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When I was in a high school “Civics” course, we started out learning about democracy. We learned about the different political parties and their evolutions so we were familiar with their different approaches to problems. We also learned that as time passes the parties’ ideals change and sometimes they are nothing like when they started out. We learned about the proper procedures for debates and about using parliamentary procedures to hold meeting and debates. As it was also a presidential election year, we were able to use some of our new f...
Rod and Laurie Ely both started their careers as teachers. Laurie taught elementary classes for 23 years in Red Cloud. Rod taught junior high science classes for two years in Superior before deciding to work at his dad’s elevator in Guide Rock. Eventually, Rod took over ownership of the elevator and has since passed its management to his son. Like all couples, Rod and Laurie had dreams about their future. A recurring one was to own either a gasoline station or a restaurant. Fate stepped in when Rod decided to build a fertilizer plant and his b...
In the early 1960s, ABC aired a sports anthology show called “Wide World of Sports” where viewers were treated to the “thrill of victory and agony of defeat.” It came on every Saturday evening and my whole family settled in to watch. Mom would prepare a smorgasbord meal ahead of the show. In spring and summer, there would be potato salad, sliced leftover meat (ham, chicken, roast beef and meatloaf), bread (to make sandwiches), lettuce, tomatoes, celery, onions, carrots, radishes, green peppers, olives (green and ripe), pickles (bread and but...
When I first was married, food and shelter were of the highest priority and I had to quickly learn to stretch a dollar. Shelter was fairly easy because our apartment rent was very low. By taking simple steps like turning off lights and putting on a sweater in the winter, I was able to keep the utilities in check. These were all habits I had brought with me from home. Food was a different story. Mom had provided meals at home and in college I participated in their meal plan. Presto! Food appeared in front of me and I ate it. Now, however, I...
When I was young, my parents had an antique beer stein that sat on the fireplace mantle. At one time it had a pewter lid but that had broken off years before. Instead of holding beer it held pennies. Whenever a penny was found it would be deposited in the stein. Every once in a while the stein would come off the mantle and my brother and I would count out the pennies with help from a parent. First they would be counted into stacks of five and arranged in rows of ten. Each row was then carefully inserted into a paper penny wrapper and set...
When I was growing up, we had two horses. Our first horse, Nickel, was a light-colored palomino (early corn color). She was given to us for free because her owner was being transferred to Germany. She was 16-years-old and blind in one eye (supposedly from running into a barbed wire fence). Nickel was well-trained and her blind eye was never an issue. I could jump on her with only a halter on her-no lead rope. I would then lean forward and tug on one side of the halter or the other to steer her. Our second horse, Viceroy (named for the...
When we lived in Rhode Island, our house sat on a 3/4 acre lot. The back of the lot was overgrown with brush and was fenced off for the donkey to roam. In front of the house was a small lawn. My father would mow this lawn with a reel style push mower. If he decided the back yard needed to be mowed, he would borrow a gasoline powered push mower from my grandfather. Moving to Pennsylvania, my father was faced with a huge lawn on a hill. Somewhere he acquired a gasoline powered reel mower. This was a monster that needed to be started with a rope...
When I started traveling in my camper, I made a reservation at a state park in Pennsylvania near some horse trails. I had volunteered to help a local horse club repair a part of their trail around the end of May. From there I planned to attend a Mother Earth Fair in Wisconsin the weekend after the Fourth of July. After making a reservation for this event in Wisconsin, I was left with a little over a month to wander westward. I decided I would find a campsite wherever it looked like there would be an opportunity to do some sight-seeing. Leaving...
When I was about four years old, my father bought my mother a swivel rocking chair present. It had a thick padded seat and back and was made of maple. It was great fun to sit in and rock while spinning this way and that. It was also large enough to climb up on Mom’s lap and cuddle while she read a story. The only problem was that it was top-heavy. My brother and I found out, if we ran across the living room and leaped into Mom’s lap, the chair would tip over backwards. If you have ever sat on the seat of a dunk tank you have some idea what it...
When I was young, many companies offered free merchandise if you sent in a specific number of box tops or seals with a “small fee for postage and handling.” After eating many boxes of the same cereal, Mom would be presented with a stack of box tops and I would beg for a check to cover postage and handling so I could have my very own cereal bowl with the cereal logo on it. Of course, Mom would comply and even help find a big envelope, address it, fill out the order form and buy a bunch of stamps to send it off. Every day after that I would che...
As a young lad my father always wanted a pony. The family owned a summer house on the ocean with a fair–sized lot. The lot was at the edge of town with a sheep farm across the road from the house and a large field beside it. The main problem with having a pony was that the family’s main residence was in the city with no room for a pony. After my mom and dad married and had my brother and me, they purchased the summer house from my father’s mother, my grandmother. After a complete remodeling and winterization, we moved from my mother’s parents...
My mother-in-law was raised on a farm. Like many farm girls, she headed for the big city as soon as she was old enough. By the late 1950s, life had not turned out quite as she planned. She returned to her old neighborhood; a single mom with four youngsters in tow. Undaunted, she bought an old farm house and soon became involved in the community. In those days communities knew what they wanted or needed. Whether it was a park or a restaurant, if they wanted it, they built it. One thing they felt was needed was a nursing home so they would have...
