Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Masters Hotel - Burr Oak, Iowa

I am a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Almanzo and their daughter Rose Wilder Lane. My interest in little Laura and little Almanzo began in grade school when a teacher read one of the Little House books to our class. I was hooked! Little did I know at the time that when my parents moved our family back to Missouri, from Illinois, that Laura and Almanzo's Mansfield home would not be far away.

Recently, I  found a couple of pictures from a trip to Iowa and a hotel that Laura's parents managed when she was a child. Their stay was for only a year according to the Masters Hotel website. Because most tourist places are currently closed due to the Coronavirus pandemic, I thought I would share!

Traveling through Iowa  

It has been a few years since I dragged my adult daughter along on a trip to Iowa and the town of Burr Oak. Before I share our short visit there, I need to talk about traveling through Iowa. Of course, I knew that Iowa grew corn because I had ridden in the backseat of a car at the age of 18 to an Iowa based wedding, but I was not prepared for driving through the state of Iowa during a prime growing season of corn. On each side of the highway, corn stood tall, thick and in perfect rows. I had never experienced claustrophobia aggravated by corn until that trip.

When there were breaks in the cornfields, we were allowed glimpses of beautiful farms with houses.

Now back to the trip.

On the Road

The trip from Southern Missouri to Burr Oak, Iowa was not a day trip for me. It was necessary to stop in a small city with a name I don't remember and at a two story "motel" with a name I also don't remember, to spend the night. Before we left home, I found on the internet a possible place to stop, but did not make reservations since I wasn't sure we'd end up there. It was an easy location, just off the highway we were traveling. In those days, I used Mapquest printout pages to assist me in traveling.

The minute we entered the building (NOT pictured above), I didn't like the dirty feel or the smell. No problem! We couldn't stay there anyway. The place was booked up with road construction workers who were living there until they finished the construction on the highway we'd just exited. This is one of those "God things" that I love, where he watches over me and gives me blessings without my asking. I had no way to check the internet from my phone for another place to stay. I'm pretty certain it was the era of my flip phone (still have it in its original box). So I did the next best thing! I asked the clerk if she could recommend a nice place in or near that city. She recommended a beautiful inn (place in photo above) that was built in a country setting. Our room with two comfortable beds was super lovely and clean!

Burr Oak

The next morning we headed out and finally reached Burr Oak, Iowa. I wish that I had driven around Burr Oak and photographed it, but I did not.

There was a visitor center with items you could purchase for souvenirs.

The Masters Hotel

The Masters Hotel sat across the street from the visitor center. The hotel was operated by Charles and Caroline Ingalls (Pa and Ma) after leaving Walnut Grove. Pa did more of the managing and Ma did the cooking. Laura is reported to have been nine years old at the time. Her sister Grace was born in Burr Oak. Read about her birth here. In my photo below, you can see a window air conditioner. Photos on their website do not show the window unit. I conclude they switched to a central air system.

The Masters Hotel was its own museum. We took a step back in time and with a guide toured the hotel. It's been years since we took that trip, but I remember the kitchen's location was in the basement. I believe the Ingall's bedroom was located there, as well. Something else that stuck in my memory was a bedroom on the top floor, a tiny room, smaller than most of today's walk-in closets. Our guide told us that the room was often used to bunk several men overnight. It was hard to wrap my head around that at least two men would sleep on the tiny cot like beds while other men slept side-by-side on the floor. The hotel got their money's worth!

The day was beautiful. The hotel was alive with history. Our guide helped us imagine life then and the people who passed through the Master's Hotel. 

Have you read any of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books? Have you visited any of the historic home sites? 

Little House on the Prairie Museum - Kansas

If you know me at all, then you might remember how much I loved reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books as a child. Who am I kidding, I still read them. I'm a huge fan of all things Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose. Since I live near-ish Mansfield, Missouri, I have visited that home site many times since my children were in elementary school. I have visited yearly, sometimes once, sometimes twice a year. 

I didn't mean to (yes I did), but I got my daughter hooked!  Dr. Lovely daughter is a voracious reader and one summer as a child, while we were perusing a flea market, she picked up one of the Little House books and asked me if it was a good book.

My heart jumped to my throat. Could this be true? Was she really asking me this question? At that time, I didn't realize that Laura and Almanzo Wilder's Missouri homestead was under two hours away. Once I found out it was there, we took our children and visited the homesite and its museum. My daughter loved the first trip. My son not so much.

