LITTLE GRANDMA

LITTLE GRANDMA: Nora Beatrice Lattimer was born November 1888. I used to beg her to tell me stories about when she was young. She told me that when went to school she wrote on a slate, sat on wooden benches and probably read out of McGuffey's Reader. When she was older she caught Scarlet Fever, now known as rheumatic fever. There was not much treatment. She had her hair cut off because of the fever. She never grew it back. If there was aspirin she might have gotten that. If she was very lucky she was not given Laudenum which is opium and alcohol. I am certain one of her heart valves was effected as well. One of the side effects of the fever was that of softening of the joints. It was not known then that the fingers must be bound and kept straight. As soon as she was well enough to went back to work and her fingers became a crooked zig zag. Those were very talented fingers and I loved her hands. She met Riley when she was working in a store in Missouri. She was always a little embarrased that that she was about three years older than he. She was 27 and nearly an old maid. They married and lived in Missouri for a few years. While there all of her children were born, the first baby died shortly after birth from a broken neck, mostly likely face first. A second son died at age two and is buried in Missouri. Clayton, Ralph, Paul, Wilma and Virginia were born there as well. Riley decided to move the family to eastern Colorado and do dry farming. That means you plant seeds and pray for rain. They lived there through the dust bowl years. A family friend had moved to Emmett and wrote back to them raving about the crop yields. Riley decided after a very good crop to sell out and moved to Emmett, Idaho. They lived on a couple of different farms. They settled on the slope down the valley a few miles. The farm was small and they kept a dairy herd and planted corn. I loved the smell of the molasses poured on the feed that the cows ate while in the stall being milked. The earliest memory I have of Grandma Horn was her prompting me to jump so she could hold me on her lap. I loved her food, especially pies. She made a cherry pie one time and I kept begging to eat more and more. She asked me if I had enough. I kept eating cherry pie until I vomited. Never did like cherry pie much after that. She fried chicken in an electric skillet. Took about thirty minutes and it was just the best fried chicken. She had a gooseberry bush that grew on top of the fruit cellar. I would beg her to make me a pie. She would agree but shuddered when I ate it. Yum! I was well grown before I ever learned that Gooseberries could get ripe and were pretty delicious. She taught me how to emboider; a French knot and how to make daisies. If I was lucky I could emboider a printed pattern on a hoop. She taught me to divide the skein of thread into sets of two and three depending on what you wanted to emboider. I emboided a free style dish towel one time and it was ugly, she gave it back to me when I got older. She would occasionally take me to church with her. We attended the First Christian Church in Emmett. It is gone now that site is now occupied with a drive through bank station. Back to church. One time we were sitting in church it was communion Sunday. The elders passed the collection basket and later on they passed the communion tray. The tray was all shiny silver looking with doily's in the middle that held the Host wafers. There were two circles of little glasses that went around the edge of the tray filled with wine. The little glassed jiggled merrily as the tray was passed. Grandma took a sip of the wine. I asked if I could have some and she said no. The church baptismal was behind the alter hidden by a blue cloth. When open the baptismal was a large cement basin that held a couple hundred gallons of water. Above the baptismal hung a large wooden cross with light bulbs on it. It did worry about that cross falling in to the water at a critical moment. I was attending an evening service and the preacher called for sinner to come forward and be saved. I was having my period at the time and decided that the timing was just not right. Grandma always worse dresses and a little black hat. After Riley died, she moved into town by one of the canals. I would go stay with her every once in a while. One Christmas I decided to make doll blankets for my three sisters This was also a Home Economics project so I got credit. I would come over after school, back in front of her electric wall heater. The get up and sew for a while. She taught me how to use er Singer sewing machine. I loved using the rocker plate and pushing the wheel. It was a lovely thing. Grandma helped with the chicken. I would go with her to the coop where she was change the water in metal feeders. She would let me scatter chicken feed out in the yard. I always wanted to play in the coop but she said that there were mites and I could not play there. She churned butter when she was younger. She gave me her five gallon butter churn with paddle. She told me that she always felt like she was marking time when she churned. At the farm in the 50's she used a stand mixer to churn the butter, squeeze out the buttermilk and use a paddle to form one pound pats. So she had chicken and egg money. They would take the butter and eggs each week to sell to Albertsons store. I learned early on not to beg for anything. They would purchase two kinds of candy; horehound candy and chicken legs. The latter was a bit like Baby Ruth only smaller. The horehound candy tasted like cough drops and I did not care for them. Most of the milk went intp 25 gallon cans which were wheeled out to a cement tank by the road for the dairy truck to pick up. A couple of gallons of milk were brought in for the house. I remember Grandma Horn using her crooked finger to skim the cream off until the milk was nearly blue. She made bread. It smelled wonderful. My special job was to use a brush to pain the tops of the loaves with bacon grease. When the loaves had cooled, I would sometimes get an end piece. Heaven! She made pies and her pie crusts were so tender and flaky. I loved her pumpkin pie the best. Her recipe was from the last new wood stove she received while living in Colorado. A small recipe book came with the stove. Carla has the cookbook. There are other nice recipes in the booklet as well. She also made green tomato pickles. This is a sweet pickle and very crisp. Her favorite way of serving it was to fry up hamburgery patties, grill the bun in the frying pan, a smear of mayo, put on the burger and a couple of slices of pickle. Yummy! I have made many batches of green tomato pickles since. I have jars from last years batch. My neighbor across the street obtained seven pounds for me , which is exactly what the recipe calls for, so delicious. I moved back to Emmett to go to college and get a short degree in Medical Records. I worked at St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in the medical records department doing transcription. While there Grandma Horn was admitted with ascending cholangitis. She was in ICU for a few days and died at age 93. Her funeral was held in the First Chrisitian Church in Emmett. It was a nice service. At the viewing I was a little dismayed. Someone at the funeral home had given her pink lipstick. She never wore makeup of any kind while alive. A few weeks later I was working medical records at St. Al's sorting reports. Among these reports was Grandma Horn's autopsy report. Well Hippa did not exist then, so I read the report. Her great vessels were clean and slick as a whistle. No organ damage anywhere. I prayed, “Please God let me have Grandma Horn's heart and vessels.” She had eaten bacon and pork and made pie crust out of lard all of her life. I was fairly certain that my cholesterol was perfect and it was. Yeah! Thank you genetics!

