"That's not our ring"

I know I'm going to sound like an old curmudgeon when I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway.  Kids today are spoiled rotten with communication. Cell phones, texting, email, Facebook...

Back in my day, we had one corded, rotary telephone in the house.  For youngsters who don't know what I'm talking about and for older folks who may have forgotten, it looked like this.

That's it.  Unless you were face to face with someone, that was your only option of communication.  Well, that and the good ol' US Postal service.  And megaphones and smoke signals.  And dinner bells.  

You get the point.  

The phone was in the kitchen, on a washstand, next to a heating vent, behind Dad's chair at the table, under a black and white television that sat on a bracket mounted to the wall.  On cold days after school, I would stand over the vent to warm up and watch Dark Shadows, Love American Style, and Match Game - in that order.  On Saturday mornings, I watched cartoons there with my nightgown on - it was like being in my own little heated tent.  And that's where I talked on the phone.  

I had a lot of really good friends, and some of them were "long distance."  My parents convinced me that it cost some astronomical amount of money to make those special phone calls.  I could chat for a while with Jill, but a call to Kathy meant convincing them of a life or death situation.  If I did get to place the call, I was told to "make it quick."

Here's the kicker:  Four households shared one telephone line.  Our little dead end gravel road had a "party line."  Sometime during the late 1970's, the family at the end of the road moved out and the couple that moved in got their own telephone line.  I considered that snooty.  That took our "party" down to three.  

There was party line etiquette.  When you picked up the phone and heard someone speaking, you gently put the receiver back in it's cradle and checked back after a few minutes.  After checking more than a few times, the receiver was put back with a little more force.  When you were talking and heard someone pick up their receiver, that was a signal to wrap things up.  You were never supposed to listen in on a conversation, but I caught the neighbor kids doing it more than once.  (In all fairness to them, I did have the juiciest stories on the line.)

I don't remember when we got rid of the party line.  I'm fairly certain we were forced to get our own line by AT&T. Why fix something that's not broken?  I know it was after 1983, because that's the year I met my husband.  John distinctly remembers having dinner with me and my parents, when the phone rang and nobody made an effort to answer it.  One of my parents saw the puzzled look on his face and said, "That's not our ring."  Yes, technology was so advanced that even though the phone rang in every house on the party line, we all had distinctive rings.  

It still floors me from time to time, just how much things have changed in less than 30 years. 

Now excuse me, while I go Skype my spoiled kid.

Zeke

When I was 10 or 11 years old, we got a basset hound puppy.  He was the cutest thing I had ever seen in my entire life.  If you've never been around a basset puppy, do yourself a favor and find one.  They are a whole lot of loose fur, ears, and wrinkles.  They should be in the dictionary under adorable.

He was a Christmas present for my brother.  I don't remember where we got him, but Mom, Dad and I went somewhere to pick him up, and he threw up on the car ride home.  

He was perfect.  He had beautiful markings for a basset.  The Hush Puppy dog looked like a 

scraggly mutt compared to this puppy.  

My brother loved his present, and then named him...   Zeke.

This beyond adorable little puppy had ZEKE for a name!!  I was horrified!  You can't name something so cute, something so...  so... NOT!

But I quickly found that Zeke was a quite fitting name for such a regal hound.

At some point, Zeke was let outside to be the farm dog he was meant to be.  He wondered around, checking on livestock.  He moved so slowly, everyone in a 2 mile radius of our house knew to look out for him meandering down the middle of the road.  Zeke never felt the need to get out of anybody's way - even my father, driving a tractor or combine behind him. (My brother drew a great caricature of Zeke sitting, as a tractor loomed in the background behind him, and my mother even needlepointed it onto a pillow.  Yeah, we were all kinda nuts about this dog.)

His paws were massive and he took the same route everywhere he went, so he wore a diagonal path across our front lawn, and one across Sis' yard as well.  He had numerous girlfriends in the area (or so we assumed), so nobody was ever too alarmed when he disappeared for a couple days.