The other day, I was going through some of my old digital pictures and found pictures from two road trips in 2011. Dr. Lovely Daughter and I had traveled to Kansas to visit the Little House on the Prairie Museum. As close as Kansas is to Missouri, I had never been to Kansas or the Little House on the Prairie Museum. This was a day trip. Here are photos from that trip.

Before we saw the Little House on the Prairie site, we saw Independence, Kansas. I can't recall what this building is but I sure love the architecture. If anyone knows what the building is or was, let me know in the comments.

Then there was this road to the Kansas homestead and museum. 

Then a sign to let us know we had arrive. I'm not positive, but I don't think any of the buildings are original buildings to Laura's family. I believe, however, that the land was actually homesteaded by Ma and Pa Ingalls.

A schoolhouse and another building. To the right of them is a cabin built in late 1970's.  

Here's the cabin a little closer. 

A sign!

Inside the little cabin.

Inside the school on the property. 

I had to add this picture of an ugly tourist in the school room! Do not make fun of her. She hates her picture taken. She told me so.

 

Here is Dr. Lovely Daughter sitting on the front porch, looking out over the land that little Laura lived on. Well actually she was looking at the camera, but before that she was looking out over the land.

Visit their website for more information here. I have a couple of pictures from our Iowa trip where we traveled to see the hotel where Ma and Pa worked. I will write that for a future post. The Iowa trip was not a day trip. I might have gone corn sane a few times.

If you're interested and haven't read them here are posts regarding the Mansfield site: Laura Ingalls Wilder Gravesite, Laura Ingalls Wilder and more Pictures and Laura Ingalls Wilder Quilt Block Patterns.

Not My She-Shed!

My Barn/Shed that is about 40 years old and needs a haircut! 

It was a warm day in January when I decided to spend thirty minutes cleaning out the winter creeper vine in a section along the back fence. I'm having lower back issues so don't tell my family that I did that, but I needed to start the process. I have fought the invasive winter creeper for years--a battle I am not winning. I have no clue who introduced this vine into our rural neighborhood, but those people are not my friends. 

I took this photo January 1, 2020 of my old barn/shed that is covered in the winter creeper vine. I did not work on this project. The building is made of old but sturdy wood and it's a mess with it's missing boards and creepiness. I need to have it taken down, but it's not in my way. It has character.

When I looked at my photograph, the shed gave me the vibes of a hairy monster. The least I could do is give it a haircut, I guess.

Rural Rewards and Blocks

Living in a rural area where the people population is less and small towns are your go to place for goods and services seems like a wonderful idea and a Mayberry experience. If you want to avoid others being in your face and place, if you want the government to stay out of your business more, if you want fewer restrictions on building structures and if you’d rather hear frog peepers instead of people voices, rural living might be for you. Well-water tastes better than city water. The air smells better unless you happen to live downwind from individuals who buy up real estate to run egg laying farms that are not favored close to towns or cities. If you want to cast your eyes on an ever changing country landscape complete with wildlife and experience stress relief, the rural experience might be for you. People in rural areas mostly know your name and sometimes your business, but if anything goes wrong, rural folks line up at your door, in the olden days. Today, they might show up on your social media page to help out.

Rural life offers rewards, but it also can be a stumbling block.

Growing up rural meant for me that I rode the school bus for at least an hour one way, depending on the year. Back then, I couldn’t join after school activities. I wanted to but knew the reality of the commitment. We lived in the area where my mom grew up, but when she was a child/youth her school was only a couple of miles away from her home. She could join activities and walk home after, as needed. My school was much farther away. Kids today in rural areas still have a long commute to school. At our district, there are school activity buses now where kids can participate after school and be delivered to centralized bus stops for parent pick up.

Remote rural areas can also draw in the criminal element. Because of the remoteness, rural areas are handy places for manufacturing meth and stashing stolen goods.

Inconveniences Linked to Rural Life 

Rural individuals go to their doctors less and often miss early diagnosis of chronic diseases (Saylor, 2012). If there are tests to be done, patients are sent to large cities quite the distance away.

Getting to any appointment anywhere can be difficult for the elderly or for anyone who does not own or can't borrow a vehicle.

