the pickup over to the body shop this afternoon. We were finally able to pick up our car today. The twice-replaced back right door looks great. I hope this door lasts longer than the first two.

I drove on to Carbondale as I had a Trail of Tears Association board meeting tonight, and I have been needing the car to claim my re-soled and repaired Birkenstocks from Shawnee Trails. They’ve been ready for a while, but I had no car to go get them. The management there is so accommodating. I apologized for being so long in picking them up, and the man was so nice that I was almost made to feel I’d done them a favor for being so poky! Once again for far less than half price, my returned Birks looked like a new pair. And choosing repair over brand new helps the environment as well.

While I was that close to 710 Book Store, I couldn’t resist the pleasure of going in to look at the books. I was delighted to find a copy of the late Normagene Warner’s Standing on Tiptoe, one of the most beautiful and honest accounts of losing a child that I’ve ever read. You can no longer order it from Amazon, so I was delighted to find a couple of copies there, and I bought one as I think I gave my last one away. Copies of the late Dr. Ben Fox’s two books were also there.

Earlier this week I finished Cinnamon the same day I started it. This account of the trekking the Appalachian Trail was fascinating and enlightening. I am also thoroughly enjoying Rowena McClinton’s translation of the diaries from the Moravian mission in pre-Trail of Tears Georgia. I won’t finish these two hefty volumes in a hurry though.

Diaries and journals are probably my favorite genre because they are composed of such simple day-to-day activities that end up making a life. Yet the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. One of my all-time favorites is The Diary of Helena Morley, which Elizabeth Bishop translated. It is the wonderful diary of a young girl in Brazil telling of the daily life in their village. I used to order it through inter-library loan, but with the Internet, I was able to buy my own second-hand copy.

In much the same way, I have always been attracted to the weekly journalists who write personal columns about the Smith family spending the day at grandma’s house and little Suzie Jones being sick with the flu. There was a time in my life that I read probably 25 or so of these community columns a week--about people I did not know from neighborhoods with names like Possum Hollow or Tool Shed Corner.

One of my weird writing goals was to write such a column, and I did accomplish that for about nine months. It was some of the most difficult writing I ever did.

The Johnson County Genealogical and Historical Society is publishing a book of Harry Nave’s columns from some decades ago, and I am eager to read his book. I find it exciting that he wrote a book without knowing it--one weekly column at a time.

Pampering, Shopping, and a Cooling Rain

Sounds of thunder came inside the mall, and I hurried to end my shopping. Welcome rain greeted me as I scurried from Dillard's with my arms full of on-sale purchases and ran out to where I had parked the car under a shade tree--with all the windows rolled down to prevent a heat build-up.

I had planned to shop until time for Geri Ann’s softball game in Johnston City. Instead, I rolled up the windows and drove happily home through the rain. (Only later did I learn it did not rain up at J.C.)

My shopping trip today was something I needed to do, and I am not often much of a shopper. However, I had done so little lately that I looked forward to it-- mostly it was to “reward” to myself for enduring the dreaded mammogram this morning. My other “reward” for this important but unpleasant duty was to resolve that today I would not hurry all day long.

I would take my time, leave the house with chores undone and give myself driving time to be there without worrying about being late. (I have a tendency to act as though I have a magic carpet that will take me from Woodsong to town and then across town in far less time than it takes to do either. Consequently, I not only arrive late, but I must drive tense scolding myself for not starting earlier. Today I was going to turn over a new leaf.

I almost achieved that goal although my desire to recycle the bag full of aluminum cans and drop off the accumulated box of newspapers in the garage almost messed me up. When I saw another car ahead of me, I debated postponing dropping them off before the appointment. But that would require extra back driving, and I wanted those two big containers out of the car. I took the chance and arrived exactly on time. So then, I got to wait awhile, but I relaxed and enjoyed the wait knowing that I would not enjoy the appointment. I left feeling very righteous that I had accomplished that task for another year.

After shopping at Stella’s and the Dollar Store, it was lunchtime, so I went to my favorite (and cheapest for me) place in town--Honeybakers. There in a pleasant atmosphere, I relaxed again with a cup of soup, a wonderful roll with sweetened butter, and tinkling ice water served in a real glass just the right size--neither too small nor awkwardly large to handle. The well-trained service was lovely and rapid. I read a little local paper, consumed my delicious soup, and was on my way in little over a half hour. (We have had such ridiculously slow service lately in some restaurants that the speed with which my food came was greatly appreciated.) The only thing that could have made it better was to have had a daughter or friend with me, but life and today’s schedule did not allow that.

Next, it was on to the mall for the shopping trip aborted by thunder. However, the rain and the cooler temperature it brought was more welcome than more shopping. After carrying in my purchases to the guest bedroom where tomorrow I will have to finish putting them away, I was able to look at the mail, read a bit, check emails, and be available to go get Gerald up at Wayside Farm when he phoned for a ride home. He had taken the tractor up there to finish mowing CRP ground before he moves on to Gerry’s place tomorrow.

