“Why’d You Move Back?”

My View

I hit the decade mark here this past May. I grew up convinced that the last thing I would ever do is move back to Morse Bluff, I’ve been back for 10 years now and I have no regrets. People ask me constantly, when they find out that I’ve lived in other places, “Why’d you move back?” This is what I tell them, which happens to be some of the same enticements I use when attempting to bribe my brother and sister to make their journeys back home to Morse:

If every year, when your vacation days are replenished at work and you sit down to plan where you are going to spend this precious time off, if the first thing you do before anything else, is figure out when you are going to sneak back to Morse Bluff… you should probably throw in the towel and move back. That way, you could spend your vacation days on real vacations.

If you long to drive a gravel road with roller coaster hills and scenery that changes daily as the crops mature in their patchwork plots and the season’s colors transform your view with every trip through… you should probably give in and start pricing a good piece of land with a scenic view in all directions. I recommend you tell the architect to include a wrap-around porch in the house plans.

If you haven’t seen a rain gauge in more than a week and you are going through serious withdrawals… it’s time to consider that you just aren’t where you are supposed to be.

If a town with a population of 10,000 seems like a big city….Morse Bluff is a perfect fit for you.

If you like to shop in the “big city” but you don’t want to have anything to do with living in or near one…consider Morse Bluff ….it’s there if you need to go, but who wants to drive by a Target or Walmart parking lot more than a few times a year or so?

Sick of stop lights?…it’s a non-issue.

If you desire ample opportunity to become “involved” and have an open invitation to live out your political dreams… you can do that if you move back to Morse Bluff, we are always looking for a breath of fresh air in our government machine.

If you want to raise livestock in your back yard…we can work that out too.

If you love your family enough to actually want them within close proximity of you…you should probably move home.

If you are an exercise enthusiast who doesn’t mind that every once in a while a truck will slow down as it approaches you and the driver innocently, leans out the window and asks you if you need a ride somewhere…this is definitely the place. Along that line: if you prefer encountering deer, opossum, raccoon, and stray dogs instead of muggers while you are on your early morning run….we’d welcome you with open arms, just switch out your mace for some non-toxic pepper spray…Fido is vicious toward strangers but he’s still a member of someone’s family.

The most dear to my heart, quite possibly the turning factor in my personal decision to defy all of my rebellious-youth-ideals and move back to the small town which I fought so hard to run away from: the drive between North Bend and Morse Bluff.

If you want the complete Nebraska experience in one ½ mile of nature’s best, 2-3 times per day, every day of your existence… you need to strongly consider putting in a serious bid on one of the several houses, lakeside lots, or acreages for sale in our fine village and surrounding rolling hills of farm country.

The “commute” between North Bend and Morse Bluff has to be the most enriched path of highway I have driven and I’ve been a few places. Still some may argue but come on, at the very least it’s in the top 10. This drive would stop my heart no matter what time of day I arrived or what time of year I returned for a visit. It still does, no matter how exhausting or frustrating a day I’ve had, once I turn south and cross those tracks, it all melts away and I become so very thankful for this life I have been blessed with.

If you haven’t done it recently, stop on the south side of the river bridge and make your way down to the edge to watch the sun set on the river…just astounding! Right now, the geese are teaching their young to fly, I can guarrantee they will make their way through your picturesque view extra low over the flowing water’s surface, with the twilight as their backdrop. There will probably be some boys fishing off the edge somewhere or on a sandbar with their dog frolicking as they try to cast out their lines near the campfire they’ve built in preparation for their overnight camp out, literally “on the river”. You might get an enthusiastic, hefty wave and a near-deafening burst of motor and laughter as the “cool people” on their air boats, fly past you, obviously enjoying every ounce of what Nebraska has to offer. The sky is full of color at dusk with just the right amount of tassel pollen, country road dust and humidity to bring out the deep fuschias, an array of oranges, and shades of purple, the likes of which you never knew existed….just think, you could share this wonder with your kids every single day.

