The Spattered Silhouette

Friday afternoon art classes

When I was a little girl attending Duff Valley District 4, we all loved Friday afternoons. (I'm speaking for myself and the half-dozen other students in our little one-room schoolhouse.) Of course, Friday afternoons were wonderful because the weekend lay ahead. And the other reason that they were wonderful was that we had art class after last recess.

We all did the same art project, no matter which grade we were in -- kindergarten, eighth grade, or anything  between. Some of us cut, pasted, and colored a lot better than others, but before we went home on Friday afternoon, everyone's project was pinned to a bulletin board where it would be displayed for the next week or two. Seeing my handwork in comparison with the others motivated me to cut, paste, and color more neatly.

And we did do a lot of cutting, pasting, and coloring. Sometimes the teacher used the hectograph to copy a coloring sheet, and sometimes, we drew our own pictures. Sometimes we cut pieces from construction paper and pasted the pieces together to make a valentine or a turkey or whatnot.

A lot of our art work was flat, but I do remember some three-dimensional projects:  flowers cut from egg carton sections or made from crepe paper, mosaics made with shards of Easter-egg shells, and even a sculpture of a cow's head made from crumpled aluminum foil.

Once in a while, our teacher got out the water-paint boxes or mixed up a batch of tempera paint. We all painted whatever she announced our subject would be -- such as "trees in autumn colors." And once in a blue moon, we did a finger-painting.

We painted just often enough to make us super-excited when we got to do it again. I am not sure whether we painted so rarely because paints were expensive or because our teachers hated the mess.

I remember quite a bit of spatter painting.  It only required one color of paint, and the paint was applied with the teacher's close supervision, outside if the weather permitted. It only took a minute to do the spattering. The procedure was this:

• Draw or trace a shape and cut it out. 
• Lay the cut-out (or several cut-outs) on a sheet of construction paper.
• Put on a very large shirt, backwards.
• Dip the bristles of an old toothbrush in tempera paint and scrub the toothbrush over a small window screen so little drops of paint spray all over the paper.
• Let the paint dry and remove the cut-outs.

The day that I made my silhouette the teacher set up the filmstrip projector while we were gone to recess. When we came back inside, we took turns sitting in the projector's bright light and tracing each other's silhouettes. Then we cut out our silhouettes and spatter-painted them. I think I was in third or fourth grade at the time.

I did dozens of Friday afternoon art projects before I left country school at the end of 8th grade, but the only one I still have is my silhouette. I found it in my mother's things after she passed away.

Some Memories of Duff, Nebraska

The Duff school, bank, and E.U.B. Church

Duff, Nebraska, was located in the southern part of Rock County, in a broad Sandhill valley. Drained by the Bloody and Skull creeks, the area was originally called the Bloody Valley and now is known as the Duff Valley. The Duff road turned off to the west from Highway 183, about 26 miles south of Bassett.

By the time that we moved to Duff, Nebraska in 1957, the Duff store was closed and the Duff post office had been gone for several years. The post office operated from 1886 to 1901, closed briefly, and then was open again from 1903 to 1953, according to Perkey's Nebraska Place Names by Elton A. Perkey (copyright 1995, Nebraska Historical Society).

I attended Duff Valley District 4 school which was still in its original building, 3 miles west and 1 mile south of Highway 183. The records of attendance in the attic of the school building went back to the late 1800s, when the old people of the community were school children.

The Eldon Horner family lived in the old Duff bank building, about 1/2 mile northeast of the school. My friends and schoolmates, the Horner girls, had their bedroom in the room where the bank had done its business. This is what the Horner girls told me. I don't know when or how long the bank was in business.

The old store building was 4 miles west of Highway 183. Forest Saar lived in the storekeeper's quarters in the back, and the Duff Evangelical United Brethren (E.U.B.) Church met in the big room in the front of the building where the store had been. In the pasture just west of the building, there was a concrete cellar (I am sure it was concrete and I believe it was a cellar). It was all that remained from an earlier store that had burned. (See this link which mentions the Duff Store in 1910. )

The congregation of the Duff E.U.B. Church was very small. I think that on a good Sunday, we might have had 30 people. Some of the people in the valley went to the Methodist church in town, another family or two were Catholic, and others didn't go to church at all.

Our pastor, Brother Harold Koelling, served three country E.U.B. churches, of which the Duff group was the smallest. In 1962, the Duff church was consolidated with the Rose E.U.B. church. (Sadly, the Rose Church is also now closed.)

I have a fairly clear memory of the little Duff church. The room was quite large with wooden pews on both sides of a central aisle. At the front on the right side were the pulpit, a piano, and a communion table with the words "In Remembrance of Me" carved into it. I confess that I thought Arthur Zlomke was the "Me" of that phrase. A metal plaque on the bottom crosspiece of the table clearly stated that the table had been donated in his memory.

A low table and some chairs occupied the area at the left front of the room, where the children's Sunday School class was held. Between the Sunday School table (on the left) and the pulpit (on the right), there was a door that opened to Grandpa Saar's living room. He often came through the door and joined the congregation when it was time for the worship service to begin.

Grandpa Saar was a generous man. Besides giving the space for the church in the front of his building, he also loaned his kitchen and living room for Vacation Bible School classes. His living room window looked out into a lilac bush that was often in bloom during VBS week. One year, a bird had built its nest right against the window, and we could look into it from Grandpa Saar's living room and see the little blue eggs.