After that, I got us a quick but substantial supper since Gerald had to fix his own lunch. (Not setting his place, etc. was one of the neglected activities to get me to my appointment in an unhurried fashion.) By the time I cleaned up after our meal, set the breakfast table, and fixed the morning coffee pot, it was quite late, but I read a bit more, read my California cousin’s email forwards, and wrote a long and important email for a club.

I am on my way to bed now, and it has been a pleasant day. There are umpteen things I could yet attend to, but on the day a woman gets a mammogram, she has a right to treat herself well.

Elijah is Here--Not There!!

Elijah came down to Woodsong with the Eiler Grey groupies, and he has stayed on for his week with grandparents/cousins in Southern Illinois. Samuel came out to Woodsong from town to join him and the rest of the gang staying here. One night when Geri Ann and friend Allison came from The Mix with us, there were 12 sleeping here, and quite frankly I am not sure who slept where--but I know the living room floor was occupied.

The next day the rest of the cousins (Trent and Brianna) showed up briefly here and for an Eiler Grey concert. When Eiler Grey (the stage name that our granddaughter Leslie has chosen) and her gang left on Monday, Elijah and Sam were the only grandchildren here until they went to Sam’s house while Gerald and I went up to Sesser to Geri Ann’s first softball game for Johnston City Middle School. After the game, we picked Sam and Lige up for the night at the farm before our planned trip the next day.

We slept late on Tuesday except Gerald, of course, who was out in the garden early on gathering produce to take along and share. After cereal, we loaded the car and headed to Saint Louis and on west to Lake Saint Louis.

We forgot to take pillows to travel, but that didn’t stop the boys from sleeping--because they had stayed up visiting the night before naturally. After sleeping, watching scenery, watching videos, making phone calls, etc. Elijah and Samuel grew bored and reached the “Are we there yet?“ stage. At that point, they kept us entertained as they played with words to discover that no one can ever be “there.” You can be almost there, but you can’t be “there,” because you are always “here.” So when we finally got to Brian and Mary Ellen’s house we weren’t “there,” but we were “here.”

The boys were invited up to visit with their cousins Trent and Brianna and to help break in the newly installed swimming pool just outside the Taylors‘ back door. That activity happily occupied us for the rest of the day with breaks for lunch and supper. Lauren joined us in the evening to spend the night with Brianna. Since we had big plans for Wednesday, I was impressed when the kids all headed to their downstairs bedrooms at a decent hour. I figured they were worn out from all that swimming and ready for sleep.

Little did I know until we were almost home yesterday how late some of these jay-whos stayed up. But we will not go into that. Mary Ellen had gone down to settle them, but I think she went to sleep before they did.

Our Wednesday adventure was to explore the St. Louis City Museum that Mary Ellen’s family had discovered on a school field trip. Gerald kindly took up to a lovely seafood restaurant at Union Station before we hit the museum. After we said goodbye to the gold fish there, we hurried on because Mary Ellen assured us there was much to do at this unique museum. It was indeed an amazing experience.

Artists/craftsmen have recycled Saint Louis history in this downtown eleven-story building with a school bus sitting on top of it as though about to drive off the roof. There is an airplane up there too on the outside. And all kinds of slides, climbing chambers of spiraled wire taking you up to these weird masses of junk. This is just on the outside. Actually just a small part of the outside stuff.

Inside, we were immediately awed by the beautiful mosaic tile floor of bits and pieces making fishes and sea creatures swimming under our feet. Great columns were at the entrance made of small brown gears placed together--often with a recycled marble in the middle of the gear. They were beautiful. Other tall columns were made lovely with recycled bits of glass. Huge sea monsters, serpents, whales, and dinosaur-like creatures abounded throughout.

Four or five stories of the building were gutted and then filled with unbelievable beauty and intrigue--storefronts of historic buildings, hiding places, climbing places, catacombs, dungeons, staircases of recycled materials, slides, lovely statues, ugly gargoyles, advertisements and a rescued Big Boy, collections of marbles, rocks, pottery--often just the tops, past cigarette packages, pin ball machines, and on and on. There was a battered grand piano with the top missing--but it was in tune and the children were encouraged to play it. Sometimes visiting pianists come to present concerts on it.

Although there were young brave slender parents there with little kids, we felt our 10 to 14-year- olds were the perfect age for this museum because no way could we have possibly gone through all the narrow holes and scary climbing places they went.

After we tired out wandering and seeing the never-ending sights, we were able to sit and people watch while our kids had adventures climbing things we really would have not wanted to watch. Where we were sitting, we saw children go into a hole in the floor beside us. We felt as if we saw them go into a rabbit hole and disappear forever because we never were able to figure out where they came out.

