Labor Day Closures

It is Labor Day Weekend and that means things are beginning to change to oranges and burgundy shades now. When I was a child, it meant end of summer and beginning of school. Now school starts much earlier. DH and I rarely travel on this busy holiday, but hunker close to home feeling the change in seasons as if it were a mantle laid over our shoulders. It is still warm out, in fact, it is hot and steamy. The sky has haziness to it, like a layer of summer dirt has rested over the sun waiting for a clean wash from autumnal rains.

After 30 years, our garage door opener gave out so DH has been replacing both sides. It has been slow due to health and heat.  But today it is done and now clean up begins. While buying the openers, I saw a clearance sale on fountains. I have had a wooden one DH made on the deck. It was nothing pretty…just all we have had for years. Now I have a real one, a small waterfall really. I love sitting there with my tea pot early in the mornings listening to the water dance across the rocks. I can shut my eyes and be by any stream I have or have not seen in my lifetime…and all without worrying about a bear biting my behind!

Thanks to Martha at Lines from Linderhof (http://www.lflinderhof.com/) our lunch was a Shady Gables chicken salad and tomato spice bread. Shady Gables is a wonderful English tea room in Missouri that we once visited, and the salad has both apple and onion in it. The tomato bread is a lovely autumnal crimson shade made from end of the season tomatoes. Email me if you would like the recipes.

Happy Labor Day to all my readers!

August Is Passing!

This morning I noticed how dark it was at 6 a.m. It felt like the middle of the night instead of a time for dawn. I read in my chair a while before starting the kettle. Then Miss Biscuit and I took our tea tray outside where it was so obviously a late week in August.  The wrens were gone; the hummers had begun to migrate and hit the disappointment of red geraniums before moving on; the verbenas had yellow leaves and marigolds were drying up. The crickets were singing, reminding us that autumn was coming. Spiders were spinning webs from deck posts to flower pots.  The summer was passing right before my eyes.

While early mornings whisper autumn, a few hours later summer’s force lets us know he hasn’t gone yet. Temperatures are so hot that breathing is a challenge. Sweat pours off our skins with any exertion. Lunch is no longer pleasant on the deck so we retreat to the kitchen for cool salads using the last of the tomatoes. Afternoon means a “sit down” in recliners with books.  Evenings might be (boring) television because the air still burns the skin, and then there are the “no seeums” which blister my bare legs and ankles being a high price to be outside at dusk.

This afternoon I looked through a book that did not live up to my expectations. Consider the Fork: a History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson is packed full of facts, but something about the presentation left me uninspired. The one chapter on spoons was more interesting than most. There was quite a variety of spoons such as bone or pearl spoons for eating soft boiled eggs since egg yolk tarnished silver. There was also some info on silver marrow spoons. The 18^th century Georgians had a fondness for bone marrow and a special spoon for digging it out was useful. But the most interesting was the development of the teaspoon in the 17^th century when the English began adding milk and sugar to their tea cups. The teaspoon moved from being just for tea service to the dining table.

The summer has slipped by fast. After winter woes and spring situations, summer has been loaded with issues too. September looks inviting at the moment. I can hope that this year will end with some good things maybe. I am ready for cooler air….some writing….some walks…some pleasant moments outside other than just morning tea. I pulled my Cranberry Autumn tea out this morning, but I thought, “No, not yet. It will be savored more in a week or two when real autumn arrives.”

Please Meet Ernie Pyle

When I started teaching writing lab, I had never heard of Ernie Pyle. I had done a lot of WWII reading, and I was familiar with Bill Mauldin who drew famous cartoons and Andy Rooney who reported for newspapers during the war. So I was pleasantly surprised when our textbook had us study Ernie Pyle for writing clear details. My students knew little about WWII and thought war was some glorious Rambo romp. So I was thrilled to see them learn writing but also take a realistic look at war through this journalist’s eyes.

Pyle grew up in the flatlands of Middle America among the corn fields of Indiana. Last fall as we drove to Kentucky, I caught sight of a small sign near Dana, Indiana that mentioned Ernie Pyle’s home. I had DH put on the brakes! Dana itself was only a spot in the road surrounded by an ocean of corn. But there was a beautiful white house next to two Quonset huts serving as a museum. Unfortunately they were closed. But this month on a return to Kentucky, we routed ourselves right by Dana again to visit the Ernie Pyle Home and Museum.