STORIES I COULD HAVE TOLD AT MOM'S FUNERAL

STORIES I COULD HAVE TOLD AT MOM'S FUNERAL: Mom died shortly before Christmas. She had turned 83 and was in gradual decline. She was on oxygen, receiving Home Care. Gale called to say she was in the hospital dying. She called later that night to confirm her death. I left the next day. Tim and I drove to Emmett. We decided to have the funeral on the Saturday after Christmas. Since that same day was Jim's birthday we threw a party at Gale's house. It got a little loud and a little drunk out. We had assembled the previous day to divide up her belongings. The only thing I took was her birthday ring. I have it in my jewelery box made by Charlie in his shop class. C harlie wanted the angel that hung in the kitchen so I took that for him. Ellen had fallen in love with some of Mom's glassware and she took that. I don't remember what Carla took. Phil took the Neeci-Elna sewing machine and later gave it to a family who needed one. There was a small problem with her hand written will, it needed two witness signatures. So we decided to have Richard take care of that. Ellen was in charge of Mom's Money Certificates and she got that divided up. She had written several check to us for Christmas, I cashed mine. She did not sign some of them, so that had to be figured out. Richard took the electric bike thing to sell. It was not worth much. Phil loaded up some of her furniture. The funeral was a lot more jolly that Dad's. Gales then man friend read a childhood history when Mom grew up in Colorado. She met the King and Queen of Denmark who came to visit a Danish hospital. I told my story about her signing an excuse slip with Mrs. Baseball and about how when she was a young suburban housewife and took me to Brownie Scout day camp for singing and crafts. It was fun. Then the rest of the audience chimed and told other stories. Had I thought about it a bit more carefully I would have said that Mom worked very hard. She kept us washed, fed and clothed. Cooking, she told me as a young bride she experimented with food coloring. She put blue in the mashed potatoes. Dad gave her his best stink eye and that was the last of the food coloring. Mom's cooking was basic, nothing fancy but all pretty good. All of us kids have the list of Childhood Torture foods. Mine was fried brains, fried oysters, liver and onion any any form of aubergine. Ugh. I have read of aubergine parmesan and I would give that a try. I think the secret to successful egg plant was to soak it in milk. SEWING: Mom talked Dad into letting her purchase a sewing machine when I was not in my teens yet. The sales pitch included free sewing lessons and wouldn't that be nice to teach a me? Um, never happened. Mom would not let anyone touch that machine. She sewed approximatley ten thousand miles of stitches on that thing. The only thing she did not make was blue jeans. She made my school dresses out of Dan River cotton. This was a cotton that washed well, did not fade and ironed like a dream. The pattern of plaid usually had little tufts of cotton here and there. These dresses wore like iron. The pattern was a simple shirtwaist that buttoned from the skirt to the neck, collar and short sleeves. If the material she bought was on the cheap side she always washed it then had me hang onto one end while she held to the other end and tugged it to stretch the material. Fortunately I left home before the advent of polyester. She made lots of very unappreciated dresses for the girls. They did not need ironing and lasted way too long. She made several quilts out of the left over material. I gave mine to Gale. It needed new backing but the front was still in pretty good shape. When I was in Junior Highschool at Parkview, I was enrolled in Home Economics. The only thing we learned to cook was milk toast. Which is pretty disgusting. We also had a sewing project. We used a pattern to cut out material and sew a dress. I used Mom's shirtwaist pattern for my project and she purchased a nice dark blue cotton. It took several weeks and at the end there was going to be an inclass fashion show. I took my dress home and showed it to Mom. She shrieked in horror, got out the seam ripper, tore it apart and put it back together with properly spaced margins and seams that would actually hold up to washing. She sewed my eight grade graduation dress of white cotton with black dots, It was beautiful. The skirt flared a bit, short sleeves with a square back. She put in some black strips to hold it snug so it would not slide down my shoulders. I wish I could still fit in that dress I loved it. No idea what ever happened to it, obviously grew out of it, Dang. IRONING: Mom taught me how to properly iron. The clothig had been sprinkled with water from a pop bottle with a top with holes in it, rolled and placed in a basket. My chore was to iron down to a certain colored towel. She taught me to iron a