(I speak of "Grandpa" Saar because he was the grandfather of the "Saar kids," all of whom I knew well. Marion Saar's four children were my third cousins on my mother's side, and their cousins, Bill Saar's three sons, were relation's relation to me from another side of the family. In addition to all that, all of us were neighbors in the Duff community.)

I remember one series of revival meetings at the Duff Church very well. The evangelist was a man named Elmer Reimer and he was from South Dakota.

Brother Reimer had a collection of crystal wine glasses of all shapes and sizes. He had them lined up on a table, and each glass had a different amount of water in it. He talked about how the glasses had been converted from their former wicked life of serving alcohol to a new life of service to God. Then he wet his index fingers a little and ran them around the rims of the glasses to make a vibrating, resonating musical sound. By switching from glass to glass, he could play hymns and even create harmony. I can still hear the thin, high, warbling sounds.

When I drove through the Duff community several years ago, the Duff church was completely gone. I would never have guessed there had ever been a building there. Before long, no one will even remember it.

Related:
Photos of the Duff Valley
Henry Seier's history of Duff

A Traveling Salesman Remembered

The Minnesota Woolen Mill salesman

One hot afternoon every summer, the Minnesota Woolen Mill salesman came to visit in his dust-covered station wagon.

The back of his wagon was weighted down with suitcases, and the suitcases were stuffed with samples of all the Minnesota Woolen Mill merchandise for that year -- wool blankets, wool garments, and other winter items like flannel sheets, thermal underwear, and quilted nylon parkas.

When my mother granted permission, the salesman hauled the suitcases into our living room, and we sat down to hear his spiel and see what he was selling.

He had one sample of each item and a book of swatches to show the different colors available. In mid-summer, his goods seemed very warm indeed, especially when a sample garment was tried on to get an idea of the size needed.

If my mother decided to buy something, the salesman filled out the order form. Then he refolded his samples, packed his suitcases, loaded his stationwagon, and drove on to the next ranch. Several months later, a package from Minnesota Woolen Mill arrived at our mailbox.

Over the years, Mama bought several Minnesota Woolen Mill blankets. They were heavy and scratchy with a creamy white background and bold stripes. I still have the one that I used as a child, and it is still a heavy, warm blanket.

In my fabric scraps, I have a Minnesota Woolen Mill skirt from the winter that I was ten. It's a turquoise-and-gray plaid, with knife pleats all the way around, and it was an important piece in my winter dress-up wardrobe until I outgrew it. One of these days, it will become part of a wool quilt. For no practical reason, I will carefully remove and preserve its tag.

I think that the last summer my mother ordered anything from the Minnesota Woolen Mill salesman was 1967. She had thought for several years that the prices were much too expensive, and that year, she was disappointed in the quality of the merchandise.

For the first time, the Minnesota Woolen Mill salesman had skirts, dresses, and jackets made of bonded wool. Those garments did not have the usual nylon lining that was attached separately; rather, the fabric had wool on one side and lining fabric on the other side.

After my sister and I wore our bonded wool skirts a few times, the lining separated from the wool and the garments lost their shape. Furthermore, the wool was not as tightly woven as it had been in the past. Mama was irritated.

I don't remember the Minnesota Woolen Mill salesman stopping at our house after that. Perhaps he did, and my mother sent him on his way. Maybe the mill went out of business. Or maybe the salesman retired; his job surely demanded strength and stamina, and he was not young.

For many years, though, he brought a selection of quality winter goods to our living room, with an opportunity to see and touch that a mail-order catalog couldn't match.

1966 Chevrolet Impala SS Convertible

'66 Chevy Impala Super Sport

After I got off work this evening, I went to Godfather's Pizza to eat with Keely, Taurus, and Annie (Keely's friend.) As we were standing in front of the restaurant later, a very well-kept (or nicely restored) Chevy Impala convertible pulled in. Two men and two children got out. They looked like a grandfather, a dad, and two grandkids. I asked the guys if I could take some photos of their car. They seemed pleased.


All the boys wanted a cool car like this when I was in high school. I suspect that a lot of guys my age still would like to have this car! (Just a hunch.)

Taurus mentioned that this Impala is somewhat unusual because it is a two-door. "Quick, Taurus," Keely said. "What year is it?" "'65 or '66," he answered. He was right. After checking some photos online, I decided that it is not a '65 but it definitely looks like a '66.

Related: Chevrolet Impala article on Wikipedia

I Grew Up in Radio Land

A childhood without TV

TV reception was poor, out in the Nebraska Sandhills where I grew up.The picture was snowy and the sound faded in and out. My parents decided not to waste their time and money on it.

Along with the mail, radio was our connection to the rest of the world. My parents listened to the radio news, farm market reports and weather report every morning, noon, and night.

My mother also had an informal agenda of radio shows on various stations that she enjoyed when she was working in the house.

One of Mama's morning shows was Ward Childerson on the Christian station, KJLT, of North Platte, Nebraska. He read letters from readers and played the recordings that they requested. One reason my mother especially liked his show was that a girl from our church (Carol Gurney) had married his brother.

Mama also liked Wynn Speece, the "Neighbor Lady" on WNAX radio (Yankton, South Dakota.) The Neighbor Lady talked about her family and home and things that pertained to housewives. Sometimes she had a guest in for a chat. During each broadcast, she read a recipe, very slowly, repeating each ingredient and instruction several times, so the listeners could write it down.