Aging in place in remote rural areas is a concern unless you have family living with you or nearby. If those are in place is your house aging compliant and if not do you have the money to make it so. If you have passed the above obstacles, there is one more--a shortage of people who can help the aging population with housekeeping chores in rural areas.

Transportation

Unavailable transportation not only restricts doctor visits, but other important life things. Without transportation, the pursuit of higher education is a struggle or not attainable. In most cases, education is a way to escape poverty.

Employment opportunities cannot be continued if an individual does not have a vehicle or a ride to work. There are no city buses in the country and most of the time not a reality in small towns. However, in town individuals can ride a bike or walk to their destination. And without a job, it’s difficult or impossible to buy or maintain transportation. If an individual is lucky enough to have a car, then the cost of fuel can be a hindrance especially when the commute to employment is from a rural setting. Therefore, living in a small town is a better option, if you do not have access to transportation.

Shopping Choices

Choices of grocery stores are limited in rural towns and often are not as affordable without the competition. The same goes for buying clothing. What choices are there in a small town? Why not order online you say? We'll get to that later.

Emergency Services' Delays

If you live in the rural and become ill, do you have time to wait for an ambulance that might be traveling twenty plus miles to get to you?

Living in the rural, you might be an easier target for criminal activity since they also know that law enforcement does not patrol rural areas as much as (perhaps) they should. How will you protect yourself and property until county law enforcement can assist you?

Inclement weather takes down electricity on a regular basis in some rural areas. Are your lines the last to be fixed? These are issues rural people face daily.

Internet 

Let's talk about internet options and actual working internet. Internet connectivity in my mom's area was better ten years ago than now. Today, it is a pathetic or nonexistent reality in many rural areas. You might think that the internet is a privilege and not a right, but I argue that most things in today's business world are performed through online access: job applications, online medical care and education access, just to mention a few.

All over the United States, broadband legislation is introduced and not adopted (NCSL). Profit over people, in my opinion.

Schools

Many administrators and teachers do not want to teach in the far away land called The Ruralhood. In my 29th year working for a school district, I have lost track of the number of building administrators who have passed through our doors. Some used the district as a stepping stone, some left because they wanted a school closer to home and some exited due to the noncompetitive salaries we offered at the time. The same goes for getting good teachers and keeping them.

However, the quality of education in our district has never waned. I can't speak for other rural schools, but our district through the years has provided excellent learning opportunities with up-to-date technology for both college and trade school bound students. We also have a vocational school. Not only have we kept its doors open, but in the next five years, with the support of our community, we will build a new vocational school so that our students and neighboring rural school districts' students may learn a trade.

Housing 

Housing is also a rural and small town problem. Well, let me clarify. Often rural communities and towns lack not only in quantity but quality housing options, places where humans should live. It's easier to be a slumlord in rural places. 

Final Thought 

As the rural child grows up they are faced with life decisions that includes where they will call home. Will they live in a rural area where the benefits are soul pleasing or in a city where opportunities and conveniences abound? Many of our career bound students do not return after college, which is sad, but I can't blame them. Sometimes the land of opportunity wins out over soul pleasing. I mean, we need to pay the bills.

Do you live in or ever have lived in a rural area? Did you experience any of the issues listed above?

Sources:
RHIHub
Problems of Rural Life Support the Rural Landscape Saylor Academy, 2012
NCSL: Challenges facing Rural Communities

The Unlife of Gardens

Nature is alive and well on my 3/4 of an acre. Recently, I read that nature doesn't like voids. This is true for my property. If I clear or clean out anything, nature is already working behind the scenes to fill it up again. Today is not about the living, but about the unlife in my gardens.

Mr. Gnome - Some say he is creepy. I think he is wonderful.

This wire owl I've had for years, but didn't know what to do with it. This year, I decided to repurpose my thirty year old mailbox post and shelf, attach the owl to it, fill the owl with a hundred solar lights, and place it in one of my gardens. This setup looks cute by day and but by night is a glob of eery light in a dark yard.

Live frogs and turtles are welcomed here, but also fake frogs and turtles.

HEADLINE: Metal Daisy grabs her fifteen minutes of fame by photobombing Miss Phlox and Miss Lily's photo.

That's all. Just a little unlife in my gardens.

A steady pace...

and a little slimy is the Missouri snail, at my place.