shirt; first do the collar back side first,then the top. Next the back yoke by folding the yoke over until that was all that was showing on the ironing board. Then cuffs if there were any, then each sleeve. If there were buttons turn the shirt inside out and iron the button placket from the inside then the outside then the other half of the shirt front. Then iron each side on the front then the ba ck. Pay special attention to the hems, iron them straight so they would not curl. Hang finished piece on a hanger. OTHER CHORES: Mom had me clean the bathroom and wash the dishes. I knew how to get out of washing dishes. The longer I played around in the kitchen the better. She would get impatient with me and ask if I was done yet and I said no. Get out of there, I can do it faster myself. Yup, that worked. I could get back to whatever book I was reading. I was the built in babysitter. I didn't care my little sisters were self entertaining. She taught me to wash blood out of clothing when I got my period and how to put the Kotex pad on the little belt. It was kind of tricky. She took me to a ladies house in Emmett near the highschool. She sold underwear. Mom took me there to get my first brassier. She told dad that my cup runneth over. Mom sewed my wedding dress for July 3, 1970. It was a simple satin sheath with a lacy over dress, no sleeves. My first roomie loaned me her veil. It was very hot in Novato that day. Fun was had by most of us. No idea what happened to that dress either. WASHING: Early on Mom would use Grandma Horns wringer washer. I found that fascinating. Hot water was in the first tube where the soap was put and the clothes were agitated. She clothes then went throught the wringer where most of the water was squeezed out. The second tub was where the clothing was rinsed, I think this was agitated as well. The wring was swung over to the third tub where the clothing was put through the wringer after rinsing and allowed to fall into a tub. The clothes were then brought home to be hung up to dry. The winter we stayed at the Bishops house near Letha, Mom hung up some wash, mostly cloth diapers. She told me after school to go bring in the clothes from the line. They were all freeze dried. I brought them in to thaw by the wood stove. Then they were folded. I learned early on how to fold diapers. Start with a square, fold one side into a triangle, fold the other side over the triangle. Fold the top flap down. Fold the bottom up two times. Then fold in half for storage, Voila, diapers!. Later on God invented Laudromats. We would go to the one by Albertson's. They had a centrifuge machine that you could put the wash load in and it spun the water out of the clothing. Mom would take it home and hang it on the line. Very efficient. Christmas decorations. Consisted of a small allumium tree silver colored and a few balls. That was it. Mom had migraine headaches when I was younger. If we came home from school and the curtains were closed, and she was lying down. We knew that we had to be quiet or else. That stopped after a few years. When I was much older and would come home to visit, I would take Mom out to lunch to Boise somew'shere. She had active passenger road rage. I would tell that her that while we might be having an adventure it might not necessarily be much fun. She liked to go to a certain place that had free pie for seniors on Wednesday, so away we would go. I did not know for a long time that she did not like Chinese food. During the 80's I lived in Emmett. We traveled together for one of the Cousin's re-union. We drove through to the Yellowstone park. We were walking toward some of the springs and it was real sulfur smelling. I turned to her and said, “Guess what? We can fart all we want and no one will ever know. “ We picked up Ellen in Caspar and drove until we hit Best Westerns then we would stop for the night. We stopped at the Wind Caves and walked around in the dark. Mom hurt foot and actually had fractured her toe. We drove on to view the Presidents carved in granite. Stopped here and there, went to Kansas City to pick up Carla who flew in from Seattle. Then eventually we went to northern Missouri for the re-union. When I lived for a year in Dillingham, Ellen to Mom on a cruise through the NorthWest passage. Then flew from Anchorage and stayed with me for a few days. She decided she needed to have her ingrown toenail removed. So they came in, signed up and she was seen by a young doctor. He went to inject some pain killer but she kicked him like a mule and got a needle stick out of it. Mom came to visit a couple time after we moved to Coquille. We went to the County fair in Myrtle Point and looked at all the fun stuff in the barns. The dahlias were as large as dinner plates. The last time she came was to can fresh caught tuna. She gave me one tiny jar but it was delicious. If anyone else remembers anything please post in Facebook.