KRVN of Lexington, Nebraska, had the Back to the Bible Broadcast every morning at 9:00 a.m., and my mother listened if she possibly could. Back to the Bible was headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska. It had a wonderful studio choir, and it featured the conservative Christian preacher, Theodore Epp.

On Saturday mornings, Back to the Bible was aimed at youth and children. One of its attractions was the Danny Orlis serial story, read by Ord Morrow. Danny Orlis and his friends were the Christian literature equivalents of the Hardy Boys, always stumbling onto a criminal plot or getting into a scrape of some sort.

We also listened to Art Linkletter on Saturday mornings. In the last segment of the show, Art Linkletter always talked to a few children and tried to get them to say something funny -- a forerunner of "Kids Say the Darnedest Things" on TV. And on Saturday night, there was "Bohemian Band Time" on WNAX -- a half hour of accordion-dominated music.

After supper, we did dishes with Herbert W. Armstrong's "Plain Truth about Today's World News and the Prophecies of the World Tomorrow." My mom didn't agree with him, but she liked to listen to him. He gave her plenty of reasons to study the Bible.

When we could pick up KOA from Denver, we liked to listen to the children's story that was broadcast every night. There was one story about "ooo-black" that I never did get to hear all the way through. That story was always divided over two nights, and somehow we always missed the second night. When I started reading Dr. Seuss stories to my children twenty-five years later, I finally found out how the story (Bartholemew and the Oobleck) ended.

A relay tower for educational TV was built in Rock County about 1970, and they also boosted the signal of a commercial channel. We got a television set then, but I had already graduated from high school and gone to college.

To be honest, I was embarrassed about my home's lack of television when I was a teenager. When the conversation turned to television shows, I had no idea what everyone was talking about.

When I was a college student and I could watch TV cartoons every Saturday morning in the dormitory, I was disappointed in them. They weren't as funny and fascinating as I had imagined. That remains the case. A great deal of television's programming bores me, but I can nearly always find something interesting to listen to, on the radio.

Now I'm in my mid-50s, and I've decided that it's cool that I grew up with radio instead of TV. Most people my age don't remember Edward R. Murrow, Arthur Godfrey and Amos and Andy on the radio -- but I do.

Old Children's Game: Anty Over

A nearly-lost playground game

In one-room country schools, all the students played games together at recess. The rules and rituals of the games were taught to the young by the playground elders, who had been taught in that same way when they started school.

The passing-down of traditional games from older to younger children ended when the little country schools were closed. A few games have survived, but so many have been forgotten.

For example, "Anty Over" was a game that my schoolmates and I enjoyed playing when we attended a one-room school in Nebraska, fifty years ago. I doubt if my own children have ever heard of this ritualized ball game.

[H]e rose and strolled back again past the little schoolhouse, and it was recess. Long before he reached it he heard the voices of the children shouting, "Anty, anty over, anty, anty over." They were divided into two bands, one on either side of the small building, over which they tossed the ball and shouted as they tossed it, "Anty, anty over"; and the band on the other side, warned by the cry, caught the ball on the rebound if they could, and tore around the corner of the building, trying to hit with it any luckless wight on the other side, and so claim him for their own, and thus changing sides, the merry romp went on.

Source: The Eye of Dread by Payne Erskin. Published 1913, by Little, Brown & Company, Boston.

We played the game very much like it is described above, with one minor addition. If the attempt to throw the ball over the schoolhouse was unsuccessful, we yelled, "Pig's tail!" Then, when the next throw was attempted, we yelled "Anty anty over!" again. Or sometimes, "Anty eye over!" which was our way of saying it fancy.

After the ball went over the schoolhouse, a few moments of high suspense followed. We didn't know if the other team had caught the ball or not. If they hadn't caught it, they would call "Anty over!" pretty soon and throw the ball back. But if they had caught the ball, they were going to run around the schoolhouse and try to tag us.

When the other team came around, they usually split up and came from both sides of the schoolhouse at the same time. Because we didn't know who had the ball, we didn't know which way to dodge! The only escape was to run wildly around the schoolhouse to the side the other team had just vacated.

Our teachers always warned us to be careful of the schoolhouse windows, and I don't remember that we ever broke any of them, though we certainly rattled the window screens a few times with our badly thrown balls.

In Dialect Notes, published by the American Dialect Society in 1895, alternate names listed for Anty Over included Anty-anty-over, Antny-over, Anthony-over, Baily-over, Colly-over and Colly-up.

Hot Cocoa Days

Memories of a mouth-scalding beverage

When I was a child in the Sandhills of northern Nebraska, most country folks still had a milkcow or two. Country kids grew up drinking fresh, unpasteurized milk, and lots of it. Most of our families had plenty of extra milk to make dairy-based treats occasionally -- such as hot cocoa.

In my memory, hot cocoa was served at every winter function where snacks were offered to the children. I can't think of 4-H meetings, for example, without remembering the community hall's kitchen steaming with hot cocoa and boiled hot dogs.

I'm quite sure that it was hot cocoa that we were drinking, not hot chocolate. I don't think any of our mothers bought bars of chocolate and melted them into hot milk or cream. No, I'm quite sure that frugal Sandhills ranch wives made cocoa for a crowd with cocoa powder.

I haven't drunk hot cocoa made from scratch for many years. I remember it well, though. I remember burning the inside of my mouth terribly, time and time again, with that beverage. Then, when the cocoa cooled a bit, it developed a scum that stuck to my lips when I tried to take a drink. And unless I stirred frequently, the bottom of the cup developed a brown, syrupy, cocoa sediment.