Ernie Pyle was an only child. The home was moved into town from the farm where he grew up. It is reminiscent of all homes of the 1920 or so era. His mother pushed Ernie to get an education, and after graduating from college, Ernie went to work as a newspaper reporter. The rest is history. He never intended to cover war, but the work swallowed him and became his life for a few years. His approach was slightly different. He looked for the untold details, for the aftermath and suffering to humans that war cost. He was on the beach after the invasion of Normandy and painted pictures for readers not of gunfire or dead bodies but of letters from a mom covered in sand, an open Bible marked with favorite verses, a cigarette lighter, a dog lost and looking for the man he knew….heartbreaking details that moved readers beyond belief.

He never was a soldier but he lived a soldier’s life right with the armies. He was with infantry troops and lived their own rugged life. Pyle covered all of the war and wanted to quit, but one last venue remained. He had not covered the Pacific and there were still Americans fighting on islands. He wanted to give them coverage too. So he went. It was there that 44 year old Ernie Pyle was shot down and died.

                     Imagine a small boy doing his homework here while his mother peeled  apples or 
             canned corn. The kitchen was the center of activity for the Depression era homes.

Depression Era bedroom in the Pyle farm home. Note the quilt. Each block is a signed one. People paid a quarter to sign a block and then the church ladies quilted it and put the quilt up for raffle. They made $200 which was a load of money at the time. 



In Dana, Indiana you can tour his childhood home. The two Quonset huts are a delightful museum of his war life. There are constant running sound effects that one would have heard if they had stood in Pyle’s shoes during WWII. The sound of fighter pilots, bombers, exploding firepower, and grenades going off are not gruesome but so amazingly authentic that it adds to the museum experience. This museum is a tribute to a journalist, but also to a war hero too. It is so worth your time to visit here, and although it once was a state site, now it is run by the Friends of Ernie Pyle. They struggle to keep the doors open, but honoring a hero is always a good thing. We need more of them to look up to and to remember.

DH is never surprised anymore when I drag him off the beaten path. This time he thought “just another writer” site. But when the car pulled away he told me he was SO glad he saw this place and learned about Ernie Pyle. I definitely will be reading more about Pyle’s life, and I bet DH will too!  

A Short and Troubled Road Trip

                                 Beauty of Kentucky while rain was stopped!

The Ruby Slipper has not been much of a recreational vehicle the last seven months. Instead she has been a real work horse and with more loads to come. Soon we will move my sister and help her start a new life.

What should have been a pleasure trip last week to see our kids turned into a real trial. Sickness, heavy rain, wrong turns, wrecks on the interstate slowing traffic to a standstill in the wet, lost clear down into a corn field when a bridge was out, no phone service, and a lot of other bits and pieces turned the trip into a challenge. But there were at least three small areas out of the five days that will be worth keeping in the memory bag.

      

           1. We saw the Ernie Pyle home and museum in Dana, Indiana. We had spotted it last fall when we went to Kentucky, but then it was closed. So this trip we went that way again and made sure it was a Friday when we got there. Great stuff to be shared at a later date.

2                                                   Ernie Pyle home in Dana, Indiana

      

            2.  We saw our grandbabies who are now 3 and 5, who have grown a bunch since last October! On Saturday we went to a petting zoo and on a picnic. PawPa built with Legos; Grammie taught about eggs and cheese!

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      3.  On the way home, we pulled off the interstate and drove right up to The Hill in St. Louis. Here sits a lovely old Italian community. GPS helped us find a favorite Italian grocery store. We limited ourselves to one stop as we needed to move on another four hours to home. But I loaded up on frozen handmade raviolis of various kinds and some spinach cannoli too. Our whole backend of the Ruby Slipper was Italian. 

      Although it was early, we drove by Rigazzi’s, an Italian eatery we had never been to before and saw it was already open for lunch. What luck and we stopped. We learned Al Capone was arrested while eating here in the wooly days of gangsters. 

      Wonderful food here!!!  We had toasted raviolis and then manicotti and chicken with risotto, along with powerhouse garlic bread. 

Friday Fictioneers/Genealogy

Please read Rochelle and rules for picture prompt at: http://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/2014/08/06/8-august-2014/

My picture story comes in at 98 words this week. 

                                                                        Genealogy

The trees had taken over the German structure like aging hands wringing a hanky. Walls crumbled and branches reached through broken glass. Geneva thought of the relatives she never knew. Felt them reaching for her across time just like branch fingers.

Ben’s voice broke her thoughts vibrating her back to the moment, “You’re so white. Feeling okay?”

