TERRY
Terry is pretty much the same as she is reading the paper as I blog. So I have nothing new and it may be this way until we see the doctor and even after that. I would say her strength is the same and yes her balance is still about the same.
There is a program on Facebook that is titled, "Dakota Abandoned Images". Well believe it or not this picture fits that perfectly. AND so one can ask WHY as there are NO images, except a deer stand, in the picture. Well 60 years ago this was our farm. IF you would have been standing in the same place I was when I took this picture you would have seen a farm, yes a farm that was far from modern but yet still a farm. You would have been able to reach out your hand and touch the mailbox that had LAWRENCE H LEE on the top. You would have seen, looking straight ahead, our farm house that was old, in need of repair but still carrying memories of love that was in our family of 8. A house with a downstairs of a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom. Oh, also a tiny room with a sink and water and a door leading down to the basement. A basement with old boards for shelves that were, in the fall, lined with preserves made by Mom. AND often a medium size green lizard! A house with a stairway leading up to the second floor that had shell loading equipment in the floor joists as you went up. AND there in the landing you would see a gun cabinet made in high school shop class by Ronald. As you continued up the next few steps, if it were November and December, you would notice a pile of hard lefsa that kind of decreased in size as the days went by! Once up stairs you would find two bedrooms, boys and girls. Also a small enclosure with a curtain for a door. There would be a 5 gallon pail which served as the bathroom in the winter. The west bedroom would have NO finished ceiling so in the winter the nails holding the shingles would be covered with frost to the point of being able to pretend you could blow smoke rings in the air!! Enough of that! In the west bedroom you could get down on your hands and knees and crawl into the attic where you would find bundles of rifle and camera magazines saved by Dad. You would also find other things that would be of no use to anybody but too valuable to throw! AND still it had the handiwork all over the kitchen of a Mom who loved her kids beyond reason, a Mom who could craft a meal out of almost nothing and a Mom who NEVER allowed herself to complain to her kids. AND a Mom who could heal the sick, fix a nasty cut and shine those old farm shoes for Sunday church. Then after you took your eyes off the house you would notice just in front of you a sandy patch in the ditch with a stick in the middle of it--golf hole #1! To the right would be a groove of trees with delicious plums and just in front of you a garden that produced much for the family. The out house was beyond the home and then to it's right was the shop where we could fire up the forge to do repairs or make bale hooks. The shop was also the parking spot for the Ford tractor that ALL the kids learned to drive before they started school! Swinging your eye sight to the left you would spot the red low roofed barn where we milked a few cows daily which gave us all the milk and cream we wanted AND sometimes a 5 gallon cream can could be driven to Cayuga where Benny Flash would pay us for it. Then continue looking to your left and there was the granary that had holes in the roof before I was born BUT still it housed a bin of coal in the winter and 50 gallon barrels of fuel for the stove in the living room for winter heat. It also had one room with NO water leaks and that was where the 100 baby chicks would be for a period of time after Fritz, the mailman delivered them in the back seat of his car! Beyond the granary you would see 3 steel bins that Grandpa, my grandpa, Lee helped make the cement foundation for. Just to the right of the bins was the chicken house where we gathered eggs to eat and also to sell. We would buy oyster shells to put in the feeder for the chickens. In the winter there were be 3 hay stacks to the west of the chicken house as feed for the cattle. To the east of the chicken house there was the corncrib which was usually full after the fall harvest. Just to the south of the corncrib was the pasture fence going from the road all the way to the barnyard. Along that fence one would see the manure spreader parked, the corn picker parked, the disc parked the combine parked and even an elevator which was used to put grain into the bins.
SO AS ONE LOOKS AT THIS PICTURE YOU SEE CORN AND THAT IS ALL BUT FOR ME, IN MY MIND, I SEE ALL OF THE ABOVE AND THINK ABOUT WHAT "WAS" AND THEN TODAY WHAT "IS"!!!
We have some budding track stars in the family thanks to the Lees, Hengens, Larkins and Adkins. Henry and Liam are doing well in track this spring and I am pretty sure Aaron said Leo was in track as well. Here is a picture of 7th grader Faustina going air born on the track as she carries the baton in a relay. She also runs the mile in 6:10 which is very good for someone her age.
I know my dad, Grandpa Lee, would be so proud as his athletic endeavors included baseball and boxing! I do not know much about the athletic endeavors of in-laws but if I remember right Grandpa Hengen was pretty darn good and I know that Amy was on the college swim team. Want to hear about the athletic feats of the Lee kids? Oh, that would be bragging but I promise the blog would be pretty long today if I did that. I should add that brother Ronald played football and baseball. I also could add that there was a lot of skills on the Saunders side as well. Enough for now but it is kind of fun to recall!
Before I close here is what I am dealing with. OK I admit, nothing great about feet but as one can see the one on the right is swollen and pretty painful. It is a tiny bit better today so maybe it will heal day by day until it is good enough to play tennis again!
Time to shut this down as the FP is almost ancient history.
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