THINGS I WISH I HAD SAID AT MY FATHER'S FUNERAL

THINGS I WISH I SAID AT MY FATHER'S FUNERAL: When Dad died in 1995, he had cancer of the prostate. If I remember correctly he refused chemotherapy and hormone therapy. I do not know if he had surgery but he did have radiology treatment when it went to his back and it worked pretty well. All of us kids came home to be there. He was in the Boise VA hospital. The nurses were very kind and moved a bed that did not work so we could have a private room. It was pretty crowded as it was. He was pretty heavily sedated when we first visited. I walked in and his hand was on the raised rail. I leaned over to kiss his hand and said, “I love you, Daddy.” The nurses got an order to back off the sedation and he perked up and we played a decent game of Pinochle. In a couple of days he was moved to a step down unit for palliative care. My brother asked what palliative care meant. I told him it meant they were keeping him comfortable until he died. The funeral was held at Potter's. The officiant was a man from the Boise Veteran's who knew nothing about dad He gave a short speech about Brother Berglund's service and that was about it. Gale gave a reading, she was utterly heartbroken. I was simply numb. I think some else spoke but I do not remember. Among the music chosen, Mom selected “Wind Beneath My Wings”. Great another song I can hate forever. If I had not been shaken I would have liked to tell all sorts of stories that Dad told me. He ran away from home when he was 13. He rode his bike to Ontario, sold it for 10 or 15 dollars and took the train to Minnesotta. He worked the summer on relatives' farms during the harvest, mostly hay. He then wandered south to New Orleans where he was picked up for vagrancy. The judge decided to keep him for a while. I do not know when or how he got home. I wish I had asked. He told me about how he went AWOL in WWII and got away with it by having a buddy answer “Berglund” each morning when roll call was taken. He told me about the time he and his older brother got in trouble with a next door neighbor. It was cold they were cleaning trash out of the ditches and set some hay on fire to warm up and burned down the farmer's hay stack. Grandpa Berglund made them do some chores for the farmer. Then they decided they would get some revenge. One evening the farmer and family were gone somewhere. The boys sneaked over to the farmer's place. They decided the gentle bull needed a better view of the place. They stacked some baled hay and led the bull to the top of one of the barns. Then they sneaked off. The farmer got home and found the bull on top of the barn the next morning and he was furious. He was absolutely convinced that the Berglund boys had done it. He called the Sheriff. He called Grandpa Berglund but the boys denied having anything do with it. They stayed clear of the farmer as well as the sheriff for quite some time after that. Dad also told me about having a Chickeree. That is when a bunch of young people get hungry and decide they want fried chicken. A bunch of them drove to one of the kid's homes that had chickens. They caught three of four chickens, butchered, defeathered, cut up and fried the chicken. All without permission of the parents. Hope they cleaned up their mess. This is a story more about my Uncle Clayton than Dad but it is funny. In the summer Tater and Fern and the cousins would move to the Cow Camp. It was a two story concrete block house with no plumbing, water or electricity. There was an out house. The beds were upstairs with thundermugs beneath them. After peering into a used one, I never viewed canned tomales quite the same after that. One day Dad and Tater went hunting. Clayton was the marksman. He shot a deer just a teensy weensy bit out of season. Since there was a good eight or nine blabbermouth kids available to tell interesting tales, they decided on a bit of deception. They dressed the deer in the barn and wouldn't let us in to watch. We were wildly curious, Tater brought out a lodge pole pine just studed with porcupine quills saying they had killed one. They brought in the organ mean in a white tin bowl and for years after that, my show and tell at school was, “Do you know how big a porcupine liver is? It's almost a big as the porcupine!”. Years later I was home visiting retelling the tale including the bit of how big a porcupine liver was. My folks started laughing. The told me that it was not a porcupine liver but a deer liver. Well that was a little embarassing. Dad taught us how to approach a strange dog. Hold out the back of the hand, let the dog sniff. Tail would wag. He would take us fishing at a kid's water hole where any trout the kids caught were free. Our bait on the hook was a piece of hot dog. It worked just fine. I did not like to put worms on the hook. Dad taught us that a man could always find work. He was discharged from the Army as a mechanic and it did well for him. He and Mom loved to dance. We learned to dance at home and at Country dances at Montour. It was a family affair. Everyone went. If Mom made a raisen spice cake we knew we were going. I leaned to two step, waltz and I mostly watched the Schottish. It was lovely. There was usually a three piece band consisting of piano, violin and drums. They I remember that someone brought caviar on crackers. I ate some, it was salty. They held the supper at midnight and then passed the hat to pay for the musicians. If anyone brought liquor they had to leave it out in the vehicle and then go out for a nip or two. Richard told me he knew where to get free liquor when he was a little older. The only time Dad ever cooked was when Mom was in the hospital having a baby. He would bake a cake. He was a meat, potatoes and dessert man. He liked to make a quick dessert by tearing up bits bread in a glass, pour milk and sugar over it and eat it right up. I never cared for it all that much. I asked Dad what he used to eat for breakfast as kid. He told me, “We were so poor we couldn't afford cereal. We had to eat steak!” Does anyone else remember anything? We would love to hear it.