I am sentimental about many of the things I grew up with, but I honestly don't miss homemade hot cocoa. On the rare occasion (approximately once a decade) that I feel like drinking a hot chocolate beverage, instant cocoa is good enough for me.

Winter Memories

Winter weather on the ranch

When the temperatures drop and we get some snow, my thoughts always go back to bad snow storms on the ranch of my childhood.

We had a spell of cold, hard winters in Nebraska during the 1950s and 1960s. I mention those years because I remember them, but there were some bad winters during the 1940s, too, including the infamous Blizzard of 1949.

I remember that night temperatures often dropped to 20° below zero (or even colder) during cold spells. During the day, it might warm up to zero. I remember one instance of night temperatures close to 40° below. Extremely cold temperatures made things that should have worked turn sluggish and break easily. The diesel fuel in the tractors always wanted to turn to jelly.

Feeding the Cattle

The cattle had to be fed every day, despite cold temperatures, wind, or snow. In a blizzard, my dad, the hired man, my brother, and my mom, too, often worked the whole day just to get the cattle fed.

Before winter began, the haystacks were moved to a stack-yard in the corner of each meadow that was closest to the ranch buildings. The nearest haystacks were saved for the very worst days.

To get a haystack for feeding, the "underslung", a wide trailer with a tilting bed, was pulled to the stackyard and parked beside a haystack. Then, the haystack (usually five tons or so in weight) was winched onto the underslung. All of this was made far more difficult by snow and extreme cold.

Then the loaded underslung was pulled with the tractor to the area where the cattle would be fed. We pastured the cattle close to the ranch buildings during the winter to make it easier to feed them. We had nice shelterbelts, and the cattle gathered close to them during bad weather. They always knew when a storm was coming.

Being unable to feed the cattle would have been such a horrible thing I can't imagine it. However, about ten years ago, the South Dakota blizzards were so terrible that ranchers couldn't feed their cattle despite tremendous, heartbreaking efforts. Some people lost most of their herds.

Blizzards and Lots of Snow

We judged the severity of a blizzard by how far we could see. If we could see the road that led from our mailbox to our house, we had half-a-mile visibility and it wasn't terrible yet. When we lost sight of that road and could only see the fence of the milkcow pasture -- or maybe not even that far -- the storm was very dangerous. Once we even heard loud claps of thunder during a raging blizzard.

My mother tried to keep a six-week stock of groceries during the winter. When she was able to go to town, she replenished her supplies thoroughly because she didn't know when she'd be able to shop again. Even when the county snow plows cleared the roads, they might quickly drift shut again if the weather turned bad.

When the roads were impassable, our mail delivery was suspended. The rural mail carrier brought the mailbags to our rural store/post office where the mail was sorted. I suppose he delivered mail to the boxes along the highway, but he left the mail for the boxes on gravel roads at the post office. If you needed mail service before the county snow plow came through, you had to plow your own way to the post office.

It's hard to imagine all that now from Kentucky, where we have only a few inches of snow every winter.

(UPDATED to add links and headings and polish up the text a little. I think I'm done with it now.)

Happy Goodman Family on YouTube

Great Classics of Southern Gospel

I'll warn you right away -- if you don't like gospel music, you should just skip this post. But if you do like gospel, these links will bring a smile to your face and perhaps a tear to your eye.

Browsing around my bloglist this evening, I visited the Cheatham County Rock Star Wife. Marisa's blog is a bit "Goodman-flavored" right now -- that is, she's been listening to the Happy Goodman Family, and the music has affected her.

Now I've been listening to them and it has affected me too.

First, I want to share a wonderful YouTube video of the Happy Goodman Family singing "The Sweetest Song I Know." Marisa has this posted on her blog, and I understand why. If you like Southern Gospel, I promise you'll enjoy seeing and hearing this masterful performance from 1968.

If you want more (as I did after watching that great clip), here's a great gospel hit by the Happy Goodman Family -- "I Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now." It's also on YouTube -- apparently a cut from Tennessee Ernie Ford's television show during the 1960s.

Two more great performances -- "He's Coming Again" and "Looking For a City."

Don't miss "When God's Chariot Comes" with J.D. Sumner.

Ah, they were great. They put their whole hearts into their singing.

We recently got satellite internet, which makes it so much easier to enjoy things like this.

UPDATE: Corrected the link for "The Sweetest Song I Know"

Diner Plates and Hot Beef Sandwiches

Vintage dinnerware and classic comfort food

Michael Leddy has a new "dowdy" coffee cup with saucer that looks like old-time restaurant ware. The everyday dinner plates at my house are similar in style. They are heavy, white, Corning® plates with burgundy bands on the rims.

I bought fourteen of them at a flea market a couple of years ago for $1.00 each. I have no idea if that was a good price, and I don't really care. I bought them because I like them. I think of them as my "diner" plates.

When I imagine going back in time to a small-town cafe of my childhood, I see my dad getting a hot beef sandwich on a plate like that. The sandwich is two slices of soft white bread, filled generously with thin-sliced roast beef. It shares the plate with a big mound of mashed potatoes. Brown gravy covers the sandwich and potatoes and fills the plate to its brim.

Flashduck has a good photo of a hot beef sandwich in her Picassa album. In my opinion, the roast beef sandwich shouldn't be open-faced, but otherwise, it's perfect. It looks tasty.

