When I step outside to empty the vacuum cleaner bag, I notice how the flag is blowing straight out and holding. “Oh, Shoot!” I’ve ended up without a kite on hand and it’s a perfect day for it! My dad made his own with waxed meat paper and splitting lathes the long way. I was standing there remembering his bib overalls and high-top work shoes and realized that he was a closet meteorologist. I believe farmers had to be that in the 1900s through 1950s. After that, radio began to let them know the weather.
This man would stop in his tracks and let the air blow by his face and tell if there would be too much humidity to mow hay or cut oats. He would judge the clouds and the movement of them about incoming storms. He would climb up the first few steps on the windmill and judge the strength and feel of the wind. While hewas up there I would be below him walking the rim of the metal water tank and knowing that if I fell in and disturbed the green algae I would be sent to the house with an aggravated point of the finger.
There was women’s work to do in the house and I’d rather not be there doing housework when I could be outside. The livestock didn’t like to drink from the tank after the water was riled up. A few times he would explain what he knew about the Santa Ana winds that Iowa felt about once a year.
In the spring when the fields were knee deep in mud was when the winter snows melted slow and soaked deep and good for next year’s crops. I knownow that he was in a partnership with the weather and the more he knew, the better. My husband was also always aware of the wind and humidity, because as a body and fender man, no matter how tight a shop was, those two things affected body putty and paint. When he learned body and fender work, it was all done by lead. He thought body putty was a wonderful invention. Not better, but easier.
Millie’s lesson for United Methodist Women had a sentence that grabbed my attention. It was: “Do all the good you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, as long as ever you can.” Now isn’t that a code to live by?
How long since you’ve played a game of pick up sticks? I buy all these things at garage sales, but the 9-year old takes this game very serious. I can hardly do it without breathing on them. Thatcounts, too, if they move.
The trip to Springfield, Mo., to visit Howard Pennington at the burn hospital was a trip of old memories - driving through Monett, Washburn and Cassville. These were the towns that my husband brought me to, to introduce me to his family.
They sure don’t resemble the towns he showed me in 1949.
Bring your Valentine cookies on Sunday, Feb. 12, for our birthday celebration. Leftovers will be taken to Hanna House.
Ash Wednesday services will be at Brightwater this year on Feb. 22, at 6 p.m.
And don’t forget the NEBCO Chili cook off on Feb. 25.
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Editors note: Edith Lammey has been a resident of the area for nearly 40 years. She can be contacted through The Times at 451-1196 or [email protected].
Opinion, Pages 4 on 02/08/2012