Regardless of a bath, he always had that fragrant "outdoor farm dog" smell about him.  It can be endearing.  Really.

In the winter, he would try to chase me and my friends down the hill in front of our house on our sleds.  I can't tell you what was more entertaining - sledding or watching Zeke get tangled in his ears as he barreled down the hill as fast as his stubby legs could carry him.  Watching him try to maneuver the ice that covered the pond was most amusing as well.

Sis hit him with her car one spring, and his right hind leg was in a splint for a couple months.  That happened to be the year I took Dog Obedience in 4-H.  I don't know what possessed me to sign on for that to begin with, and the splint could have been my excuse to get us out of it.  Bassets are known to be ridiculously hard to train.  They are very smart - but built for smelling things, and they embrace that gift with a fervor beyond compare.  After the splint came off, I drug him around at a couple workshops, and then drug him around the coliseum at the 4-H fair.  Even though all Zeke wanted to do was smell for new friends, we earned a red ribbon for our efforts.  I think the only reason we didn't get a white ribbon was because the judges knew what I was up against and took pity on me.

My brother took Zeke cruising with him on a few Saturday nights.  Denny never verified it, but  I'm sure Zeke was quite the chick magnet.  At the end of the evening, Denny would come home and turn Zeke out to his doghouse as usual.   Zeke had a MAJOR problem with all that attention coming to an abrupt end, and howled all night long - right under MY window.

I won't go into how Zeke left us.  Let's just say there is a idiotic, jerk of a teenage kid in every neighborhood, even on our little dead end gravel road.  That was my first true heartbreak.  We lost a member of the family, and we all took it very hard.  It was one of the very few times I saw my father cry.

Of course I love Caz and Lilly, but Zeke will always have a special place in my heart.

Fearless

I was absolutely fearless as a kid.  Well, that's not true.  I hated spiders and snakes and bugs and that kind of thing as much as I do now.  And chicken guts.  And toads.

But I'm talking about stunts.  I mean truly stupid stuff I can't believe I survived.

Example #1-

I took this photo from on top of one of our Harvester grain silos.  I am awful at guessing heights, so I won't attempt it here - but these silos are big.  I guess that can be assumed, given this view of the barn roofs.

I had no qualms about climbing up there - even at the very top when you have to keep climbing without the safety of the semi-circle cage encasing the ladder.  I just wanted to get the photo on my Kodak Pocket Instamatic (we were inseparable.)

I remember sitting up there, just contemplating life.  Looking over all that land, not seeing another soul, it was peaceful.  

I wouldn't climb up there now if you paid me.  A lot.

Example #2-

The Talbert family lived down the road from us.  Actually, they lived at the very end of our dead end road.  They didn't have many visitors, so when I saw a car driving past our house heading toward the Talbert place I would count the seconds before I saw the car driving back.  (Did they not get the "DEAD END ROAD" sign posted at the corner?)  Anyway, David was my age and Peggy was a couple years younger.  Together, we explored every inch of woods surrounding our houses - and while mine was mostly farmland, they had awesome woods.  They had a waterfall and creek practically in their back yard.  And our favorite thing to do was to swing out over the waterfall on grapevines.  

Grapevines.  That can break.

I took these photos years later.  See the rocks below the waterfall?  Yeah.  That's where I can't believe my mangled body didn't end up. 

Here is my brother, looking over the edge.  I remember using a zoom lens when I took this.

Example #3-

This is a bridge that was near my house.  It is called High Bridge.  It is called that for a reason.  It's freaking high.  I took these many years after we hung out there as kids.  

See the railing?  Yeah.  I walked across that railing more times than I care to even think about.  It is maybe one foot across.  One slip, and you can see where you end up.  Legend had it that a kid we knew rode his bicycle across the top railing.  Thankfully, I wasn't that brave.  Or stupid.

And it's a rather long bridge.

This photo is taken probably half way across the bridge.  