Maggie Osterberg photographed a hot beef made with French fries. The sandwich looks great (mmmm, lots of pepper), but those gravy-laden fries just aren't right. (And the plate isn't right, either!)

Related: Hot Beef Sandwich Reminiscent of Home Cooking

Green Stamps at the Grocery Store

The era of trading stamps has passed.

Image by Wandering Magpie

When I was a child, grocery stores gave trading stamps with every receipt. I particularly remember S&H Green Stamps and Gold Bond stamps in our area, but some other brands of stamps were given by stores in different towns.

The number of stamps a customer received depended on the amount of money he had spent in the store. Stamp books were provided, and full books of stamps could be traded for merchandise in a catalog.

My mother always thought that pasting the stamps into the books was a good job for my sister and me. When she came home from the store, she threw the stamps into a box. When she thought she had a bookful or two, Charlotte and I got a bowl of water and a sponge. We used a lot of water, so the books and the table were pretty wet when we got done. Also, the books usually had some their pages stuck together when they dried out.

Maybe the catalog had one or two little items that could be purchased with a single book of stamps, but most items required multiple books of stamps.

I knew a family that saved enough trading stamps (around 200 books, I think) to buy a dishwasher. It took them years! My mother once had enough trading stamps to get an electric sewing machine. That was when my dad got Green Stamps with some seed corn he bought.

Wikipedia says that S&H Green Stamps is still in business, but I haven't seen trading stamps for years.

In our area, the closest thing to the trading stamp idea is the "Kroger card" which is sort of a combination ID and reverse credit card. When you buy groceries at Kroger, they scan your card and it entitles you to special prices on some items and (when enough dollars have been spent) a 10-cent-per-gallon discount for a fill-up at Kroger's gas pumps.

I am most familiar with Kroger's cards, but some of the other grocery stores, book stores, etc. also have discount cards.

Related:
The Trading Stamp Story
Does Anyone Remember S&H Green Stamps?
Andy Warhol S&H Green Stamps at Museum of Modern Art
Andy Warhol S&H Green Stamps lithograph
New York Times column by David Leonhardt relates frequent-flyer miles to Green Stamps

Image by Hugo90

Rose, Nebraska

A "wide spot in the road" is fading away

Rose, Nebraska, in 2000. Trading Post (left),
livestock feed shed, and machine shop (right)

My address, when I was growing up, was Rose, Nebraska. Rose is on Highway 183, more or less midway in the 60 miles between Bassett and Taylor, Nebraska.

When I was little (1950s), the blacktop road from Bassett ended just south of the Rose Trading Post, and the next 30 miles to Taylor were gravel road. A couple of miles after the road turned to gravel, it passed Grandpa and Grandma (Gilbert and Christina) Swinney's house, which was the Rose post office.

By the time I was 10 or so (early 1960s), Highway 183 was paved all the way from Bassett to Taylor. Not long after that, Grandma Swinney retired as postmistress, and the post office was moved from her house to the Rose Trading Post.

After acquiring the post office, the Trading Post earned the honor of having the "Rose" highway sign there also. It always read, "Rose, population 2."

Rose was in its heyday during the time that I was growing up. The store sold groceries and necessities, livestock feed, and gasoline. Another building housed the Swanson Brothers' machine repair shop. (They moved their operation to Bassett around 1960.)

The Rose Community Hall was located just north of the Trading Post, and it was used for dances, 4-H and extension club meetings, Thanksgiving potlucks and Christmas programs, and as a polling place during elections.

We lived about four and a half miles west of Rose, as the crow flies. We could have driven through pastures, but by real roads, it was about eight miles. I looked forward to my mother going to the Rose store because I might be able to talk her into buying me some bubble gum or perhaps even a bottle of pop.

When Mike and Mildred Riley were running the Rose Trading Post, Mildred had a beauty shop in a room between the store and the living quarters. My Grandma Nora liked to go there to have her hair done, and I remember going with her to have a perm put in my hair once, courtesy of Grandma.

About 1970, several rural schools in the area consolidated and built a community school at Rose. I believe my sister-in-law Kathy taught there the first year that the Rose School opened. She was young and single, and she boarded with my parents. She and my brother became interested in each other, and the rest is history. They've been married for around 35 years now.

The last few decades have been hard on Rose. Population in the county has decreased, and Rose has been one of the casualties. I don't know if Rose still gets a dot on the Nebraska map or not, but it won't completely vanish as long as the school is there.

The community hall is still there, too, and it's probably still used for some of the same events that I remember attending there.

The Trading Post has closed. The machine shop has, I believe, stood empty since the Swanson Brothers moved out.

The post office was located in the community hall for a while, but now it has closed permanently. You can still address a letter to Rose, but the Bassett post office handles that zip code.

Cowboy poet Baxter Black gave Rose a bit of immortality in "Sandhills Savior", a poem about the windmills in the Nebraska Sandhills.

... From Thedford to Hyannis, from Valentine to Rose
Across that sandy country where the prairie grass still grows
You'll see those man-made daisies, silhouettes against the sky
Their steel petals gleaming on their stalks eighteen feet high...

Stovetop Popcorn Is Still Possible

I love microwave popcorn, but I can live without it.

I suppose you've heard the bad news about microwave popcorn. Some people who've worked in popcorn factories have a serious lung condition from inhaling the chemical, diacetyl.

Opinions vary about how much a typical user of microwave popcorn is at risk. It seems prudent to avoid inhaling the steam as much as possible.