As you make your way south through the over-reaching trees, it’s like a beautiful, natural, heaven’s gate. You’ve got quaint and ornate lake houses on either side with beautifully kept grounds that aren’t landscaped into plastic, cookie-cutter perfection, instead they blend in with their Nebraskan surroundings. Mixed in between you’ll come across a colorful heard of lazily grazing cattle on the east side of 79 and a taste of industry with the Dolezal operation on the West which it isn’t distracting or destructive looking, it just enforces our ideal that, in Morse Bluff, we strive to cooperate with nature without destroying it.

Then before you know it; there she is, our Morse Bluff: nestled in among the trees on the side of the hill like a cozy, safe harbor welcoming all who approach….like a fleeting gift you will unfortunately miss, if you are rushing by too quickly. My heart used to seriously race as I turned off the interstate in York and made my way home through Columbus on Highway 30, sometimes I’d turn off at Seward and make my approach from the South but other times I would come in from the North. I remember finally reaching the Platte river bridge after driving for 10 hours or so and I would always, always, always slow down to 40 or 50 mph even though all I wanted to do was get home and get out of that darn car. People would wonder why this strange Texan was driving at a snail’s pace; they don’t wonder anymore, I’ve got 6 county plates now and it’s an expectation. You just can’t help yourself, it’s a vision that takes you off guard and you’ve got to decelerate for a moment so you can take it all in after you’ve been away for a while, or just gone for the day, kind of like catching up with an old friend you haven’t seen in ages.

If this sort of syndrome comes over you as you visit your family, or as you’re dropping by for a visit in Morse Bluff…..it’s definitely time for you… Morse Bluff will always welcome you back, even if it’s just for a few of those oh-so-precious vacation days.

The Zen of Mowing

Comedy

I’m having this parenting-type dilemma lately, maybe some of you can relate. complaints surrounding the chore of mowing and the time it consumes in my already busy week are a somewhat common vein in my repartee of conversation. My caring and helpful circle of friends and relatives recommend I pass this mundane task along to my daughter. We were, after all, taking on this and even greater responsibilities at her age.

“So what’s the problem?” you might ask. I think I’m the one who’s not ready to let it go. The plan and simple truth is that I LIKE mowing. There; I’ve said it out loud, I’ve admitted it. I complain at times but with only a half-hearted commitment to the whining. mowing has always been a sort of “Zen” place of peace for me, right from the beginning. There’s that almost, but not quite deafening white noise blocking out, not only sounds, but most of your thoughts, leaving behind an empty page with which to imagine, create, or de-stress, in effect: meditate.

when we were kids, we used headphones while we cut the endless acres of lawn. I would be able to listen to my music without another sibling interrupting, initiating a volume war or taunting me with challenges that my taste in music was crap. Hours spent alone with only my choice of music or my voice in my head were cherished moments in a family with 9 kids.

Even now it’s a place and time where I can think things through, go through the events of the day in peace, and sometimes just admire the environment that surrounds me without TV or other human voices invading my thought process. There’s something about the concentric circles, the two-tone, parallel lines, the undeniable completion of a job that clarifies one’s acceptance of an imperfect world. It’s the mindfulness of these daily experiences that is at the core of meditation, as I understand it, this leads to enlightenment. I’ll bet you didn’t know you could get all of that from a job well done out there on the green.

I come across this “stress reliever” toy in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog every now and then and it kind of reminds me of the grass-cutting-zen-experience. It’s a small, personal sandbox that you can keep on your desk and it comes with a rake and some sort of tiny hoe. The idea is that you take time to sit and “draw” lines in the sand to calm your nerves or you “draw” circles to “center” yourself. People pay a lot of money for those little, tiny sandboxes, in order to “find their inner peace”. Personally, I’d rather get the same effect from mowing my lawn with the added bonus of actually accomplishing something, rather than just sitting and playing with a GI Joe-sized hoe and rake in a miniature cat litter box at my desk. That might be what is holding me back from becoming a successful entrepreneur/businessperson….but it’s difficult to say.