My friend, Jill, lived right by the bridge.  Her family were the caretakers of a girl scout camp that owned the property to one side of the bridge.  Purdue University owned the property on the other side.  We camped out there a lot during the summer - but rarely far enough that we couldn't run back to the house to use the bathroom.  Purdue students would come down there to camp and party, and we spied on them.  

Now, heights completely freak me out.  I can't even drive across a bridge without getting sweaty palms.  Roller coasters?  Don't get me started.  I almost had "an accident" during the Tower of Terror ride at Disney World.  

What happened to me??  

We now live in the St. Louis area.  Don't expect me to go up in The Arch with you, and don't be surprised if I get weird while going over bridges.  I used up a lifetime of height tolerance at a very young age.

My balls

I feel the need to take a short break from my stroll down childhood memory lane to talk about my balls.

People love my balls - my Oreo balls, that is.

I could refer to them as Oreo Truffles, like they do on allrecipes.com, but what's the fun in that?

Years ago, my friend Kathy put a dozen of them in a silent auction at church.  My son didn't care that he had never tried them - they were Oreo goodness packed into an orb and dunked in white chocolate.  It was a no brainer.  No matter the cost, they were coming home with us.

They were quite tasty.

I didn't make them until a couple years later.  Jim was a freshman in high school and new to the football team.  I thought the guys needed a little reward for completing their last day of double practices.  I remembered the "cookie" that didn't require me to turn the oven on during an August heat wave, and whipped up a double batch.  It was on that fateful day, that I became Oreo ball famous.

I got hugs from gross, sweaty, stinky, teenage running backs and lineman.  Countless mothers asked me for the recipe.  Teachers requested them.  After Hannah hit high school two years later, I had to make them for Speech competitions and Dance Team bake sales.   Any day the kids deemed special, was a day to take Oreo balls to school.

I took them to work.  Every time we had an event that called for bringing food, it was assumed I would bring balls.  One of my former bosses calls them as "little teardrops from heaven".

People have told me funny stories about their attempt to make Oreo balls.  Someone once used butter instead of cream cheese.  Eww.  The best was from woman I worked with, who tried to make the "dough" using only her hands.  I'm sure she was trying to get Oreo goo out from under her fingernails for weeks.

So that I cannot be accused to hoarding any Oreo ball secrets, here is my step-by-step tutorial.

Ingredients:
--One package of Oreos - no substitutions.  No store-brand knock-offs allowed.  No "double-stuff" or green-in-the-middle Oreos for St. Patrick's Day either - just ordinary Oreos.
--One package of cream cheese - whatever brand you like, but I've never used the low fat stuff.  I mean please!  If you are hellbent on lowering the calorie count from 523 to 518 per ball, you shouldn't be making these to begin with.  (I'm kidding about the calorie count.  I hope.)
--One package of white chocolate or white candy coating or white almond bark.  I use the almond bark or candy coating because I don't have the patience to melt real white chocolate.  And I burn it.  Like, every time I attempt it.

3 ingredients total.  Got that?  But the key to a good Oreo ball is the machinery.  You either need a kick-ass food processor or a mixer with major muscle, like this one.

Here we go.

Put the package of Oreos into your machine.  You can crush them before hand, but I never do.  I'm all about letting the machine do the work.  With the Oreos in the mixer, I start out with the bowl lowered, so cookie parts and pieces don't fly out, land on the floor and make my dogs sick (they are constantly perched in what they presume to be the optimum position to nab anything resembling food falling to the floor).

After they are crunched up a bit, then the bowl can be raised while still mixing on a low speed.

Then add the brick of cream cheese.  Again, start out with the bowl lowered, on low speed.

Then raise the bowl, until it is mixed enough not to spew crumbs.  (The mixer came with a shield to prevent such things as crumb spewing.  That disappeared 3 minutes after I opened the box.)