Due to the worker safety and possible consumer health issues, I've been thinking that we should give up microwave popcorn until they stop putting diacetyl in it. I have a couple boxes of microwave popcorn on hand, but when they're gone, maybe I'll just get a bag of regular popcorn.

On the other hand, I hope that microwave popcorn companies don't lose so much business that they go broke, causing all the workers to lose their jobs!

We used to make air-popped corn, and before that, stove-top popcorn. I don't think I have my air popper anymore, but I do still have my cast iron skillets.

All you need to make popcorn in a skillet is

• a little cooking oil
• popcorn to cover the bottom of the pan 1 kernel thick
• a lid
• medium-high heat
• patience and vigilance

It takes at least five minutes before the popping starts. When the corn finally begins popping, shake the skillet sideways constantly to keep the corn from burning. Listen carefully, and when the popping stops, take the popcorn off the stove immediately and dump it into a bowl.

With all that pan-rattling, stovetop popcorn is a noisy project. I'll bet many of us have happy memories of that sound, though.

My mother used to make caramelized popcorn. She added a bit of sugar, and she popped it with vigorous pan-shaking. I don't know how she avoided burning the sugar -- I can't do it! Sometimes, I get a bag of kettle corn at a fair or carnival, and it reminds me of my mother's popcorn.

Later, when I was in college, I had a little electric popcorn popper. It was an electric heat coil and a pan that fit onto it. Many of the girls in the dormitory had them, and every evening, the smell of popcorn filled the hallways. Often, it was the smell of burnt popcorn. Those electric coils had no thermostat.

We had an air popper when our kids were younger, and they made many big bowls of popcorn with it. Air-popped corn is bland, so they spritzed it with Pam® cooking spray and dumped salt on it, to add flavor. Most of the salt could be found in the bottom of the bowl when the popcorn was gone.

Unfortunately, the old methods of making popcorn produce dirty dishes. That's one of the reasons that microwave popcorn has become so popular in my home and across the nation. I hope they get this diacetyl problem solved soon.

Related:
Popcorn popularity high despite cautions

Technorati tags: microwave popcorn

Rural Party Line Remembered

Our phone lines are bad -- but they could be worse.

I get pretty disgusted about our telephone line sometimes. I wish AT&T (new owners of the former BellSouth) would lay fiber-optic cable in this part of Christian County, KY. Then we could get a broadband internet connection, which would speed up our uploads and downloads tremendously .

Isaac recently showed me a Newsweek article about the lack of access to high speed internet service in America. Compared with many parts of the world, including places you wouldn't think of as rich or advanced, America is lagging behind on the information superhighway. For example, Estonia has passed us by and is leaving us in the dust.

Even though our telephone lines are inadequate by modern standards, I do remember when telephone lines were much, much worse. Fifty years ago, when I was growing up in Rock County in northern Nebraska, we'd have been amazed at the telephone service I'm complaining about tonight.

In those days, every little community had their own telephone company and everyone was on one big party line. In the Duff Valley where we lived, twenty or more homes were on the line. Every phone call rang in every home.

To call someone on the telephone, the receiver was taken off its cradle and the handle was cranked to make it ring. Our family's "ring", the signal for us to pick up the phone, was a short ring followed by a long ring. The Anders' ring was a long and a short. Duff Valley School's ring was two longs and a short. My Saar cousins' ring was a short, two longs, and a short. It may sound complicated, but everyone knew everyone else's ring by heart.

An emergency (such as a prairie fire) or a community announcement was signaled with an extremely long ring. That was the one time that everyone was supposed to pick up the telephone and listen! Some of the neighbors liked to "rubberneck" every time the phone rang. When my parents needed to make private business calls, they made them from a telephone booth in town.

The phone line itself was strung on poles that were a little taller than fence posts, but not nearly as tall as electric poles. Glass insulators -- the ones that you now see in antique stores -- kept the wires from touching the posts and grounding out. It was not uncommon for the telephone lines to go down in a bad winter storm.

When you wanted to call somewhere beyond the neighborhood, you cranked out a long ring for "Central", the switchboard at the telephone office in Bassett . When she answered, she said , "Number, please," or "Operator," and then connected you to whatever lines you needed.

My mother's Aunt Letha Blair was the night operator at the Bassett telephone office for many years. My mother often called her late in the evening and visited with her between the incoming calls at the telephone office.

Shorty and Garneta Schubert were on two telephone lines--both the Duff line and the Sybrant line. I think the telephone office charged whenever a call went through Central, because people often called the Schuberts and asked them to get on their other telephone to relay a message.

We all thought we were pretty up-to-date when we finally got dial telephones in the mid-1960's. The telephone only rang when the call was for us. I think we still had a party line, but it was just a couple other people. It was quite a change.

Irregardless, I still want DSL!

Technorati tags: bad telephone service, bad telephone lines, party lines, telephone operator, old time telephones

Article about Shovel Dot Ranch

Buell "kids" I grew up with at Rose, Nebraska

The Omaha World Herald Online has an interesting, though short, article about the Shovel Dot Ranch of southern Rock County, Nebraska and its owners, Larry and Homer Buell. Thank you, Carolyn Hall, for pointing out the article.

These guys are neighbor kids I knew in my childhood. The Buells attended a different little country school than we did, but we were all members of the Rose Scouts 4-H Club. The Shovel Dot Ranch had Hereford cattle, and the Hereford 4-H calves exhibited by the Buell kids were always some of the best at the KBR 4-H calf shows.

