Honey, I Shrunk a Friend

         Okay, maybe I didn't shrink my friend, but she is now short! I had lunch with a long-time friend today. As we stood at the cash register to pay our tickets, I realized I was looking down at her. Naturally, I pointed it out, and she said, yes, she was now 5 feet tall! I didn't ask, but I'm sure that's at least 5 inches.
         It shouldn't change our friendship, but somehow it changes how I look toward the future. I plan on keeping her around in my old age. She bakes the most fantastic breads and cookies.
         Will I need to purchase a little stool for her someday so she can properly knead bread? If we go shopping, will I need to carry her bags so they don't drag on the floor? Will I have trouble seeing her through bifocals?
         I'm wondering if one loses weight as a person gets older. For example, if I weigh 180 lbs. when I'm 5'6', that's almost 2.73 per inch. If I lose five inches in height, will I also lose more than 13 lbs.? I think the height loss is probably along the spine, which supports more body weight than the total of each leg. So, maybe 15 lbs? 20? It might be worth investigating.
         I do wish my feet would shrink.

Reunions

         I recently attended two high school class reunions. The first was my own 50-year reunion, and the event left me with gratefulness and appreciation for knowing such a loving and caring community of people. The second was a brief visit to our son’s 20-year reunion, and I saw the beginnings of the same loving and caring among adults.
         The relationships that develop sometimes transcend childhood friendships, yet they are rooted in shared youthful experiences, in successes and defeats that will forever connect the classmates.
         Most people from small towns come away from their class reunion with a sense of satisfaction and joy in the time spent together. They talk about “fun,” but a reunion is beyond fun. It is acceptance, love, mutual respect, and comfort in the company of those who were childhood friends, and who now, with their spouses and partners, deepen those friendships. The sense of security and serenity of a class reunion is a lifelong richness unique only to those fortunate enough to have attended a small school.

My cousin, Richard Gehrman, recently wrote a book that is available on Amazon. It is called Cow Creek and is a fictional cowboy adventure with our grandfather as the main character. It's a great story, and is based on situations that actually existed in the 1880's in Northeast Nebraska. Be sure to search for it on Amazon to read more about the story and the author.

The Turtle, Uber Senior Citizen

        About a year ago, I came upon what at first appeared to be an accident. At a bridge repair with a stoplight, a large pickup truck was stopped with the front end slanted just over the center line. I stopped quite a way back as the light was red. Oncoming cars had to move to the edge of the road to get around the pickup. The light turned green, but the vehicle didn't move. I stayed where I was, speculating about an accident. 

        Just as the last oncoming car passed, the pickup moved in a large arc so that both of its left wheels were on the center line, but moved no further when the light turned green. Then I saw the biggest turtle I've seen "in these parts", nearly as big as my tire, although agreeably a Prius tire isn't all that big. The pickup moved slowly forward and stopped, and I thought the driver finally determined the turtle to be dead. "Big T" was flat to the road, and his head, feet and tail were out of his shell. 

        I pulled up close to the pickup, but near the outside of the road, and the car behind me, seeing the turtle, stopped. As I looked down at the turtle, I saw no gore, and pulled up so that the turtle was a few feet behind my car. The car behind me was about two lengths away. The light turned green, the pickup stayed, and my stopped car went to energy mode, running silent on electric. That was when the turtle became wild and crazy (for a turtle). His head stretched out, he rose on his feet and (very slowly) finished crossing the road between my car and the car behind me. 

        After another green light, then red, then green, the pickup slowly pulled ahead across the bridge and I followed, watching the rear-view mirror. The turtle disappeared into the roadside weeds, having lived another day.

Housedresses

       When I was a little girl, women wore dresses - all the time! The dresses they wore to do housework were called housedresses. They were the same fabric as men's dress-up shirts, usually had a small print design, and they had waistlines, often with little belts that matched the print of the dress. I remember my mother wearing her dresses a little below the knee, but that could vary with fashion or with what she could find for her 6' height. They had to be ironed so they wouldn't be wrinkled. Ladies rarely wore pants, which were called "slacks." If a farm lady helped her husband on the tractor, she might have worn pants, but usually they were their husband's pants. My mother didn't do that, however. First of all, she didn't usually help with the farm work because she taught school, and second, it wouldn't have worked - my mother was much, much taller than my father and his pants wouldn't have fit.

        Most ladies wore regular stockings with their housedress - like pantyhose or tights, but without a panty attached. The stockings were somewhat see-through and skin colored. They were held up with straps called garters. Actually, if you cut pantyhose straight across just below the leg holes (including some of the heavier fabric), and then connect the legs to the top section with a kind of thin, flat bungee cord, you'd get the idea.

        Women wore slips. Slips for dressing "up" might have been made of nylon or rayon with lots of lacy trim. Everyday slips were usually white and were made of cotton, but might have some lace trim at the top. Housedress slips were rather plain. They were worn as a liner for the dresses, and instead of shoulders and sleeves, they just had straps. They covered a lot and were the same length as a dress. A sundress today doesn't cover as much skin as a slip did when I was a little girl.

        My mother and all my friends' mothers did not wear shorts. It would have been considered very improper. Most homes weren't air conditioned, and clothing sometimes made doing housework very uncomfortable. On very hot days, when we were not likely to have company or dad was not likely to have helpers, my mother would just wear her slip without her housedress. Ladies who lived on the farm could do that, but I wonder if women in town ever wore only slips.