  

Bubblegum, a Store and Tar

This post appeared on my other blog in 2009, but belongs at The Ruralhood.  

 

There was not a nicer man than Ernie the storekeeper. Growing up in a rural area, his store was located diagonally from my childhood home, across the highway.





When my brother was old enough, we would sit together on the slope of our yard and watch people buy gas and groceries at the store. There were days when Ernie would step outside the store, walk to the edge of the sticky tarred highway and toss Bazooka™ bubblegum to us. He would announce that he was going to throw it our way and that we needed to catch the wrapped gum. We would race to our yard’s boundary limit and proceed to catch the gum. I can’t remember ever catching the gum in the air. 

 

I’ve always been a people watcher and loved spying on the patrons when they visited the store. I also loved visiting the small country store filled with counters of candy and shelves with other food items. Oh and let’s not forget the pop cooler. RC Cola™ was my favorite. Outside the men would sit on a bench visiting. Inside the store, the women would shop and the men could also sit near the woodstove, hot or cold, at the back of the store where the post office was located. Everyone seemed to know your name and your family.

 

As I grew older, I was thrilled to be chosen to cross the highway to get our mail. I was told to hold the mail tightly, so not to lose it. When spring turned to summer, I would shake my shoes and go barefoot all summer long. (My feet still cry when cold weather arrives in MO and I have to stuff my feet in regular shoes.) Not only was I instructed to be careful with the mail, I was also told to look both ways for traffic and then run fast over the highway. And I did. I would run like heck over the bubbly hot and sticky tarred surface that paved the highway. My feet did suffer some minor burns, but I was always up for the exciting challenge. By the time I returned to our side of the highway, the bottom of my feet were coated with hot tar, gravel (from the road that ran in front of the store) and grass (from our yard). I didn't share with Mom that the road burned my feet because she might have made me wear shoes. I would meet mom at the front door, deliver the mail, then find a shady place in the grass to pick the offenders from my (not so tender) soles.  





This picture of the store was taken six to seven years ago when I was photographing my grandchildren. Today, most of the front half has caved in.

 

Even though the store is a mess and Ernie is long gone, he is not forgotten by me. As long as we tell the stories of the places and people that filled our childhood, they will be remembered.

 

Childhood is  only a whisper in time.  Spread the memories!

 

Young Marrieds

I should post this now while the memory is still clear. The snowy part of the lingering 2018 winter reminded me of my first bad weather related experience while driving. 

As young married people, eighteen years old, we were hardly a step away from childhood and most definitely not old enough to navigate or cope with life issues without more instruction or experience. Right decisions were iffy.

The year before I married, I traded in my light green 1965 Ford Mustang for an orange AMC Gremlin. Neither car traveled well on Missouri snow covered roads. 

A week or so before we married, in February, a snow storm visited our area. Soon after that, we had another. 

This is clearly not a snowstorm, but shows you

how young we were. Picture taken the summer after

we married. In case you were wondering these

were the longest shorts that we owned. 😏  

The snow fell fast through the early morning hours. My new husband had left our home, located near a cool truck stop, with his carpool buddies and headed to his welding job forty miles away. I worked at a garment factory in a small town five miles from home. In spite of dangerous road conditions, I knew that my attendance was required in order to keep my job.

The first road I pulled out on was the main highway, in front of our house and  snow covered. I traveled slow speeds to the small town where I worked and used the  more traveled streets to get to the final street, leading to my workplace.

That particular street was the worst. No plowing had been done. As my orange car struggled through the snow, the back end slid right and left. I tried correcting, but didn't know what I was doing. When I reached the sharp corner that led up the small hill to the factory, I accelerated, not because I thought it would help, but because I was scared that I wouldn't make it. Once I reached the nearly empty parking lot, I saw that the lot had been plowed, but was still a mess from packed and falling snow covering everything again.

I drive my Gremlin as close to the door as I can and stop against a mound of plowed snow. Feeling weak, sick to my stomach and the need to cry, I rested my forehead on the steering wheel. In those moments, I considered just leaving without saying anything to my supervisor, but I'd gotten that far so I trekked through the snow to the building. 

Inside, I found Carol at her desk. I told her that I was going back home, that I barely made it there, and the roads were horrible to travel. Her face showed surprise and I thought that I would be fired for my word vomiting. Instead, she told me to go back home and that I shouldn't have tried coming in. 