Larry is my age, and he was in the same grade as me. Homer (or "Skip", as we called him then) was a couple years older. An older brother, Roger, was about the same age as my older brother. Sadly, Roger was killed by lightning as a young man. Their sister Jan was the oldest, a few years older than my brother.

In the article, Homer mentions that solitude is a natural part of the lifestyle at a Sandhills ranch. He is right. Children who grow up on ranches learn to be self-reliant at both work and play. They know how to be alone. It is a useful skill.

I think the Buells own some of the pasture land (the old Haskins place) that my family used to own, south of the Calamus River in Loup County, where the sweet red plums grow.

A Clutter Battle Fought and Won(?)

Cleaning out and re-accumulating

Casper The Incorrigible had a good time, early this morning before anyone was out of bed. He found the bottom door of the china cabinet open, so he explored that forbidden compartment while he had a chance.

To get in there, he had to push aside a stack of assorted foam and paper plates and plastic cups and tip over several tall flower vases. Most of this ended up on the floor in front of the china cabinet.

Somehow, picking up Casper's spill of paper plates and vases morphed into cleaning the china cabinet top to bottom. I "Windexed" the glass shelves and "Pledged" the wood. Then I rinsed the "china" and dried it.

This sounds so simple when I write it, but it took quite a while. I decided to pack away a few things I don't use much, donate a few things to our upcoming church garage sale, and reorganize the rest of it.

In the process, I decided that I don't need much more Anchor Hocking Early American Prescut (EAPC). I inherited my mother's 1960s glassware of this pattern, and I've collected it since then, thinking that I'll give each of my children a set when they set up a stable home. Thus I have two of many pieces -- or you might say, too many pieces!

I packed up the dishes and some other stuff for the church garage sale, and Isaac and I went to town to run some errands. We dropped off the garage sale items at church, and I must say, I was feeling quite virtuous about cleaning my china cabinet and getting rid of a whole box of clutter.

Then we went by the library and used the computers. When our time was up, Isaac went to look for some books. While waiting for him, I accidentally strayed into the magnetic field of the donated-books closet. I do have a terrible weakness for books, especially old books.

I only bought three, and they are in exceptionally nice condition -- well worth the $1.00 each I paid for them. They are:

• The Poems of Eugene Fields (with an ancient strip of paper marking the page with the poem, "A Valentine"
• Leaves of Grass (Carl Sandburg)
• The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

And I suppose I should confess that I bought an old book at the library on Thursday of this week, also:

• American Notes by Rudyard Kipling

That's one box out, and four books in. Am I making progress in the ongoing battle against too much stuff? Not really, but at least the china cabinet is nice and clean.

Summer Days

Plenty of time for play

Collagemama wrote today about the summers of her childhood in which she had plenty of unstructured time to contemplate the marvels of nature. She wonders how much time today's children have for such things.

I remember the long summer vacations we had when I was little. We had three full months of freedom from school. Most days, my mother had some chores for me, but after the dishes were done, I had long afternoons to do whatever interested me. My schedule was open to...

• Play house with my sister
• Look for wild mushrooms after a rain
• Feed bread crumbs to the ants
• Help the mama cat take care of her kittens
• Read a book from cover to cover
  
• Collect snails from the windmill tank in a jar
• Fish with a cane pole from the Skull Creek bridge
  
• Make a comfy nest in the haymow

And if I got tired of doing those things, I could...

• Wade in the windmill pond
• Ride the ornery little pony
  
• Search for 4-leaf clovers
  
• Find Indian turnips in the pasture
• Visit the hayfield to watch the haystacks being made
• Count the ladybugs on the lawn
• Stir up some mud pies and weed-seed coffee
• Eat green beans right off the vine in the garden

Educators are worried nowadays that the kids will forget too much during a long summer vacation. Here in our county, there's been talk of year-round school with a couple weeks off at the end of each quarter. After public protest, that idea was officially dropped, but for about five years now, school has started early in August. It's not year-round school, but summer vacation is greatly shortened.

In addition, many children spend their days at daycare centers or summer camps. They may also have a busy schedule of lessons, practices, and competitions or games. When they do get home, many electronic amusements are available. Certainly, all of this reduces the time that children spend creating their own simple ways to have fun.

Technorati tags: growing up in the country, summer vacation, country childhood, unstructured play

Remembering Work Horses

Tractors had taken over by the 1950's

Just some personal notes...

Around 1930, my great-grandfather Marcus Eaton, closed his small livery stable in Gordon, Nebraska.

There are family pictures and a story about my dad helping some of his Sprague cousins make hay with horses in the late 1940's.

Johnny Seier at Duff, Nebraska (in southern Rock County) still had enough workhorses that he used a team of horses to feed his cattle during the Blizzard of 1949. Lester Miles at Chambers, Nebraska, also took hay to his cattle with workhorses during the winter of 1949.

I was born in 1951, and I don't remember seeing anyone farming or making hay with horses when I was little. (They may have been doing it, but I don't remember it.) I do remember a lot of old horse-drawn hay-making and farming equipment sitting around. It was easy to identify a piece of equipment as horse-drawn because there was a seat for the driver built into it. Such a seat was unnecessary for tractor-drawn equipment. The driver sat on the tractor.

My neighbors here in Christian County, KY, talk about mules used on small farms here, through the 1950's and even into the 1960's. Of course, it is quite rare to see anyone, other than Amish or Mennonite farmers, using mules in the field today. I doubt if any U.S. mines still use mules.