Then speed it up.  I mean really let her rip.  Leave it on a high speed for a minute or two, then scrape the sides with a spatula if needed.  I usually put the mixer back on high for another minute or two or three.  Whenever you think it has a good consistency, stop mixing.  Good consistency means when it looks like tar, has a glossy sheen and feels like bread dough with sand in it.  Sounds yummy, right?

At this point, you can cover the mixture and put it in the fridge for a couple hours or a couple days - or - you can roll them into balls and then refrigerate them.  Doesn't matter.  But at some point, they do have to be formed into balls, and they have to be cold when you dunk them in the white stuff.

Ah, the final step.  Melt whatever white stuff you have, according to the directions on the package.  I love the candy coating from Kroger that I have in the photo.  I haven't found this anywhere else.  It microwaves in less than 2 minutes, in it's own tray.  When you're done, you throw the tray away, leaving you with much less of a mess to clean up.  (Note to self:  Must bring back a stockpile of this stuff upon the next visit to central Illinois/Indiana.)

Dunk a ball, fish it out with a fork, tap it on the side of the tray or pan a few times and scrape it off the fork with a knife onto parchment or wax paper.  You'll start out with nice, clean white balls.  (I've often thought of trying to paint them with food coloring to look like eye balls for Halloween.  Thinking about it is as far as I've gotten.)  Toward the end of the dunking process, they have some Oreo ball parts and pieces in the white stuff, so they are not smooth and white.  But that's OK.  Nobody cares.

Let them sit until the chocolate/almond bark/candy coating is firm, then they can be transferred to a plate.

 
Be sure to keep them refrigerated.  And brace yourself for a shower of lovin' that will inevitably come your way.

Coonie

For one glorious summer when I was a kid, I had a pet raccoon.  Not being the brightest bulb in the pack, I named her Coonie.

To this day, I can't believe my parents gave Coonie to me and let me keep her.  Why?  Beside the fact that they are hugely susceptible to rabies, farmers loathe raccoons.  They eat anything.  They ruin crops and gardens.  They get into grain bins and garbage cans.  They pester livestock and eat their food.  So not only did my father give Coonie to me, but my mother let me bring her in the house on more than one occasion.  Really.  Looking back, this was very odd behavior for Art and Wilma.

I loved Coonie and she obviously loved me.  When Dad gave her to me, I was the happiest kid in the world.  To heck with the kittens we had every so often - I had a baby raccoon!!  (Our cat, Coonie - again, I was not the most imaginative child -  must have had 200 kittens in her lifetime.  In all fairness to 5-year-old-Me, she did have raccoon coloring.)  Years later, my brother, Denny told me that Dad ran over the rest of Coonie's family with some sort of farm implement and she was the only one left.  Even if that were true, it would be more characteristic of my father to go back and finish the job instead of rescuing one lone kit.  Just like farm women, farmers don't mess around.  They do what needs to be done.

Coonie and I hung out together all that summer.  I swear I taught her how to play hide and seek.  While raccoons are very intelligent, I seriously doubt she could master such a feat at such a young age, especially with my limited training abilities - but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

We had her on a leash at some point.  A raccoon.  On a leash.

The cats didn't appreciate Coonie.  I think they were just jealous of the attention I gave her.  This cat looks like it could have been Fry-Fry.  (Seriously.  I will write a whole entry on my ability, or lack thereof, to name animals.) 

I honestly don't remember where Coonie stayed that summer, but it was probably on our back porch.  At some point, she grew big enough that she was granted new quarters - a barrel in our barn.  I saw less and less of Coonie after that until one day, she was gone for good.  Dad took matters into his own hands?  I refuse to think so. Remembering things like I want them to be, I'm sure Coonie went off to have a lovely family of her own, lived a good, long life and never gave my father a moment of trouble.  Why, I think her great-great-great....grandkits are still roaming around the farm to this day.

My story.  Sticking to it.

Toads, the Prequel

Since both of my nieces commented on my "Toads" entry, I feel the need to share just a bit more about the amphibians at the farm.  I'll call this - "Toads, The Prequel:  Pilgrimage to the Patio".