Letting go might be an additional key to enlightenment and I, obviously, need to work on that. I’m coming to the realization that a “tween” will not willingly volunteer to do anything. However, they aren’t so far gone into their inevitable, teen aged, hormonal craziness that they won’t do what you tell them to do….just yet. If I took her out there and handed over the pull start/key to my mowing machine, I’m sure she would do a wonderful job but I’m not so sure she would appreciate the solitude and the time for meditation. It would just be another annoying chore for her and I still view that as a waste of a good mow. So I will continue to take advantage of this time in the summer….maybe I’ll come up with a doozy of an article some time this month while I follow my mower….that’s what I should be thinking about rather than focusing on my own inner peace….there are those of you out there that might whole-heartedly agree.

It’s finally okay to be Green.

Comedy, My View

I managed to finish painting another wall in my house this weekend. Thanks to the beautiful rain and cool weather, I faced no guilt staying inside to work on this unfinished winter project. Whenever I paint or mow or do any sort of task of the like where other human beings become scarce, lest they be asked to help, my mind is prone to doin’ some deep thinkin’. Well, as deep as one gets with the shallow raw materials I’ve been blessed with.

My daughter and I watched this program last week that depicted the earth in the year 2100. It was, as she complained several times through the first hour of the program; “too depressing”. I’m glad I decided to stick with it until the end and so was she. I know it might have been considered a propaganda-type program by some but it gave us hope. One of the most interesting stories had to do with the fate of the people on Easter Island. The program took us back to the community of people that used to flourish on that island until they cut all of the trees down, used up all of the natural resources and there was nothing left to support life. The hanging question being; “What was going through the mind of that person who cut down that last tree?” In their case, they could easily look around and see that there were no more trees standing; no more shade, no more produce, no more life as it were. With the rest of us, it’s easy to put it out of our minds as we toss that aluminum can into the trash, it’s easy to say; “I’ll do better next time.” or “It’s just one can, it won’t make that much of a difference.”

The hope I was talking about came from idea that the civilizations that survived at the end of this program, in the “future” as they imagined it, were those that started conserving and making those small and large efforts now…today. They showed several story buildings in New York, each floor with their own greenhouse gardens and trees on the rooftops and the use of sun and wind as energy sources, seemed to be key. The city of Greensburg was mentioned and replicas of it had popped us all over the Midwestern United States because they were completely functional on their own and didn’t depend on outside resources for their electricity or water.

I’m simplifying everything for sure but my daughter and I had a New Year’s resolution this year to learn more about recycling/conservation and to make more of an effort to stick with it and actually do it. Boy! This was more of a commitment than I realized it was going to be. It takes work every day but we began building a list of things that we can do now in addition to a “wish list” of things that we try to do more and more. Here’s some of that list:

  1. Walk there. Raise your hand if you’ve every parked at “Do It Best” to pick up a bag of salt or a garden hose, got back in your car and drove over to the “Mini Mart” parking lot to pick up some bread and milk. Or you finished your breakfast at the “Corner Cafe” and drove down to “Ron’s” to pick up a prescription. I’m embarrassed to admit that I have….used to. It may take some extra time but consider walking there, if you are physically able, whenever you can. You know, “across town” in North Bend is really just 10 blocks or so…in Morse Bluff….two. Shopping malls are set up now with every store you could possibly need there on the strip within walking distance, there’s really no need to move your car as you go from store to store.
  2. Use those reusable grocery bags. I know you’ve got them, every time I come into a store with mine, everyone in line comments on how they have them in the back seat of the car but they forget them. It won’t take much to walk back out and get them, I have to do it all the time. My commitment to the practice of using my grocery bags was not the current, passing fad or the impulse buying of them at the cash register at every convenience store. It was/is the unshakable vision of those blue and white plastic bags that pepper every open field you look at these days. The next time you are taking a drive in the country; you know…along 30 or 79….look out across a field and count the number of plastic bags you see, if you are able to count that high. As you get closer to Fremont, the numbers get higher. Just ask a farmer if they’ve noticed a difference over the past 10 years, they’ll tell you. The kids that bag your groceries will moan and groan and try to pass you off to another bagger every time they see you at the register but you’ll get used to it, it’s a small price to pay and you can consider the fact that you are setting an example.
  3. Recycle. We are starting with just the basics: milk bottles, plastic bottles, cardboard and aluminum cans, in order to get into the habit. We are so far from perfect, but we are trying. I’m currently attempting to find a glass recycling place that’s near here and if anyone can help me out with that one, please write the paper and let me know. But, cut yourself a break, recycling is a huge undertaking! Much larger than I imagined it would have been. I’ll admit it, I used to be very diligent about recycling when I lived in a town where you just had to leave the green box of recyclables at the end of the driveway and that’s where my responsibility ended. It’s more of a challenge when you have to store the stuff until you can haul it off, you have to haul the stuff and you have to figure out where it needs to be hauled. We are lucky that both Prague and North Bend have drop off receptacles because that makes more of the recycling easier. We just need to do it and train our family to do it until it becomes a habit.
  4. Grow your own. I know I talked about my garden “fun” last month but those seeds are so much less expensive than the produce. Even if you factor in the labor, a little water if it doesn’t rain enough and some plant food. Think of the money you will save at the gym….it evens itself out…plus you know what you are eating.
  5. Carpool. Every chance you get. If you are going to dinner with friends; consider meeting at a central location and doing an old fashioned road trip to the restaurant, it’ll give you more time to catch up. Consider it for your drive to work, it will take some rearranging, but it’s possible. I’m still going it alone every day and I hate that. Here’s another thing I’ll never understand; we put all the kids on a bus to go to the game, why are the parents all driving up there separately? We’ve got to take the kids up to the school to put them on the bus anyway….why not have a couple of buses for the fans? It takes a little extra planning but we are all on our cell phones and text messaging anyway. Use that technology for something productive for a change and plan a carpool next time instead of just talking about nothing and calling to ask; “What are you doing?” I hate that too.
  6. Water Conservation. Consider replacing some of the juicy Nebraska foliage we are used to having in our front yards with less water-demanding type flowers and plants. I’m still researching this and experimenting because I love my flowers so it’s a work in progress. I have found that, for example, geraniums don’t require near as much water as say daisies or petunias and that’s just the potted, annual-type flower. I’ve got a long way to go in this area. The big one: a green lawn, is something that I’ve always let the rain determine, but that’s me. It’s not a status symbol to me to have the best looking lawn in the neighborhood so I can’t really say that’s a result of any sort of conscious conservation on my part…just coincidence. Please take a minute and think about the amount of water that goes into a green lawn, then multiply that by one single neighborhood…it’s mind boggling what we use for this strange, accepted “necessity” that really serves little productive, purpose.

That’s most of it so far. I did buy a diesel burner (don’t worry, it’s emissions are conservative as well) that is supposed to get up to 59 miles to the gallon to replace the one I had that made 48 mpg but that was more of a reaction to gas prices than to conservation though I really do go to the pump less than most people I know. The car is currently averaging only 45 mpg but that might have to do with my driving prowess more than with performance. I’m reading more and more about how to drive to get the most from my gas tank, it’s just a matter of giving up some speed….a whole lot of speed….in my case.

Maybe you could consider that my green lawn; that thing that I’m not ready to make changes to in order to conserve. Survival of the fittest is an interesting phenomenon and this readiness to make these small changes in our lives will be a determining factor. There’s always room for “hope” when we are open to change.

