I was looking through my library in iphoto and came across a string of pictures of the LaGrange County place. As I passed by this one, I noticed a white area to the left of the gate. It was Sydney. I think if you click on the picture, you will be able to see that it our little sweetheart, keeping watch. He says he hates it when I call him our little sweetheart, but, deep inside, he’s okay with it.
Hey, here’s another picture.
I have sat down with men who came ashore at Normandy June 6, 1994. It has been an honor. Here are two of the articles I have written.
Bob Harding
Around ten in the morning.
June sixth.
1944.
Omaha Beach. Normandy.
Bob Harding, age 19, of the 5th Engineer Brigade, 56th Engineers, stepped out of a LCI – Landing Craft, Infantry – and took his place in the second wave of soldiers to land in France on what historian Cornelius Ryan would call “The Longest Day.”
Fifty-eight years later Bob Harding sits in his Avilla home and remembers it wasn’t really a surprise that they were on this boat that had left Plymouth, England while the sky was still dark to cross the Channel.
Just five months earlier– between Christmas and New Year’s Day – they had disembarked from another ship, the Queen Elizabeth, in Glasgow, Scotland. They were then sent to England where they “practiced blowing things up.”
Scuttlebutt had it that there was something up. Harding says, “Oh, yeah, we had one guy that every time we’d be getting ready to do something, he say there was a rumor that we were going to really do SOMETHING. Then he would add that it was just a rumor.”
Harding smiles and says, “When we got on the boat there in Plymouth, the fellow said, ‘I think they’re carrying this rumor too far’” That was the last piece of humor in Bob Harding’s story for quite awhile.
He talks about General Eisenhower’s message that was read to all troops involved in the invasion: “In that speech I think it said there will be no turning back. When the last guy hit the water, I saw why there would be no turning back because they raised the ramps on that ship and they were gone. So you had one way to go. 90 pound pack and trying to keep rifle dry.
“Toward a mound . . .”
The mound was a pile of sand that they men called a dike and on top of it were guns. Continue reading D-Day Articles: Bob Harding, Gene Cogan
Ah, yes, I dozed off during a History Channel show about Alaska, having set my alarm for 12:30 am. I awoke to the sound of my cell phone doing its song and vibrating like crazy on a wooden table. It was the Der Bingle contingent, calling to make sure I was up to go get the “person who went to Cedar Point” at 6 am and was scheduled to be in the school bus lot at 1:15 am.
She was a ball of tiredness, and as she slumped on the passenger seat, I was overcome by orneriness and said, “Summer, you’ve been dreaming of your trip to Cedar Point; time to get up and actually go.”
“Ohhhhhh, don’t do that to me.”
Sometimes what is sauce for the old stringy hen is sauce for the chick.
In the midst of staccato reports of her trip – the rides, the heat, her feet, the cost of drinks – I told her, “You know, your grandpa called to make certain we were awake to go get you on time.” And she gave me that “Of course” look back. She takes his concern for her for granted. That’s fine.
Here’s a vignette from a colder day:
Tree cohorts
Girl cohort
Back to the barn
Steak and Shake afterwards
My father suffered from Meniere’s Disease, which caused dizzy spells and in the last 10-15 years of his life, a great deal of hearing loss. So I know something about talking to an older person who can’t hear. I went out in search of things to help him keep in touch and this is about just one of them.
See this below? Of course you do.
It costs allows people who are hard of hearing to communicate in detail with another person. I don’t know how well it works on hearing other things. It cost $179 and is on this site.
I didn’t know it existed when my dad was alive. But Radio Shack had one like it they were selling for around $35. I got one and my father was able to hear every nuance of my conversation as I spoke directly into the microphone part. It was a really, really neat thing and especially helpful during the time he was ill and dying.
They still sold it up until a few months ago (Optimus brand, I think) but it no longer seems to be available. Frankly, I think a company saw great potential in them, did a little upscaling and now are selling them for many times the $35 price. However, you can start off with this:
$14.99 and look at it at this site.
Even this little device can be very helpful in allowing people to communicate. I have preached it to a lot of Boomers with deaf parents . . .
We checked the email here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse and saw that Der Bingle had sent a reference to a certain newspaper article and remarked, “Words fail.” It is about the greenhouse effect and cow flatulence, and I have to add that everyone here is as speechless as he. Except for Norm, who guffawed and exclaimed, “Cow farts my eye.” Of course, I, AmeliaJake, shot him a “look” because I was always taught to say “passing gas” if I had to refer to the subject. To this day, if I utter the other word out of some desperate attempt to not seem a prudish old woman, I feel really, really sleazy, totally unwholesome and just a jerk.
It is somewhere between 4 and 4:30 am – and I would know if I only looked up to the right top of the screen – and thunder woke me up. You see, Summer’s trip to Cedar Point is today. Tomorrow, the weather in the park is supposed to be sunny; today isolated thunderstorms are predicted to continue . . . along with rain, rain and rain. I have no idea how today will turn out for her, with all this wetness and potential lightning. I suspect a lot of the rides will be suspended for long periods and she will be soaked. But she is not yet 12 and is healthy and it will be an adventure. I wonder if she is looking at it that way?
Something got me thinking about contact lenses today and, quite frankly, I am still mildly surprised when I hear someone is getting them. They are so common, it really shouldn’t register on me. But it does. Maybe because I have worn glasses since I was a little girl and can’t understand why someone would want to put something in their eyes, then take it out, then put it in, they take it out . . . then look for it on the floor.
