TERRY
There is no news about Terry today. We have a new "in home care giver" coming tomorrow so we wll seen what happens. Terry has two doctor appointments this week. One on her foot Wednesday and one with her primary care doctor Friday. We are hoping she can get the feeding tube out soon. She has not had night feeding for the last 3 nights and there certainly in an up tick in her appetite and I think that is good. As always I have high hopes for the week!
Sunday, July 15th, 1962
The summer is half over and it has not been all that great so far. Dave graduated in May and just a couple days after graduation he put his belongings in his car and headed out to see the world. That left Helen and I home with Mom and Dad. There was plenty of farm work to do BUT I managed to figure out how to make a one hole golf course that would be from the house to the ditch by the mail box. ALL I needed was sand from the lake shore, a shovel to remove the top soil, a broken broom handle for a flag stick and then a small empty coffee can for the cup. Oh, I also needed much of the old oil that Dad kept in a 5 gallon pail in the small shed. When I asked to use it he asked what I wanted it for and how much. He did say he used that to oil the chains on the combine during harvest. I promised him I would not use all of it but I did need maybe 2 or 3 gallons to cover the soil before I put the sand down. With all the material I needed I begin to plot how and when I could get the putting surface done. I knew I would probably need to put the scoop on the Ford tractor and then get one or maybe two scoops full of sand from the lake. I did not think I wanted to get caught doing that so here I was early on Sunday morning on the week we did NOT have church. I had the putting surface ready as I had taken the soil off a circle of about 8 feet across. All I needed to do was fill in with sand where the sod had been taken off and then mix the oil in so that no weeds would grow. I had told Mom and Dad on Saturday what I was going to do so they would not think I was crazy when I started up the Ford tractor at 7 AM on Sunday. It was a piece of cake as the scoop worked great and I was able to get a full scoop without making a dent in the shore line.
So by the afternoon I was playing golf on my new golf course and also keeping an eye on the road to see who was driving up to the lake for a swim. I was sure there would not be anybody coming to the lake that I knew but IF there were a lot of people I would bike up to the lake and bike around.
It had been a difficult summer without Dave. Even though he had been working near Kulm for the last two summers it just seemed so so different that this summer was kind of final, he would not be coming back for school in the fall.
AND I had another distraction as during my freshman year of high school I had found a girl friend. Well that is not really correct as I was not looking for a girl friend but Jo happened into my life and yes I was too young BUT! I was pretty sure she had kind of left me in the wake as the end of the school year approached and could I blame her? Here she was in Forman with many friends both male and female and here I was 25 miles away keeping busy by stacking hay, picking rocks and pretty much isolated from school friends. Anyway that is perhaps fodder for another time!
The bottom line was I pretty much felt alone. Somehow the rock picking was not ANY fun without Dave and all the activities we used to do together now fell on me. Not that there was all that much work but to do it alone was so different and not much fun. It renewed my desire to finish school and leave the farm behind! Today my view is somewhat different but back 58 years ago things were different!!!
So the summer went by. Anytime I could I grabbed my 9 iron and played MY golf course. AND it was Jack N, Gary P and Arnie P who played and Arnie always won! It made the last several weeks of summer go fast and that was good.
No comments:
Post a Comment