Years ago at my baby shower, my mother-in-law gave me a dozen pre-folded diapers and a dozen flat fold diapers. Checking on line, I find there are many more options for cloth diapers today, but that was all there was back then. Along with the diapers, I received big safety pins to hold the diapers in place and plastic pants to fit over them to prevent leaks. I also received several boxes of Pampers (the only brand available) in the newborn size. When my daughter was born, she was on the small side. As soon as I brought her home, I laid her on t...
When I was in college, I had to take a course in computer programming as a requirement for my major. This would have been fine if the course was in “Basic” language, but the preferred language for mathematics was “Fortran IV.” Back then, computers had a “main frame” that took up a whole building and programs were written on “punch cards” that were produced on special machines. The first day of class, I knew I was in trouble. The teacher talked gibberish and the textbook seemed to be written in a foreign language. As hard as I tried, I had no...
Our house in Pennsylvania was in a valley at the foot of three large hills (probably considered mountains out here on the prairie.) The one to the east had a gentle slope with several rolling hills. Behind the house, facing south, was a hill with several fields. From the back of the house to the top of this hill was about half a mile straight up but longer if you went through the fields. Across the street from the house was another hill facing north that was about the same height as the south hill. The north hill, however, was tree covered and...
When I lived in Pennsylvania, the hardwood trees put on quite a show in autumn. Along with the cool weather, harvest and start of many holidays, my drive home from work was full of exciting sights. Starting as I entered a valley, there was a farm with a vegetable stand. While all their produce was grown on their property, they had also planted a corn field in a maze pattern instead of the usual neat rows. There were two observation towers built in the field. Once the corn reached around six feet tall, the maze was offered for adventure with...
One of my side ventures when I was traveling was a trip to a Mother Earth News Fair in Wisconsin. I saw it advertised in the magazine and decided to check it out. When I called to purchase tickets, I asked about camping spots. They told me they had sites on the grounds, so I booked one for Thursday through Monday. That gave me plenty of time to explore the area before attending the fair Saturday and Sunday. As usual, I got lost several times and arrived at the fair grounds around five or six in the evening. Expecting a park-like campground, I d...
When I was young, our gardens were “iffy” at best. While it is impossible to beat a tomato, freshly picked from the vine and eaten while still standing beside the plant, one tomato does not make a salad. Luckily for us, there was a roadside stand next to the road my father traversed to and from work each weekday. He would stop on his way home and purchase fresh picked seasonal vegetables. Back then you had to wait for the growing season in your area to purchase different vegetables. Tomatoes in December were unheard of unless you bought “ho...
I use shredded paper as bedding for my livestock in particular my pig. It takes quite a lot of paper to keep a pig happy; much more than an average household can produce. To have enough paper to shred I get the old newspapers and magazines from convenience stores and a newspaper office. Often, I like to read the old newspapers from other towns but sometimes my stack of my want-to-reads gets quite large and I find myself reading “news” that is over a year old. Reading a year old, Kansas paper I found a front page article talking about that pap...
My father was born in Rhode Island in 1915. Like most youth of his time, he was always tinkering with automobiles alongside his father, brother and friends. These vehicles were somewhat different from today’s vehicles. If you have ever watched Walt Disney’s movies “The Shaggy Dog,” “The Absentminded Professor” or “Flubber,” you are familiar with the cars of my father’s childhood. These cars needed to be driven to be acceptable. My father and a friend even took a camping trip from Rhode Island to Yellowstone National Park in a Model T Ford they...
When I was working at the stable at the Honeymoon Resort, our trail passed a small lake at the top of a steep hill. It then wound down the hill to a marshy area with a pond in the middle of the marsh. Every year large snapping turtles would travel from the lake, down the trail, to the pond to lay their eggs and back to the lake. One year, as I was descending the hill with a group of riders behind me, I came upon a turtle “blocking” the trail. By “blocking” I mean it was so large it completely covered the trail. There was no way the horses...
As a teenager, summertime meant firemen’s carnivals. Almost every town had a volunteer fire department and one of their main fund raisers was a carnival. Starting after Memorial Day and ending around Labor Day there were few weeks a carnival was unavailable for an evening’s entertainment. There were professional “carnies” with their rides, fun houses, and games of chance as well as local clubs sponsoring food stands, bingo, raffles and other such activities. Most nights there would be live entertainment where you could dance, sing or just en...
Living in the country, laundromats required major effort to ready. You had to gather all the laundry together and haul it several miles. For this reason, we always had our own washers and dryers when I was growing up. When I went off to college, there were washers and dryers in the basement of my dorm. The main difference from doing laundry at home was having enough change to feed the machines. Linen was provided in the room and board contract, so I only had to strip the bed, round up my towels and take the pile down to stand in the laundry...
When we first moved to Pennsylvania, my mother discovered in the spring the fields were alive with wild strawberries. These strawberries were small but packed with flavor. Although it was time consuming, my mother would go out with a bucket and pick these berries. Sometimes by brother and I would help, but more luscious strawberries would go into our mouths than in our buckets. Once the berries were picked and washed, they needed to be hulled. My mother had a utensil for this job. It was metal, folded in half, and worked like tweezers. It was...
When I was about 11 years old, I came home from school to find my mother sitting at the dining room table with an outdated calendar and three picture frames in front of her. The pictures on the calendar were watercolors of birds, probably done by a famous artist. I asked Mom what she was doing and she said she was trying to decided which three pictures she liked best. She planned to frame them and hang them in the stairwell, possibly adding more if frames became available. This was the first time I had paid much attention to a calendar, let...
