Corey developed a severe allergic
reaction while we were building the house. He was finally
hospitalized, and they started letting him eat one food at a time to
try to pinpoint the problem. He chose hot dogs, then added
hamburgers, then ice cream. He missed the County Fair, and got to
stand, in his cute little hospital gown, looking dejectedly out the
window while his classmates next door had a big time at the Fair. But
he got out in time for the last day of the Fair. The doctor
suspected cotton defoliants, but this was farming country so he
didn't speak up real loudly about it. Then Corey recalled an airplane
flying over the school one day at recess, defoliating a crop next to
the school. The allergy finally went away, and has never returned.
Always trying to find a way to
make a little money, I drove a school bus. I once made a stop, turned
on the lights, and the kids got off and headed across the road. A kid
behind me lost his ball, and it rolled up under my feet. I reached
down to get it out of my way, then looked up. The group of children
were well across the road, so I started moving, just as a small boy,
picking up a book he had dropped, stepped into my vision in front of
the bus. I barely stopped in time. I still have nightmares about
that. Another time, the steering wheel just came off in my hand.
Fortunately, I got it stopped, still in the road. I once met a car on
a narrow muddy road. I pulled over some, and the road bank caved off,
and the bus just slowly lay over on its side. Nobody was hurt. The
bus mechanic had to stretch cable come-a-longs down to 3 power poles
to pull it back up, and told me, “The next time, let the car pull
over out of YOUR way!”
After I quit driving a bus, they
were very short on substitutes. I finally agreed to help them out
when they needed me, then noticed every time after a big thaw in the
spring, when the bottom just fell out of those roads in the delta, a
certain driver, a preacher, “needed” me every time it was very
bad. Some places, you just automatically knew when you bailed off
into a mud hole, you were going to bury up. There was always a
farmer, with his big tractor, waiting to throw you a cable and pull
you out, an every day thing during those times. But, you always got
muddy halfway up to the knee when you did that. The preacher was a
hard man to get your money from, too, so I quit the substituting
business.
Kinley was a sweet little girl.
She was very ecology minded, too. Once, coming home from church in
her best dress, a gum wrapper blew under the car as we got home. She
crawled under the car to get it, ruining her new dress.
We once noticed she always got
bee stung on her leg on Sundays. Always on Sunday. We started
investigating. She was wearing a long dress to church every Sunday,
one that almost dragged the ground. Walking across flowering clover,
she was trapping bees under her dress, and they stung her. A big
problem solved.
“Near the end of our lives, we
come to realize, the ordinary is the extraordinary.” (Writer
unknown)
That is especially true as I write
about our kid's growing up years. Everyday occurrences become the
things I remember.
The summer of 1980 was very hot
and dry. 112 degrees F. Was not unusual. Barbara and the kids went
to church camp, and they regretted it. No A/C. While they were gone, I went
up to Wing, to set up my camper on the nine acres we had bought from
Harold, and planned to fence it. I took the kid's pup, Blackie,
along. The hill was high, dry an rocky, and I quickly wore myself
down to nothing. I was so hot, I went down to the creek where the
cold springs are, and just hung out in that hole awhile, like I used
to do as a kid. When I got back to Harold's house, where I had left
the pup, the dog was sick. Well, I knew no fence was going to get
built that week, in that weather, 110 degrees or so. I took the sick
pup and went home. He died that night of Parvo. I worried all week
how I would break it to the kids. When they got back, Kinley was
first in the door, wanted to know were Blackie was. I had to tell
her, and I didn't handle it well. She just wailed, “but I want to
play with him!” A bad summer.
The next time I got back to Wing,
Harold had a surprise for me. He had taken his tractor powered post
hole digger, dug the holes, and built the fence. That's just Harold
for you.
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