There was a circus on one floor that our kids attended, and a couple of them came out with drawings they said an elderly man had made of them. We saw the area for the much younger kids and a lady doing crafts with a table of them and other nooks with adorable old-fashioned child furniture for them to sit on. There was a little train for the youngest children to ride also.

We stayed almost to the 5 p.m. closing time, and then we had to say good-bye to Mary Ellen and the Taylor kids as they headed west and we headed east across the mighty Mississippi into Illinois and home. Since we were already part of the way home, the trip passed quickly. We stopped in Johnston City, found out the middle-school had won their softball game, and took Gerry and Vickie and Geri Ann out to supper with us before we dropped Samuel off at his house, and brought Elijah back to Woodsong. We were here--not there--in time for an early-to-bed night’s sleep.

Hummingbirds Return from Mexico, and I Made it to Southern Recycling!

My guilt level shot up Sunday afternoon when I saw hummingbirds on the deck looking for supper. Here they had made it all the way to Mexico and back, and I had failed to have their sugar water ready for them. The next day I looked up our two feeders stored over winter in the garage. Yesterday I finally made their treat and hung a feeder on each end of the deck.

Sitting on the swing there last night reading, the little birds kept the air humming with their fast-beating wings. At the same time, the martins were chirping and swooping by from their perches on the nearby house. At the edge of the lawn, the geese were making their nightly noise as they zoomed in flight across the lake usually in sets of three. Frankly, I did not read very many pages as I watched and listened to the evening show.

Earlier in the evening, Gerald planned to haul our trash to the burning pit he created northeast of our house in the meadow. After loading it all on the “mule,” he noticed the seven deer feasting there and called to me to check them out. So before I sat on the deck, I sat on the front porch watching the deer. They bravely stayed there as they watched Gerald approaching and didn‘t budge until he was almost upon them with his vehicle. Then they all gracefully loped south.

I’ve been planting a few flowers around the large rocks Gerald placed beside his shop on the edge of our front yard. Not too many of the flowers we planted last summer survived. As I poke around planting, I jump every once in awhile when I suddenly realize that what looks like grey mud is moving. We have several fat frogs making a home there, and once I get over the startle, I love seeing them.

Since I had a Trail of Tears Association Board meeting this evening in Carbondale, I used the trip to get some errands done. I stopped in Marion at our daughter’s, and then went on to get a stuffed pretzel at The Mix in Carterville for a quick lunch. Next, I checked out Barnes and Noble on the edge of Carbondale and bought a book by Roger Lipe that I had been wanting. Then I spent a happy hour wondering through Hobby Lobby giving my eyes a feast and thinking of possible future Christmas gifts.

My main goal, however, was to finish the task I did not accomplish the day of our last TOTA Board meeting. I have a rule that I should not drive extra to recycle since using gas might defeat any help to the environment. However, since our Marion recycling center burnt, the accumulation of glass in our garage was really bugging me. Back in March, I loaded the trunk with my two large boxes of glass needing to be discarded, and confidently started to the north side of Carbondale, where two or three people had told me Southern Recycling had moved from the days I used to take stuff there when they were in the heart of downtown Carbondale. That day I wondered around in the industrial park and on roads where I thought people meant until I ran out of time and had to quit. I was quite chagrined to have to unload my two boxes of glass back in the garage that night.

Today I allowed plenty of time and armed myself with the address and phone number. I was sure I had just overlooked it somehow before. I had been told you could actually drive inside the building and unload your unwanted debris. Surely, I would find a building that large.

When I did not see it this time either, I stopped and asked a couple of people, but they had never heard of the recycling center. It did not help that I could not read my own handwriting and thought my “W” was an “N” for North. One man, who hadn't heard of Southern Recycling, said he had heard of West Chestnut, but not North Chestnut. He was right, of course.

But a guy working on his truck knew where the recycling center was and gave me good directions, but either he got his left/right mixed up or I did when I heard him, so I wondered out of my way turning right when I should have turned left. I went around a couple of curves as he said--but in the wrong way. By this time, I was out in the country and enjoying the drive at least. I tried not to think what burning gas did to the environment.

Finally, I did what I should have done in the beginning, called the phone number, and got directions. The very friendly voice gave me directions although I realized later she did not know how far north I was when I told her I was in the north side of Carbondale. She said Davies Street would run right into West Chestnut. And it did, but I was way north of anywhere that I could find Davies Street.

Nevertheless, her nice voice and laughter on the phone gave me confidence that the place was about where I had now decided it must be, and I found West Chestnut and the convenient recycling drive-in center. I was immediately helped by an employee there, who turned out to be a neighbor of mine down at Creal Springs. I was glad to meet him, but even gladder to get rid of those boxes of glass and the huge box of newspapers I had accumulated. And gladder yet to know I will not have to look the next time I want to recycle in Carbondale. I still had time for a couple more errands and got to my 6 p.m. meeting on time.