Every spring, our patio would be inundated with tiny baby toads.  They hopped all the way from the shore of the pond.  For a little thing the size of a nickel, that's one long excursion.  I could barely handle a fish while wearing gloves, but baby toads were no problem.  Their size somehow made them cute and therefore touchable.

So these little guys were on a happy quest to hop away from the pond and settle in some undetermined destination.  Then, during the spring of 1974, an aura of carnage once again descended upon the patio (see my "Chickens" entry).

The culprits this time were my older brothers, John and Denny.  They convinced Laurie, my niece who was only 2 or 3 at the time, to step on the baby toads.  Like everything else Laurie did, she did it with conviction.  There were squashed mini toads everywhere on that patio.  Denny and John - Laurie's father - thought it was wildly funny.  I was 12 or 13 at the time, thought it was disgusting and left the scene.  But then every time I walked out onto the patio for the next few days, I had to be careful to dodge the dried up, flattened, little victims.  Ewwww.

The annual invasion of the baby toads persisted, despite all stomping efforts.  I don't remember my other niece and nephew being subjected to baby toad squashing like Laurie was.

Poor Laurie.  A few years later, John and Denny also convinced her that her bangs wouldn't lay flat because a cow, did in fact, come up and lick her forehead, leaving her hairline forever marred.  ("Sure it happened!  Why do you think they call it a cowlick??")  Sorry, Laurie.  I was just happy to finally not be the center of their attention.

The darkroom years

I love photography.  I always have.  I started taking photos and developing film in high school.  After college, I took the same photography class over and over again. After the first time, the teacher let me skip the class part and go straight to the darkroom so I could do my own thing.  I never made the jump from black and white to color.  I never felt the need.  Black and white has a lovely edge to it, and leaves more to the imagination.

Needless to say, photography has changed a lot since those days.  The change is all good but for one thing - putting the paper in the developing solution and watching the image appear.  I get a little thrill just remembering that.  I think I loved that part because there were so many things that could go wrong prior to that point, (light is a friend and a foe) that it was a relief to know you actually got the shot and captured the moment.

Most of the good photos I took ended up in the yearbook or have been given away over the years.  I am really surprised at how few good pictures are still in their designated spots in my disintegrating scrapbook.  Kathy took the photos of her on-again-off-again boyfriend, at a wrestling match (because, you know, he was in a singlet).  There is a classic photo of Billy Wesley and Karen Van Pelt that disappeared at some point.  I really miss that one.  I have blank pages in my scrapbook where there used to be photos of Bill Hurst and Jeff Wilson.  My friend Brenda grieved hard for Bill after he died so many years ago, and I hope those photos remind her of happier times.  Given away or lost, I hang on tight to the images I still have.

I love this photo of Sally and her wonderful car, Stud.

That. Car. Was. Awesome.  It was an early 1960s Belvedere with a push button transmission.  Cutting edge stuff!  The driver's side door was badly dented, so you had to enter and exit the car on the passenger side.  The paint was peeled off in big spots, and with that "coloring", we determined Stud was an appaloosa.  

We had an art show in high school when I was a junior.  There were over a hundred entries.  This photo of my nieces received honorable mention--

It was completely staged at the end of our lane, down the road from Sis' house, but that's okay.  I didn't enter this one of Jen, but I took it the same afternoon and I've always liked it.  Maybe because she was such a little pixie of a thing, and it looks like she was marching.

This photo of Dad took best in show --

I don't remember why the judges liked it so much, but of all the photos I've ever taken, this is still one of my favorites.  I remember running through the field, north of Pete and Elsie's house, trying to keep up with the tractor.  I almost fell half a dozen times, and was worried about dirt settling on my lens.

Maybe when we finally get unpacked, I will find more of my photos.  Doubtful, though.  I'll just have to keep those images to myself in my head, and remember them being better than they probably were.