Psychiatry in the Produce Section

My View

Work is just nuts these days; it’s more competitive and we are all on the edges of our seats wondering if our jobs are secure, with trepidation, we take it day by day. The national/local news and government are scaring the pants off of us with threats of “pandemic” proportions. And who really knows what the heck is going on over there in Pakistan…what are those people thinking anyway? Even if we don’t want to know, the 24-hour news shows will forcie it down our throats while we attempt to enjoy an evening meal.

My suggestion: start a garden. I promise not only will it remove you from in front of the television but also away from all of this world-craziness for a while every day. I begged my father for a patch of land and bribed him with dreams and guarantees of several varieteis of fresh tomatoes, gargantuan pumpkins, and sweet, juicy, black diamond watermelon. Eventually he took the bait, we shook hands and he informed me that he would supply the wanter and the dirt and that’s all….the rest was up to me. Victory was mine!

I have a vision, well several, but one is of a good-sized garden that can provide produce for the families of my brothers and sisters. Most of us live around here and with the price of one tomato being what now $5? You’d think it contained tobacco or gold or something! It’s becoming ridiculous. My thought is to be able to let the relatives shop in their very own, personal, open-air produce isles. Part of the vision is that our pack of ankle-biters (my nieces and nephews) can get out there in the rows and pick the tomatoes and peas and pumpkins themselves, like we did when we were kids. I understand there are children out there that believe their lettuce comes cut up in a plastic bag from the refrigerated section in the grocery store! Everyone needs to experience a fresh, leaf-lettuce salad where occasionally, a grain of soil curnches between one’s teeth; a little dirt never hurt anyone. With that dream in mind, I pressed on.

This vision of mine began to fully materialize when the massively intimidating roto-tiller of my youth, magically appeared next to the patch of ground this past weekend. I remember this beast the minute it came into view. It had to be the same one with it’s large, slightly rusted motor and huge red fender covering the deadly looking blades lurking under the flaps on the back. I was informed that I would be honored with performing the ground-breaking ceremony, otherwise known as the tilling. The skepticism had to be undeniably obvious by my raised eyebrow because I got a: “You can do it, you’re gonna do it, I’ll get you started, let’s go”, and off we went.

After his little pep talk of sorts, he reaches over and pull-starts this 35-year-old contraption…one pull mind you…farmer/small engine genius that he is. Just like that, my father is walking breezily, next to this ear-splitting monster for a few feet, barely holding the one handle with the tips of the fingers on his right hand, making it look effortless. The man missed his car salesman calling. I jump in with renewed confidence, how hard could it be…right?…it looks so much easier than I remembered.

Holy mackerel!!! First of all, the handlebars are at the height of my armpits so my elbows are up by my ears, the ground I’m attempting to work was part of a corn field last year so there’s huge tractor tire tracks in it and every time we (me and my new mechanical friend) go over a rut of any size; I practicially get thrown from my precarious saddle. My generous instructor informs me that “it might buck a little, just hang on and don’t let it get away from you” then he drives off. Farmers…like he’s got better things to do on this sunny day in early May. I guess I was okay with his leaving because I like to figure most things out for myself without anyone watching me make mistakes, this is definitely one of those things. I’m a nurse who pays special attention to the ergonomic workings of people’s manual labor jobs and this one would have taken the cake, had I been observing myself at this particular task. There was a point at which I was just hoping I would be able to walk away without having to wear a cervical collar for a couple of weeks, a sling to support a possibly shredded roatator cuff, not to mention hoping that my face remained intact should I “let it get away from me” and fall prey to those potentially carnivorous blades.

It took me a while but I stuck with it and then I repeated the fun because the farmer told me that is what he would do if he were planting a garden and I tend to follow instructions from those that should know. When it coems to gardening anyway. The second pas was nowhere near as exciting and the soil finally became soft, workable and suddenly, full of promise and possibility. I stood back after I was done, smelled the turned earth, cracked my neck a few times to get my head back on straight and finally started to feel like the sheer terror of the last few hours of my life, was completely worth it. Well, once the rining in my ears subsided…mental note to self: ear plugs would be of benefit for the next round with the roto-tiller.

