It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t get on this site yesterday and post this photo of my grandmother and several other grandmothers from Kingman, Indiana. No, my mind and fingers were kidnapped by a computer game – one about finding a lot of clues to get to the bottom of what happened at Ravenhearst in 1895 when Emma and her twin daughters went missing. For those of you not familiar with such games, they involve traipsing around trying to find out what you need to know and then getting that done.

For instance, let’s say it slowly dawns on you that a certain drawer has to be shut halfway to allow the secret passage door to open, only the drawer is stuck all the way open.. Nothing in your inventory will cause it to move – not a hammer, not a magic potion, not a screwdriver, not rope. Then, after you are just ready to give up and do something useful in real life, you think, “Oh, let me go into the game’s bathroom and see if it will let me pick up a piece of soap?” So you soap the sides of the drawer and it closes halfway and,. voila, you open the secret passage and  . . .

For some people this activity is like balm on the brain – for others, it is total nonsense.  I am in the first group, dontcha know.

But, now for the picture. It occurred to me that often the back of a saved newspaper article can be interesting as well, so I am showing both.

Net Grismore is a typo; it should be Nell Grismore.

And now here is the reverse side, showing that this picture was published in 1966 – according to the ad about the fair.

This picture has been put through the editing process to smudge over some creases. I found it in a plastic insert in my dad’s wallet. I think he carried it for a long, long time. Lana is nine months younger than I, but look, she is taller and her legs already leaner. Here’s a factoid: She was in the Miss Ball State Pageant when she was a freshman. I wasn’t because I went to IU . . . and  because maybe I was shorter with toddler legs. See, those are two good reasons.

My Aunt Geraldine had a reputation for being dominant and domineering and bossy and with a hot temper to boot. A couple of my cousins called her “The Commander”. She was my father’s oldest sister. As I have been reaching into boxes and bags and letters come out to a young soldier overseas, I have noticed that they are often signed “Love, Geraldine”.  And this birthday card? She made certain to get it mailed a whole month before my dad’s birthday on November 12th. I guess there was a softer side to her . . .

Of course, it is very possible that I might not have found these letters because at some point my dad and his sisters were going through a lot of old stuff and Geraldine lit a fire in a barrel out back.  As I understand it, one entire afternoon Aunt Geraldine was tossing things in the ‘to burn’ pile and my dad was pulling them out.

(I think Bill Alexander must be the brother of Al Alexander, who was married to my Aunt Evelyn. )

Here’s our dear TwoMoo celebrating the CheeseHead victory by having a hot time in the old town that night. . Just a little cow joke for her fans. Bear with us, Der Bingle. oooooooh, was that an unfortunate pun?

While sifting through stuff from way, way long ago, I found this from long ago. He kept it and the 1975 on the back is in his hand. When I was a very little girl and we went someplace, he would always say, “Hold my hand. Hold my hand. Always hold my hand.”

Der Bingle and his bear buddies – here’s one of them pictured below – are irate about what has happened in Minnesota.

What  happendc in Minnesota, you ask. Well, I will cite the Drudge Report link, but I am also going to show you the article right here.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A sports bar owner in Minnesota is showing his support for the Green Bay Packers in this weekend’s game against the Chicago Bears in a very literal way — by roasting a bear.

Blake Montpetit, the co-owner of Tiffany Sports Lounge in St. Paul, says he plans to cook a 180-pound black bear in a pig-roaster over hickory and charcoal on Sunday. He says his cousin shot it in northern Wisconsin during bear hunting season, which runs in September and October, and then froze it.

Montpetit says he planned to serve the meat to customers, but the state health department rejected the plan because the meat is unprocessed. Instead, customers can take photos with the roasting bear.

After the game, the meat will go to his cousin’s party in Somerset, Wis.
Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press

This is just upsetting, dontcha know. And TwoMoo and her fellow Cheeseheads here share the outrage being experienced by our bear friends.

I didn’t get a picture of TwoMoo today because I forgot until I was in the car driving to Fort Wayne. Maybe tomorrow.

If you tend to go “eeeeewwwww” a lot, read no further. Do you know why? Well, of course you don’t . . . and I think I’m stalling here because this is definitely “eeeeewwww” stuff – maybe with even more e’s and w’s.

The other day I heard someone make sort of an obscene remark in frustration and I suddenly went one step beyond hearing it – I visualized it. It was awful; it was a big eeewwww. Now, I can’t stop doing it when I hear an off-color remark.

It gets worse. I got disgusted and uttered a yucky phrase myself and I momentarily saw the scenario that had been just words. It gets still worse. In my visualization there was a face that annoys me to no end – Michael Dukakis and then it switched to Joe Biden. Oh, yuck, yuck . . . as in major yuck.

It is a curse – a curse that comes from cursing. I suppose there is a lesson in that. What could it be? A picture is worth a thousand words??

Some of you may know the Ohio Redoubt of the West Facing Cave is a bear hangout. And, obviously, we have some cow friends here. Well, after all these years of rooting for the Bears, TwoMoo pointed out this morning that she was a Cheesehead – you know, the Wisconsin thing. (Even though I have it on good authority she has a “go to California and be a contented cow” fund.)

You may think you have seen TwoMoo, but you are thinking of Moo. I haven’t published a picture of TwoMoo yet, but I will tomorrow. Although perhaps with the Bears being irate, maybe she will enter the Witness Protection Program.

It was 1941 and my dad was in Gary to make money before finishing his schooling. He worked at one of the steel plants and he lived here. This is the address to which my grandmother mailed a letter in December of that year. I wrote about it in the post just below. Out of curiosity I looked it up on the Bing maps and here it is. Just a hop, not even add the skip and the jump from the Indiana Toll Road.

Of course, that road didn’t exist then – it was built when I was little and it went a bit north of my maternal grandparents’ house. The engineers rented a large room from my grandmother to serve as their field office. I used to ride my bike up to the overpass and watch the traffic go east and west. Just a rural girl leaning on the side rail – no need for chain link fencing then. I wanted to be in one of those cars. I actually did live in Sacramento for awhile, but I am back.

I lived in Palatine, Illinois also and Mother and Daddy drove over on that road and I drove to Scott on it. Not once did my father remark he had lived just that wee bit to the side.

I think it looked different then.

I belong to the early segment of Baby Boomers; we were lucky to have small town America mixed with the great spirits of the war being over. We were born knowing we had won. We reaped the benefits. My mother’s school was called into the gym on Monday, December 8,1941 to hear President Roosevelt’s speech. My father was driving back to Gary from having been in his hometown of Kingman, I don’t know who is was with, but I remember him saying he turned to the guy and said, “Well,  I guess we’ll be going soon.”

Six days later my grandmother mailed him a letter and in it you can hear the worry about the war and the tight times of The Great Depression. I think she had not yet grasped, however, just what a tremendous endeavor was looming.

Of course, he did go and he made his allotment out to her . . . and every time it came, she walked up to the bank and put it into an account for him  . . . for when he would come home. I once heard someone remark about still being able to see her making those regular trips.