Back in the car, I turn around and headed down the snowy hill without much trouble. The next corner was another story. To clear the corner, I needed to find a compromise between slowing down and speeding up. All went well until I cleared the corner and needed to accelerate again. The tires spun some and I gassed it. The car made it a couple more feet before stalling in the middle of the street. 

Out of nowhere, a man showed up at my window and knocked, and I cranked down the window. Snow blew inside the window hitting me and the man in the face.  

“You got it stuck! We'll push you out, but once we get it free, you've gotta gun it." He motioned to another man standing behind my car. Both were bundled up in coats, gloves and hat. "Keep it rolling until you get wherever you’re going.”

I thanked him, rolled the window up and waited until the back of my car rocked. When it moved forward a bit, one of the men  pounded  on the car and I gassed it.  The car moved forward, and I drove on down the street, the lightweight backend still swaying side to side. When I saw the stop sign at the end of the street, I gassed it more, prayed and glanced in the rearview mirror for the men, but they had disappeared. I kept the car going, drove through the stop sign at the end of the street without stopping and up on the next better plowed street. 

Five miles later, I passed the truck stop where several semi-trucks idled in the parking lot, perhaps waiting on drivers eating breakfast or waiting out the storm. Ahead of me, I see the prize: my little  house and its driveway! I remember saying out loud, “When I get home, I will never leave again.” 

In the distance, I also see a big rig barreling down the highway coming in my direction. Believing at that moment that I should not wait on the truck to pass or I would get stuck again in the middle of the highway, my feeble mindset influenced the heaviness of my foot and I accelerate the car to get in the driveway. It was at that moment that my car bucks and slides sideways, in the road. I don't look again at the massive vehicle coming towards me. Instead, I take my hands off the steering wheel in surrender. In that odd moment, a calm filled me. I pressed the gas petal and the car jets into the snow packed driveway and stops. The semi-truck blows its horn at me as it passes which did not make me feel any better.

For a  few minutes, I sat in my car, head on the steering wheel and sobbed. 

Not knowing me, you might think I vowed to never drive on snow covered roads again. In spite of a desperate declaration of never leaving home again, I did leave, and I became more determined to conquer inclement weather driving. Don't get me wrong, I don’t like driving in the pouring rain, icy or on snow covered roads, but over the years I've made myself drive it as needed. 

I don't like feeling a hostage to anything.

I learned my share of lessons that day. God took care of me the entire way in spite of myself and still does. I learned about angels in human form coming to the rescue, my first experience, but not my last. At eighteen, I learned about the fighter in me who surfaced that day. I will need that fighter spirit again and again.

T.

To Grandmother's House We Go

This week on FB, I posted a photo that I have hanging on a wall in my house of a road that once led to my paternal grandparents farm near Long Lane, Missouri. The road is still there. My grandparents are not and their farmhouse has since burned down.

The photo evoked emotions from some who had lived off of and traveled the road. 

Those people shared their memories. One said that the trees in the photo were no longer there. A couple of people wrote about riding the school bus and playing in the creek that the road runs over and picnics. I talked about my own memories and a cabin that my dad had built overlooking the creek when he grew up there.   

For me, the road begins at a highway just before the small town of Long Lane and eventually passes a church with a cemetery where some of my relatives have graves. There were other ways to get to this road that turned onto the road where they lived, but we normally didn't go those routes.

A sign on the chain link fence around the cemetery.
This sign message...is good to know. 

Memories are what we use when we cannot revisit something or someone. 

Memories are unique for each person, personalized by experience. 

Sewing Part 1: Resuscitation

Back in the day, I was not alone in sewing the clothing I wore. Many of my friends also sewed. To say  that I've sewn a thousand garments, household items and gifts combined, is probably an understatement. I used to sew a lot.

Then I stopped.

There is a new generation of young women who are sewing! This not only loads my heart with happiness because sewing is a great skill, and I feared a lost art, but also inspired me. These particular ladies have YouTube channels and vlog (video blogging) about their “makes” and experiences.

I've started sewing again.

Machines and Things

With my daughter's help, I concluded that I stopped sewing (my clothing) in the mid 1990s. During that time, I was responsible for raising our kids alone and running the household while working a full time job, due to my (then) husband living about two hours away and finishing his degree. My busyness and the fact that I could find clothing for less money at places like Tempo and TJ Maxx, for my family, I stopped sewing clothing.