TWO MORE

TWO MORE: I was looking for work. I walked into a nursery. The head gardener was showing the students how to weed, trim and transplant Coleus. I said that I would love to learn how to do that. The instructor brought out a trailing vine and said that he was going to transplant it to the tall multi-armed stand. I indicated that I wished to do that. GARDNER: indicates tranquility, contentment, love and domestic bliss. A need to be more nurturing. TRAVEL: Tim and I had traveled to India with his sister and her guest. We had checked into a very cheap motel that had very large hallways. The host was preparing a meal for us. I was seated on the floor and Tim sat in a chair. The host had prepared a dish that looked like deep fried bugs cut in half. These were on a plate. He made glutinous rice which looked gray. He poured this into a wooden bowl. I picked up the small plastic spoon and asked Tim if he wanted to take a bite. He made a face. Then we learned that a young woman living there had died. A large truck pulled up outside with a delivery of very ugly mid century modern furniture. The driver wanted to know where the funiture went, it went to the young woman who had just died. The landlord told the driver that he could not accept the furniture because it was radioactive. I turned to Tim and explained that I was miserable and was ready to go home even if it was early. He said we would have to talk to his sister. TRAVEL, INDIA: represents the path toward your life goals. If travel has ended you have reached your life goals. India represents the need to rise above your present status. RADIOACTIVE: Represents suppressed emotions that may spill over into your daily life.

FOUR DIFFERENT DREAMS

FOUR DIFFERENT DREAMS: 1. I was lost in a huge airport. I was trying to get outside to the parking lot where I had left my car. There was a huge military presence, some kind of welcome home ceremony. 2. I was working on a project to bring water to the ocean. The canal was a large metal trough which meandered in gentle curves. The kids at the ocean were waiting to surf. There was one large plastic conduit that needed all sorts of wires and lines. An engineer was working on replacing the contact cement in a large multi shaped thing and he needed to replace it with concrete.in order to configure the correct spacing. 3. I walked down a steep path to visit a grandparent, the forest overshadowed the pathway and it was cool and very green. There were also large boulders that gently slid into the path after I had passed. 4. I was working in a phsysics lab to find the fifth dimension. The experiment produced nothing but frost with a zero centigrade temperature. One the lab people decided to blow the lab into smithereens. A young man knelt before the killer and asked that he not set off the explosion. We evacuated the building. Lost in airport indicates need to adjust to a new direction. Canal means a need for restraint or constricted emotions, Unyielding on think or beliefs. Road, Boulders. Major obstacle or problem in some part of your life. Physics Lab, experiment. Need to take a chance, be more daring.