Now for the fun part: the planning and the planting. I should clarify my idea of “fun”: the weeds are non-existent for this short period of time and the possibilities are endless because I have packets of seeds that would make anyone jealous. More seeds than I will ever use but I couldn’t resist when leafing through the catalog in Januay. I am a novice so I spent that time it takes to loosely measure and I even drew a colored map of what I envision the garden to look like complete with colored-pencil drawings of the vegetables in their beds. I could picture it in my mind, I measured meticulously with a marked broomstick before I pounded in the stakes and ran the string between them to mark my straight rows. I carefully placed some of the seeds in somewhat perfectly linear fashion down each row bed. I’ve started some seedlings in my house for transplanting and I even tacked the packets at the end of each furrow as part of the therapy I mentioned earlier. Everything is in it’s place and as it should be, all is right with the world.

To me, gardening just makes sense when most things around us don’t. I have the luxury of enjoying it, I won’t depend on it to feed my family so it won’t turn into work….well at least not until the weeds take back over and the temperatures start to climb. Still, I’ve managed to create an outsource for my anxiety and work-related stress and to me, that alone makes it worth the while. With every weed yanked free and vigorously shaken loose until it’s lifeless and then thrown out of the garden with a vengeance; so too will go the pressures of the world and the stress of my day….it’s the perfect therapy.

The Shack by William P. Young

Reading

shack

My friend Shelly recommended I read this book and I trust her so I purchased it and I finally got to it this past Feb 2009.  I have to say it was quite interesting, I was expecting a religious, preachy novel about hell and damnation but I was surprised to be actually, totally into it while I was reading it.  The ending let me down because he did such a fantastic job of leaving it up to the reader to believe what they wanted to believe happened.  Then at the end, he explained it….at least that’s how I felt after reading the last Part….having somewhat of a medical background it all made sense.  I didn’t want it to make sense; I wanted my imagination to continue to ponder everything I had read and I loved having that feeling of ethereal wonder and spiritual introspection……this text made me question my beliefs.  Maybe I’m just showing how incredibly inept I actually am but I didn’t get the purpose of the ending.  I truly enjoyed myself and thank you Shelly……got any other great suggestions?  I passed the book on to a friend as the epilogue suggested I do and I’m writing the review here as the prologue suggested I do……I guess I’m doing my part to start the “movement” that they are hoping for.  ha ha ha.  It’s worth the read either way.

The Outlander by Gil Adamson

Reading

outlander

I chose this book from a literary catalog, probably a year ago or so and it has sat at the bottom of my steps, in my bottom-of-the-steps-should-read-next pile since then. I finished it around February this year 2009, starting it on a plane as usual.  I was wanting to read something entertaining and I hadn’t picked up a western since my initial venture into that genre two summers ago with Louis La’more, I felt it was time again and this one promised a female heroin. She delivered, I must say. The plot twisted around and wafted back and forth through time until you really weren’t sure what happened and when and I couldn’t put it down. You must read it, it’s an interesting twist on a western set up and you will fall in love with her characters and you will sympathize with our female heroin. Trust me.

Voices Of Our Time…Interviews by Studs Terkel

Listening

studsterkel

Loved this! I listened to the CDs more than once and the interviews are so timeless. Especially interesting are the political discussions, I’m amazed to be able to realize how quickly history repeats itself….during my life time even. I laughed and cried at some and I would love to lend this set out to anyone who wishes to borrow them. Wonderful for a commute or just entertainment at home. What a great loss this past year.

The Egg and I

Fiction

I finished reading this book around Christmas time ’08. I loved the book because it was written much like I would like to write some day. Plus the descriptive references of the farm and the animals is always a fave with me. She followed her husband to this place and they made the best of it. She wasn’t incredibly fond of the chickens but they were a part of their livlihood and one must do what one must do. Very enjoyable book and I found myself intrigued, amused, and laughing out loud by the character development, description, and antics.