Then a baby quilt changed my mind! My niece had a baby and I wanted to )make her a quilt. I doubt if she’ll use it. The quilt is rather blinding bright, but my niece seemed to genuinely appreciate the effort. It was a fun project. After that I decided to remake some thrift store buys because I loved the fabric (inspired by my early days). Then  I seamed up a couple of tops, from patterns. Oh and I decided to make another simple quilt. It's cut out and stitched, but not all together.

A couple of Christmases ago, my daughter gifted me with a serger. I didn't really use it until this year. Recently, I replaced my old 1974 New Home model machine  (seen here) with a Singer. 

New Home machine circa 1974

My old machine (see photo) still sews, but oh so slowly (probably needs a new belt). Plus, it’s all metal and super heavy. The new machine makes buttonholes kind of on its own! My old one does not. I haven't used the new buttonhole feature, yet, but if I read correctly, I pretty much place the fabric under the foot, click the heels of my ruby red flip flops, three times, and bam buttonholes are born! Okay, it's not that easy, but almost, especially compared to how I made them in the past.

I'm about to tell you more history of (my) sewing, so, get a pot of coffee, a cup of tea or a gallon of wine, I don’t care. It's your drink. Or if you're bored, you can opt out.

A Little History

I've always felt "creative". I think growing up rural with limited TV time helped me find things to do to fill my creative mind and free time. By the way, I can't ever remember ever being bored in my lifetime. What a great way to live--responsible for my own entertainment. 

My parents worked hard to provide for their family of five, but there was little extra money, for a clothes hungry girl like me. In about fifth grade, while we were still living in Washington, Illinois (Trading Lives), I started noticing fashion and asked my mom if I could pick out my own clothing. She said yes, forked over the money, and let me wander through a huge store until I found what I wanted. It was a magic day. (I did get lost from my parents, but I don't think I ever told them.)

Back in Missouri, during my junior high years, I felt the pressure of possessing lots of clothing, because the other girls did. I knew that sewing my clothes would be the answer. The tides were changing at school and we were allowed to wear pantsuits to school, for the first time ever. Previously, we girls wore dresses to school, rain or shine, hot or cold temperatures. That year, I reconstructed my first garment, from a sleeveless shift dress, opening it up to resemble a vest. I sewed this on my mom’s Sears brand sewing machine, along with some hand sewing. This idea came to mind when I remembered my Grandma Minnie sending me a dress, while we lived in Illinois, made from a hand-me-down. The dress was gorgeous.

There would be a lot of sewing in my future. Come back for additional posts and see my first sewing pattern and what I made. In high school, I made this dress (see below), a very short mini dress.  

This dress was made from a double knit fabric:

With this pattern: 

Coming next post: Sewing Part 2: Good and Proper

What fashion from your day has been worn in modern day? What shoes were you wearing your senior year in high school? Would you wear them today?



When a Snake Bites!

Dad on a river, probably the Niangua.
My favorite picture of him

With my dad’s passing, I’ve been thinking about our family’s version of Indiana Jones.  Dad was called that more than once, the Indiana Jones of Missouri.

Recently, I read an article, here, that reminded me of him, about a young man bitten by a copperhead. We’ve had torrential rain and devastating flooding, all over MO, and have been reminded to watch for relocated snakes, but of course we don't think about it.  

Snakes are a part of rural life (city too). As I’ve mentioned previously, I happen to like snakes. I think they’re cool. I don’t tell people that information much or there is a big possibility I will lose friends. Snakes are not on my fear list, but if at this moment there is sweat forming on your brow and your heart is racing, then perhaps you have a snake phobia. If so, then you should not click on the links in this post, and you should not travel with me down the rural memory road.

I asked my dad once about how many snake bites he’d received in his life. His eyes twinkled when he grinned and said, “Oh I don’t know, Teresa, too many to remember.” (He almost always said my name in sentences, even if I was the only one there.)

I told him I remembered once when he’d reached inside a feed bin (made I think out of a refrigerator on its back or maybe an old freezer) and he came out with a snake bite. His hand looked pretty bad, swollen and somewhat bruised after that. He said it was a copperhead that had bitten him. Even though he was bitten a few times in life, it never changed my mind about snakes. Knowing the way he felt about doctors and hospitals, I don’t remember him visiting a doctor, either.