        A man from the creamery stopped every other day to pick up cans full of cream skimmed off the cows' milk, and boxes of eggs we gathered from the hen house. My mother would be wearing her housedress because it was fairly early in the morning and still cool. Other times, salesmen would stop in to sell various products, but we would hear the car and mother would run and put on her dress. One very hot afternoon, the Watkins salesman came in a brand new car! It was very quiet. When he knocked on the door, my mother had to run past him in order to get to the other room where her dress was. She was so embarrassed because she considered her slip underwear.

        When she returned to the door (in her dress), she apologized, and the Watkins man said, "I have to report to my wife how many ladies I have seen in their slips, but other than that, it's a pretty ordinary thing."

        As a very little girl, I didn't have to wear dresses, although I often chose to do so. When I went to elementary school, high school, and college, girls were required to wear dresses or skirts and shirts (which we called blouses). A lot has changed.

How to Know You're a "Senior Citizen."

        The term "senior citizen" is just silly. First, in order to be a "senior citizen," one must first be a citizen of something. I suppose that a person could make a case for anyone to be a citizen of any kind of political/geographical organization. Second, the term "senior" implies some kind of priority, and I'm not certain that older "citizens" are placed in highest priority by members of younger generations, at least in our culture.
          Here are clues to help you decide if you are a "senior citizen."
 1.  You don't like FaceBook, but go to it every day. You have lots of young parents as friends, just to laugh at their parenting skills.
 2.  If you're a woman, you wear 4" heels just to show off - or you wear ugly shoes just to walk.
 3.  Employees at places that offer "senior discounts" no longer apologize for asking if you qualify for the S.C. discount. In fact, they no longer ask, and often just tell you that you've received the discount.
 4.  Your hairdo is designed for ease of care, not for improvement of appearance.
 5.  You silently respond to a young person's opinion with "I can't wait until you get to be my age."
 6.  Your iPod contains recorded books.
 7.  Your doctor is a kid.
 8.  Your biggest regret at a reunion of high school friends is the number of old people that attended.
 9.  You discovered that "thongs" are not shoes.
10.  You know, with absolute certainty, that Elvis is dead and the moon landing really happened.
11.  Your face and hands have uber freckles, and you have never once obsessed about them.
12.  Admission that you are old came on suddenly as a surprise. 
13.  At least one spot on your body hurts, itches, grows unwanted hair, is lumpy, or bends oddly.
14.  You've decided that the best wrinkle reduction approach for your face would be pleats. 
15.  Each day you accomplish one thing on your to do list.

Drive to Night Classes

        The picture in the header of this page shows the Missouri River as it divides South Dakota from Nebraska. While completing my doctorate a few years ago, I saw this particular view nearly every day as I drove to my classes or to study at the University of South Dakota library. Rarely did I see a view on my way home (except for the one night that the Northern Lights were glorious) because my travels home were after dark. A one-way trip on paved roads was 55 miles - about 60 minutes. It was possible to drive in 30 miles, but that would be on gravel roads that were narrow and, as they approached South Dakota, winding. The trip was much longer (75-90 minutes) because of farm vehicles moving to and from fields, and many ruts in the road.
        I would leave home and my town with stoplights (albeit 3), sidewalks and paved streets, and I would literally "head for the hills." After 15 minutes, I would arrive at another time, another place. There were occasional farms or acreages, but the homes, whether old or new, had an eccentricity about them that articulated a desire to live in that area. The cornfields, for the most part, dissolved into open fields of wild cedar trees, and the ground would be spattered with rocks. (It was as though God held back a handful when he created the Rockies, just to lightly toss them a few hundred miles to the east.) 
        Contrary to the typical opinion of "outsiders," Nebraska is quite hilly. Not only does Nebraska have a panhandle, but it is actually shaped like a pan, with rolling hills along the borders in all directions. In fact, in the very northwest corner of Nebraska (the Panhandle), there are mountains! The middle of Nebraska, which welcomes visitors to the state with man-made constructions that depict history and provide for the watching of migrating birds, is flat, just as the interior of a pan is flat.
        Even though I intellectually knew better on repeated trips to South Dakota, the crest of each hill held the vision of a new, higher hill. Climbing higher and higher, I passed two very small towns and a rustic roadside cemetery. I looked at the scenery in awe, imagining that Native Americans of 200 years ago watched me just as they must have watched Lewis and Clark. Finally, from high above the flat plains of South Dakota, the river came into view from the Nebraska bluffs.
        On several occasions, I began the trip early so that I could climb the Mulberry Bend Scenic Overlook constructed near the bridge. From there I could see the colors of the current season, and the beginning of the long, wide turn of the river toward the south. This part of the river, between the dams to the west and the channeling to the south, is much like the Missouri of the past.
        Wildlife abounds in the region. I saw bald eagles several times, but the trip requires a driver to stop looking up and remain watching the road in order to avoid pheasants, wild turkeys, badgers, coons, skunks, and deer. At night, I sometimes saw a deer nearly every mile. One night, something began to move onto the road, and then backed into the weeds along the side. As I got closer, I examined the spot where I had seen the animal, and a vicious creature glared at my car with bared teeth, gleaming eyes, and ears flattened to its head. It was a coyote. I had heard coyotes many times, even from my house back in "civilization," but never had I seen such a nasty-looking creature. 
        I consider the route a curious one that compares to being in the middle of a cornfield, or for me, on a plane. Cell phones do not work in most places there. At night, lights are seen sparingly or not at all. When driving the route, I have never been able to emotionally reconcile that I am no more than a mile or two away from a phone, and no more than 15 minutes from a large town and 30 minutes from a city. It is one of those minuscule adventures that revive the day.