Power Outage Opportunities

My View

Many weeks ago, my daughter and I were sitting down to supper. I asked her the question that I usually ask her at the end of the day; “Well, did you learn anything today?” Fortunately, she still answers me thoughtfully and doesn’t just grunt or ignore me…yet. She replied on this particular, atypically warm day in February: “I like Spring; it smells like the last day of school.” I’ll never forget it. The anticipation and happiness at the thought of school letting out, beamed from her face.

Isn’t that how we were all feeling that Sunday when most of us were sitting in our silent, chilly houses with our circuits all disconnected? Probably, the farthest from it for most of us: the consensus was that it was a long day, more than a day for quite a few, and it was boring and cold. Personally, I love to wake up in the morning when the power is off. The world is at a mandatory standstill which is a huge, welcome delight and relief. It’s as though the earth stopped spinning out of control. Being a Sunday; no one was expecting me to be anywhere and I could lay there and enjoy the complete slience. No humming , no fans, no computer noise, no phone, no fridge kicking on and off. Only the sound and vibration of the cat’s motor running against my ear. He must have detected a slight nip in the air at some point during the night; when I opened my eyes, I kind of felt like it was as if he was attmpting to have as much of his surface area pressed up against my warm head as felinely possible. This tactic proved successful,judging by his outward signs of contentment. The Spring birds were outside my window, dicussing the unseasonal weather as well. You could tell that they were confused and miffed at the whole situation, possibly discussing the idea that they may have returned too soon, and whose fault that was.

The temperature outside wasn’t as cold as it could have been so snuggling back in bed with a book and my warm, water-bottle of a cat, was an option for keeping toasty, at least for a little while. How often do we take the time out of our lives to just linger in bed and read? What a treat on a Sunday morning before the Spring chores begin and our outdoor, after-work lives, start all over for the season.

Not only did the outage provide us with time to catch up on some reading but how many of us drug out the familly board games? Those boxes we put away in the closet once the Wii, Nintendo DS and 24-hour Sports channels took over the house, made their way to the forefront on Sunday. Twister, Monopoly, Connect 4, Apples to Apples, Clue, Life, Chess, Go Fish and my least favorite: Dream Date Barbie. Eventually, our frosty feet got the better of us and we had to head for higher ground, in other words; a house with electrictiy. But even that was a welcome change, to stop and visit with family on the weekend, without rushing around trying to get everythning done beofre the work week starts again. You can’t finish the laundry without power….oh! for that excuse on a regular basis.

The other thing I did on that Sunday morning was pray. I’m not a religious person really, but something I witnessed, while driving in that crazy storm on Saturday night moved me to ask for help for the family who woke up Sunday morning, not only out of power, but out of their home. I know a lot of us were complaining about the electrical company and how much time it took them to get us country folk all juiced up and back to normal, but they were out there working in full force with teams of trucks everywhere ereecting ples and stringing lines. Almost all of us can be thankful to the electricians, the firemen, and the paramedics, that hours of power was all that we lost to that storm.

This morning, as I let the anxious, aforementioned cat out on to the deck for his morning constitution; I stood out in the morning air and took a few deep breaths in. Even though there were still several small, lingering clumps of snow glowing in the dawn’s shadows on the grass…..I could detect that undeniable scent, yes, definitely…..the last day of school.

Fowl Weather

My View

I know it might be difficult to conceive or understand, but I have received divine confirmation that Spring is just around the corner.

I was driving through Schuyler the other day on my way into work, already feeling the stress that mounts every day as I get closer and closer, white knuckles start to form, fingers starting to make an impression on the steering wheel and there it was…a literal sign from above: “CHICKS ARE HERE!”

Maybe if we were in downtown New York or in some seedy part of any big city, that phrase might make you conjure up all sorts of lewd mental pictures and it might even be offensive to some of us.