When I was a kid, I remember dad owning a snake bite kit, something like this found on Ebay. The cylinder thingy had a blade inside to (maybe?) cut the bite open. After that the suction cup, one half of the cylinder, would be used to suck out the venom.  

John Miller a “snake expert” said in the aforementioned article, in the Springfield News-Leader, that in modern day there is no cutting the bite area or sucking out the venom (paraphrased). You just need to get to the hospital as soon as possible and keep the bite below your heart (edited). He said there is no reason to take the slain snake to the doctor for show-and-tell since the modern anti-venoms are great.

Oops, I might have taken a brown recluse, live spider, in a brown paper bag to the doctor’s office when I was bitten. I felt the need for show-and-tell, to prove it was what I said it was because I knew they’d say something like “I doubt if it was a brown recluse.” And they did! And...I was ready to point to the brown paper bag, I’d placed on the counter in the room, with the spider inside (yes, it was in a jar, but they didn’t know that).  



Dad as a young man, holding a snake!

My dad always respected wildlife and nature and more than that he loved it. When a hawk that he was nursing back to health landed on his arm and dug his talons in flesh, Dad said, “He didn’t do it on purpose.” Dad always said that about snakes. They don’t seek out people to bite them. We intrude or scare them. He also said that about spiders, how they have their place in the world and that some...are...beautiful. Of course, I tuned most of that information out because spiders and I go way back and it's not a pretty story.

Now when I was a kid...

Soon we’ll be looking at another summer in the rearview mirror, waving goodbye either with gladness or tears. When I was a kid, the older adults said, “Now when I was a kid, things were different.” 

I'm now, not so suddenly, that person.

When I was a kid in the sixties, summers were different than what kids experience today. As a child, I played outdoors, my brother and I pretending we had a ranch, using tree branches for our horses. Our cattle were illusions of our minds. Leafy grasses became our currency. Often barefoot, we stayed outside all day, except for meals. When we moved to the city, for three years, we still played outside all day, but we had other kids to play with and bicycles to ride.

In the country, our bathroom was an outhouse, our bathtub--a washtub or a pan of warm water. I didn't know that air-conditioning existed. We slept most hot summer nights, upstairs. After church, summer Sundays were spent at my grandmother's house eating good food, making ice cream, swimming in the creek or river, and playing with cousins. 

My summers as a teenager were different than younger childhood. My brother and I no longer played together. We fought as siblings do. I thought about boys a lot. I read many books. One summer, I discovered the wonderful world of mythology through the traveling library from town.  I also discovered the classics written by authors like Jane Austin, John Steinbeck, and Kurt Vonnegut. I willingly disappeared into fantasy worlds. 

I taught myself to play the guitar. I played John Denver and Eagles songs. 

One summer, I discovered soap operas. They became my family and friends. I cried with the characters, fretted, fell in love and looked forward to seeing the characters each day. And "so were the days of our lives". 

I discovered talking on the telephone with friends, while being careful of what I shared, since we were on a party line and had neighbors who gossiped. Our phone was attached to a wall in the kitchen--a rotary dial. I didn't know about cell phones, but did fantasize about "what if" we had a car phone, and I could talk to my friends on the way to town. By that time, we had added a full bath for five people, to our house.

In the summer, rural teenagers(in my area)dated or hung out in groups of friends and drove continuously around our "square" in town on Saturday nights. We ate hamburgers and drank cokes from Mr. Swiss or the Snack Shack. We watched movies at the town movie theater, but preferred the drive-in movie at the edge of town. Some kids sat on river banks drinking beer or wine, bought by older peers, while some kids smoke their cigarettes and other things.


Entertainment.

All summers, for most kids, were spent in church activities, ice cream socials and Vacation Bible School.

I enjoyed my summers, but always longed for school to begin again, since I craved the social life with my friends. 

Kids in my day were imaginative, read books and played hard physically, but that was my childhood. Kids are still imaginative and read. Every new generation forges their own childhood summer memories according to what is available to them and what they choose to do. Their memories will mean no less to them, than mine do to me. They will inevitably say to a younger generation,"Now when I was a kid...." 

Looking back on summer.