TERRY
As I write Terry has the paper in bed. I would say she is the same as she has been over the last several days. She has not ventured into the living room for a few days now but she is in good spirits. We did not go to the wedding and that was hard but it was the right thing to do. So as we go forward it will be one day at a time.
Here it is pretty much a perfect day with a temp of 82 as I write and a high of 88. That is several degrees cooler than it has been in the past and that is good.
I do not have tennis today, Sunday, and maybe not tomorrow either. Karl, who often puts me, in is out of town for the weekend. So I may just go on a couple of bike rides and that will be it for the day. OH, I do have a mess in the kitchen so will try to clean that up this morning. As usual, I will watch church on the TV as I do not like to go to church and leave Terry at home.
I really have little to say today so I may go back in time and write about "what was".
Clean up mode in the summers of 1963,64 and 65
It was the summer after my sophomore year of high school. I was the first year that summer would come and fall would follow with Dave not coming home. Dave had graduated in May and in a day or two after graduation he loaded his car with things and headed to Kulm for the summer. The difference this time is he graduated from HS and he was GONE. He would not be back in the fall.
That left me with a void in my summer. In the past I would keep my summer busy with work and also with doing small things knowing that Dave and I would be together again in September but this gave me an entire different feeling. What was I to do. Well being a farm kid on a small farm I had a lot of time. Yes, Dad expected me to do field work, to pick rocks, to do harvest etc. etc but also there was a lot of time that I had to myself. Meaning to my self I mean I had to fill in hours and sometimes days with things to keep me busy. And so the summers of 63, 64 and 65 were filled with projects that I thought of myself to do to keep me busy. I do not remember the summer time schedule of work I did as the years blended together in a hog podge of this and that. But here are some things that I figured out to do and keep busy.
Of course the first was to clean up the old foundation from the hog barn. That in itself was a summer long project. There was much cement to break up and get rid of. Some of it broke into small pieces and I used the rock wagon to load it on and haul to the rock pile. Some of it was just so large I could not do that so I put chains around chucks of cement and pulled them behind the tractor to the rock pile. That project was a complete summer job in itself. Of course the self satisfaction in getting that done was huge.
Then there was the old shed that was blown down in a storm. I think by the 60s much of that was taken care of but still I finished cleaning up debris and then it actually had grass grow to cover the spot. Now to be sure I had NO grass seed but maybe it would be more accurate to say it was covered with weeds but when mowed it was kind of nice!
Then there was the granary. It had left over coal in one bin. It had the large heater for chicks in a room. It still housed the kerosene for the living room stove and then it had two more rooms that were scattered with junk so to speak. I spent time cleaning and picking up so that it was kind of in nice order. I don't really know why as the granary was old, delapatated and really of little or no use but still it stood and did it's part as an eye sore!
Tha barn was in OK shape but by that time in the 60s it was not used for anything. I cleaned up the hay barn which was the north end of the building. There I put up a 5 gallon pail ten feet up and played basketball. I did clean up some of the pens what had not been cleaned for some time but I did not fix the many broken windows!
Of course in all this I did have my golf course which was a 90 yard shot from near the front door of the house to the ditch near the mailbox. I would play two or three balls at a time and play pretty much every Sunday afternoon. Unless there were a lot of cars going by to the north and then I would get on the bike to see who was at the lake. I admit sometimes there were girls!!!
By the pasture fence to the south of the chicken house there was a row of things that were not used anymore. They were not used because they were outdated, they did not work or Dad did not need them anymore. There were times I took the lawn mower and mowed the weeds around them so that it looked like someone cared. To this day I can hear the one cylinder motor on the grain elevator what was music to my ears. Actually much better music than anything on the radio!
There was the corncrib that was not used any more. IF I could get someone to play ball it would be the back stop so to speak.
My most important tool was the Ford tractor. We had a scoop that would fit on the back. That was what I used to smooth out the barn yard so I could play ball. That was what I used to drive up to the lake and bring back a scoop of sand for my putting surface near the mailbox. That was what I use to go over the mature pile in the barn yard and put scoops onto Mom's garden where the mature made things GROW. AND yes with a hand cultivar I would make a habit of going up and down the rows between Mom's plants in the garden to keep the weeds down.
Perhaps I could go on for a bit longer but you get the idea. When one is on a farm that is well past its prime and you are the only one around you find MANY things to do to keep you busy. And I might add that often I would shimmy up the light pole by the barn door and lay on my back looking to the sky. As planes pasted by way way up high I would be on them. Sometimes going to places far away and have adventures that were new and exciting. I also took time to think what I might be, where I might live and what kind of work I may do. Maybe, just maybe, I should revisit those times and see if I had a remote idea of what was really going to happen. Actually that may be a lost cause as I NEVER had me living in Florida!!!
So the day is now mid morning. I have eaten, I have a messy kitchen and I have a list of things that could be done today so will sign off, sip my last sip of FP and get on with the day.
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