However, those three simple words; boldly, yet innocently on display in the middle of the marquee in front of our local farm supply store, made me smile, made me reminisce, made my day. I turned the blinker on, made a right and spent 5 minutes de-stressing while I took a quick peek at the new life skittering around the cattle tanks in the middle of the store, before proceeding on work.

Somehow that smell of sawdust always takes me back and it hit me as I walked through the door. Hundreds of the fluffy yellow peeps would arrive at our house as if by magic, in half-shoe box sized crates with tiny air holes, toward the end of every winter of my young childhood life. We girls must have looked like foreign giants as we gathered around and tried to catch a peek at them before Dad opened the boxes. It generally took plenty of repeated reminding but we wouldn’t be opening any boxes until we got their new home ready. This unrestrained anticipation insured many able hands were available, so we all quickly set to work.

Down in the basement kitchen; we would unroll the corrugated “fencing” until we had a good-sized circle just big enough for the amount of chickens we had. They needed to be kind of bunched together to stay warm, but not so close that they would smother each other. The adults in the room must have had some sort of mystically, scientific equation involving Pi that went into figuring out the exact size of that circle. Without a care for the specifics, we happily used two hands to clothes-pin the pen in place with the extra roll of cardboard there handy so we could easily enlarge the circle as the chicks grew out of the original one. The large, belled, warmer lamp would be hung from the rafters, perfectly centered over our miniature corral, a new bulb inserted, flipped on and tested to make sure it worked. We kids were then allowed to jump in and spread the sawdust in a nice even layer. Mom would get out the small chick feeders with the holes and we would have to wash the pieces of the clear glass, bell jars and the glass attachments that, together, became their watering stations. The pretty jars always started out so clean and the chicks never seemed to care…they just pooed all over them. I still remember being mesmerized, watching the bubbles float up as each round, glass tray filled with water and though our little hands weren’t able to master the technique; Mom could always expertly flip the water-filled jars over and get them set down in the dry dust, without spilling a drop.

Now we were ready to meet the new additions to our farm and we always got excited until we were reminded that the boxes would be set in under the lamp for a while to warm up and then eventually we’d let the chicks out. They were counted and tallied and released at some point and I remember spending hours just watching them “do their thing” there under that lamp. Any sudden movement from me on my little stool next to the fence and they would bunch up and start their quiet cacophony of chirping like a bunch of kids on a playground when a tractor trailer approaches; they back away, talk about it, then move toward it as it passes by to get a closer look. The tiny chicks’ memories were even tinier and it only took seconds for them to resume their positions and activities of drinking, eating, scratching, excreting and of course, dozing….they were just babies after all.

Our chicks co-habitated with us for a few weeks until they sprouted a sufficient amount of feathers, March got closer to April, and the mercury got farther away from zero on a more consistent bases, at which time the little chickens would be moved to the “chicken house” along with their warming lamp and all of the paraphernalia. At that point, they became additional chores on our list, the newness long worn away, and the sweet little fascinating fluffiness just a fleeting memory replaced by pink skin, pin feathers, and sharp, demanding, little, always-hungry beaks. The sweet cuddly memory gone until that smell of sawdust returned again to our basement the following year.

As I stared down at the incredible variety of skittish, newly hatched fowl there at Bomgaars that morning; it reminded me of the importance of taking time for these moments within the seasons. Even though, I don’t raise chickens, at least not yet…maybe someday, I enjoy the preparation and anticipation for new life that comes fresh in the early Springtime. I’d obviously forgotten that as I let myself become wound up and stressed out before I even get to work each day and time just goes by without my knowing what day of the week it is. The presence of this seemingly insignificant, three-word “sign” that was thrust by chance, into my daily routine, reminded me to start watching the ditches for that tell-tale green haze as I drive to work, to take that time during the day to walk and deeply inhale the approaching Spring, and to slow it down because my white knuckles would not have been conducive to life, should I have decided to pick up one of those fragile babies, I stopped in to see, at my local farm supply store.