I know contacts have evolved since people starting wearing them when I was in high school, but I don’t follow the progress and I have never sought out new information. Some people are amazed that I have no desire to get them. I should qualify my opinion by stating that if I found them necessary to see while performing an essential task, I would be fitted for them. I don’t need them. My glasses are on my face almost all the time; they are tough lenses and serve as goggles as well. They can get super smudgy and I don’t have to worry about infection in my eyes. I very seldom misplace them since if I find them not on my face, I merely have to reach out to the places within arm’s length. A lot of the time, I fall asleep with them on.
I don’t even think about them, but after writing this I wonder if people question why I am wearing clunky glasses and not cool contacts. There is the possibility that they serve as a disguise for what Der Bingle and his crowd refer to – when they are being polite – as my close-set eyes. Cyclops nose might be another phrase they use . . .
I don’t care. I like my glasses. In fact I think I need a really individualized pair that make a statement; I just need to think of a statement to make.
Hey, one more thing: It’s customary when a person wears glasses for the funeral director to remove them when the casket is closed and place them in a gentleman’s breast pocket or put them in a lady’s hands. Maybe I’ll leave instructions for them to stay on my face. I’m not sure, though, and will probably give it some thought tonight . . . maybe experiment lying here first with them on my face and then taking them off.
Yes, kids are home . . . for 70+ days – Summer counted them and made a point of telling me. She is going to Cedar Point in Sandusky with the “been on the Honor Roll all year” middle school kids. All A’s. Won the science award for the 6th grade for 2007-2008. They go tomorrow.
And tomorrow, her brother starts some three weeks of intensive freshman biology because, well, he flunked the class. I am proud of him: His first term in high school and we had major illnesses in the family . . . and then we find out his grandpa was potentially deathly ill and I took off and left. And he hated labs and was shy and wouldn’t ask for help and got depressed himself and, well, got behind an 8 ball so big it probably was a 100 ball – bowling ball size.
You know what he did? He hitched up his pants, made sure his bootstraps were strong and pulled himself up. At a pivotal point in his life when he could have decided he was a total loser and gone into a funk – sort of like his grandma would have done – he went on and got lots and lots of A’s.
I told him this may be the best thing that ever happened to him. He’ll go in there and come to terms with hands-on science and it will help him will all his science and lab courses. And maybe he won’t blow up the chemistry lab in the next two years. Okay, you know how I am . . . nothing is sacred from a joke.
So think of him tomorrow, please. While his sister is zooming on a roller coaster, he’ll be starting out on a long trek, probably one without exciting thrills – probably one that starts out as a daunting uphill climb and hopefully, somewhere along the path, starts a downward slope toward the finish line.
He can put his hands in the air as he goes across that line, because he will have worked for it . . . he wasn’t just along for the ride.
The backyard, which was getting close to needing mowing, looks this morning like a jungle for feet. You see, the dog – Oh, rats, I’ve done it again . . . referred to his majesty as “the dog” – goes out there and we do not want him to be sickened by chemicals. We spray nothing back there. If you want weeds removed, you need to pull them and I have to admit after fighting for a few minutes with roots and realizing the sheer magnitude of the task, I find myself thinking something about live and let live.
I could put a bounty on weeds – give my grandkids money for each little weed pelt they toss into a bucket but I have serious doubts it would work. And they are too old now to fall for the “We are going into battle against the enemy of flowers and grass; we will smite our enemies” scenario. I am not, however, and will probably wind up getting myself some tool about the length of a golf club which I can use to pop the invaders out.
Or I could put a cannister on my back with weed killer and spray each one individually with a personal vengeance. Yes, yes, I stand at Armageddon and I do battle for the Lord. Oh, the spray thing? Okay, we can keep the dog (drat, did it again) out of that part of the yard for a day or so.
I can see me – green cannister on my back . . . little metal wand with spray head in my hand. Maybe in the future, the moments spent in fighting the weeds will be immortalized in a statue of me standing steadfast against the creeping charlie.
Of course, a main consideration is that the yard is almost entirely weeds . . .
People have told me for a long time that I have a talent for writing; I think, to some extent, that is true. And there are times when I like to just talk about things, to try and capture the feelings of a moment, the sincerity of a concern . . . to try and pass on someone’s thoughts and deeds to another.
I think one of the incidents that most moved me was when I wrote about a pilot who was shot down over German-occupied France in WWII. He was in a POW camp which was liberated by General Patton; he said the General looked at the men around him, pointed out that he did not look directly at him, and said, “Men, I’m proud of you.” He told me at that moment he would have followed Patton anywhere, anytime. Having a link to such a moment in history was sort of beyond the usual dimensions in which I live. It enlarged me.
But that wasn’t the part that moved me. That was when he told me of an experience he had after the article ran. He said he was up on his roof, fixing or checking something, and when he came down two young men were standing there . . . and they said, “We just want to shake your hand and thank you for what you did for us.”
Now, I thought that was something; that made me feel as if, in the smallest way, I had said “thank you” too.
But this blog, and others I have started . . . Why do I write? Yes, honestly, I guess it is part of me. But, most of all, I write for you, the one who does not read what I say here. I write because I hope you’ll get to know me maybe more thoroughly than you have before . . . Oh, shoot, now, when I need them most of all, words fail me.