She looked at her sliver bracelet embossed with feathers and thunderclouds. She felt turquoise stones framed in the cross at her neck. As a Catholic, as an Indian, she wouldn’t have been desirable. She shuddered remembering all sides of her forefathers.

Friday Fictioneers/Night Witches

It is time to play in words again. Rochelle put up a picture and asked us what we saw. In a hundred words we are to tell a story based on the picture. Read the entire rules and more stories at: http://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/1-august-2014/




                                                 Night Witches  *

From a sky black as a walnut shell, Nadia leaned out and saw her target resting still on the earth. She cut the purring engine back and began a glide with her hand on the bomb release. Her plane sliced through the air making swishing sounds like broom straws against wooden floors. She felt the biplane tilt, lighten, and then straighten as four large bombs fell away.

Nadia smiled and lifted again to head back. As she turned, her smile faded. Three planes with Swastikas were rising rapidly behind her. Her job wasn’t finished just yet.

*Night Witches was a name given to Russian women pilots in WWII. While American women were used to ferry equipment, mail, and for training purposes, Russian women pilots actually went to the front and were bombers!

Random Thoughts

The other night after being asleep about an hour, the phone rang. Immediate thoughts of injured or dying family came to mind. Do you know what kind of words I said when I learned it was a telemarketer? It was a computer controlled telemarketer for Seniors no less, and I could not even rant at a living being! Calling Seniors in the middle of the night to warm them of the dangers of falling? Get real.

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This has been an odd summer in that we have had some cool days and long for rain too. There have been some excruciatingly hot days, but they have not gone on for weeks and weeks. You can often expect that in the Midwest in July! Now we are getting ready to jump into August…the back to school month. Our phone popped today from family and friends needing help in the coming weeks. I hope we can keep up energy in these old bodies, that things go well for all those we care about. 

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I have my autumn writing contest submissions mailed off! Six entries and I hope something does well. I am waiting on a couple of submissions from magazines too. I have exchanged several emails with an editor over a nostalgia piece and sent several pictures. He wants to use but no date for publication given. I need to be forming new ideas but with a busy August looming I probably won’t even be able to THINK much let begin to write. Meanwhile, I hope to keep reading because reading good writers is one way I think I hone up my own writing—by studying their examples.

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DH loves toting in the tomatoes right now. He is getting a few every day. Since we were paying $5 a pound for nice slicers, these are handy in the kitchen. Love tomatoes! Love corn too, but we can not eat much here at this house. One nice pan of roasting ears was pure Heaven last week. It seems that the summer eating has gone as fast as the summer days. Already people are beginning to think of fall crops, of fall produce. Only a month away from the hummingbird migration…and we notice that the birds are still here but in less numbers. We have not heard our wrens in a couple of days…wonder…?

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Last week while it was so hot, I could enjoy early mornings on the deck, but by noon it was uncomfortable. That meant long reading times inside. Nothing wrong with reading! While I ran across a couple of books I just could not continue reading, I found two good reads. I no longer punish myself to finish a bad book. I was never a quitter, taught always to finish what I started, I now give myself permission to put down a bad book!

I read John Grisham’s The Innocent Man that he wrote in 2006, a work of non-fiction. He follows the investigation and trial of men after a murder, am extremely brutal and sadistic one, in Ada, Oklahoma.  The police and prosecutor made a mess of the situation and sent two innocent men to jail for twelve years. One was five days from being put to death before a stay arrived that saved him long enough to be found innocent. It is scary this book…how close any one of us are to being misunderstood, pushed aside, falsely accused, and denied a fair treatment.

The other good book was a piece of fiction but full of researched details. Wildwood Boys by James Carlos Blake is about Bloody Bill Anderson and William Quantrill. Blake makes the history of the Border Wars and Bleeding Kansas come alive, although I will admit it is a rather ugly read not for the faint of heart. While I knew of Order 11…of Burnt Mill…of the burning of Lawrence,Kansas, of the 90 plus Union soldiers massacred over at Baxter Springs, Kansas, Blake put the events in order and let me see them on a type of timeline through story.

I grew up in Kansas and to be honest, I did not really hear that much about the Missouri side of the story. I do remember hearing in grade school that the Jayhawks were “just an imaginary bird”. No one along the way explained to me the meaning of those red legs, those blue jacket feathers. Nor did I ever understand the meaning of a Rebel Yell! Frankly, Union and Rebels were neck in neck with the horrors they committed. Blake’s writing is good, the book a page turner, but be warned it is a gruesome tale!

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And so, August is coming like it or not...I believe I'm  ready.