My husband grew up in Independence, MO. They had a little donkey right in town to plow the garden and help with yard work. In the mid-1960's, one of the neighbors got a small tractor and plow. Grandpa Netz sold the donkey then, because the neighbor could plow the garden.

Technorati tags: work horses, workhorses, farming with horses, horse-drawn farm equipment

Rain Showers in Christian County, KY

Life in Christian County, Kentucky...

We had some showers across Christian County yesterday evening and today. The rain was "spotty," which means some areas got a little rain and other areas didn't get much. I've heard about rain amounts from two-tenths of an inch to half an inch.

We had rain here at the house, but I don't know how much. If I see Willis, our Mennonite neighbor, I will ask him. He keeps his own weather records, and I'm sure he'll have a full report not only of how much it rained in our micro-area, but also of how much it rained in various other parts of the county.

That's Hopkinsville's little mall in the background of the photo. You can see how dry the grass is. It probably shouldn't have been mowed so close to the ground. We have some places in our yard where the grass is just as crackly.

The rain has moved out of the area now. I read on the Hopkinsville weather report that the barometric pressure is rising. The weather will be clear until Saturday when we'll have a slight chance of rain again.

Weather Forecasting

Reading about the barometric pressure made me think about my parents. We had a round barometer that hung in the back hallway. Mama and Daddy checked it several times a day to see what the air pressure was doing. When the barometer's needle dropped sharply, it was an omen of an impending weather event. A big drop in air pressure was particularly alarming in the winter, because it usually meant we were going to get a snowstorm.

Both my mom and dad had an ingrained habit of noticing what the wind was doing. At any time, either one could have told you what direction the wind was blowing from. If the wind's direction changed, they knew where it was now, how it had moved there, and what type of weather was likely because of the change.

Like many country people of their time, my parents were pretty good amateur weather forecasters, using their own observations, a few basic weather instruments, and their knowledge of common weather patterns.

Weather predictions weren't as accurate or extensive back then -- that is, during the 1950's and 1960's when I was growing up. The first tornado forecast was issued in 1948. The first computerized weather model was made in 1950. It used 25,000 punched cards. 24-hour forecasts were first issued in the early 1950's. Meterologists first saw photographs of the earth's atmosphere from satellites in the early 1960's. Now we take all of these things for granted.

Technorati tags: weather forecasting, barometers, drought in Kentucky, dry weather

Amazing Garter Snake Stories

Garter snakes in the Nebraska Sandhills

I have snakes on my mind lately because we've been seeing them. A few days ago, we saw some sort of a 4-foot snake headed across the yard. Yesterday, we saw a big blacksnake crossing the highway.

And today, Dennis was moving some railroad ties and found a big brown snake under them. It might have been the same snake we saw last summer in the hollow tree branch. He came to the house twice to tell me to come look at it. I hurried, but the snake disappeared both times before I got there. We think he was retreating to a hole in the ground.

So, I am feeling a bit "snakey" and this has reminded me of an amazing thing I saw when I was a kid in the Nebraska Sandhills.

We had a well that my mother used for irrigating her garden and the lawn. The pump sat at the bottom of a concrete-block pit, about six feet underground. One spring for some reason, my dad took the lid off that well, and what he saw inside was so amazing that he called us all to see it.

The well pit was filled with hundreds of garter snakes, twisted and twined together, and the entire mass of snakes was writhing and wriggling. It was like Medusa's hair on a much larger scale! The snakes had probably just awakened from hibernation and they were either preparing to leave their den or they were doing mating maneuvers.

An Audubon Magazine article talks about tangled heaps of snakes in its description of the mating of the red-sided garter snake, one of the native garter snakes of Nebraska. (The article is about Manitoba. Apparently, there are some incredibly large garter snake dens there.)

One more garter snake story -- also from my childhood in Nebraska. When I was about ten, my parents installed a new furnace. The furnace heated the house by running hot water through baseboard radiators and through coils under the floor.

During installation, the furnace guys drilled a hole through the foundation of the house to insert some of the necessary piping, and they didn't fill the hole when they were done. That fall as the days grew cold, many garter snakes crawled through that little hole looking for a haven for hibernation.

That was the Winter of the Snakes. In the heated crawlspace, it didn't get cold enough for them to really hibernate. They stayed active, and they crawled up into the house through any little openings they could find.

They liked to go inside the baseboard radiators where it was nice and warm. I remember lying in my bed more than one night, listening to a snake slither across the coils of the radiator.

They also liked the kitchen. One time my mother found a garter snake resting inside a cast iron skillet on the gas range (a warm spot because of the pilot lights.) Another time, she found one curled up in a bowl on the shelf.

Every now and then, a snake slithered across the floor on its way to somewhere. I suppose they were hungry! I was afraid to get out of bed at night because I might step on one in the dark!

I found one swimming in the toilet one day. Another snake crawled up into the wall of our bedroom, got stuck and died there, which made our room smell bad for a while.

My mother didn't take kindly to the invasion, and soon the handle of her broom was dented and bloody from beating garter snakes to death with it.

Of course, we located and plugged the hole when we realized we had a snake problem, but it was too late. When spring finally came, my mom opened the hole every morning so the snakes could leave and put the plug back in every night so they couldn't return. Finally we stopped finding them in the house, and my dad filled their entry-hole permanently with cement. Boy, were we glad!

Snake image from U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute.