Hats

I was watching the "Bishop's Wife" the other day and she fell in love with a hat. I was wondering that you do not see many hats anymore. Maybe because they look funny when you wear slacks. I use to have a green one with a feather on that I wore to funerals and teas. They still have funerals but not teas. I do not think they even have hat stores anymore so maybe you have to buy them at costume stores. Maybe it is because everyone male and female wear slacks. Little girls still wear dresses but then I think we use to have "Easter Bonnets". I canot write a very long blog today because how can you write about something obsolete. People wear hats now and they are generally knitted. I used to knit headscarves for my daughters. I knitted their names into the hat. That was dumb because people would call them by their name and they would think they knew them.

Obituaries

When my husband died he had a very long obituary as he had done many, many things in his life. Now I am older and have gone to the hospital a few times I wondered what anyone would find to write about me except to mention my wonderful children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. I have a good friend of my younger years that when she died I loved one of the sentences in hers was "in lieu of flowers,please send premium quality chocolates." Maybe I still have time to do something memorable besides run into buildings so people send premium chocolates while I am still here and I will eat them.

Name tags

I love name tags as I like to know who I am talking too. My husband Ray always carried one in his pocket he put on as he thought people were happier when they knew who you were. I notice I have two. I was talking to my minister yesterday and we were talking about people wearing them at church because we have them there in alphabetical order and people don't seem to be bothered not wearing them. Now the minister remembers their names but some of us with bad memories do not. I have care givers who take care of me now and I wish they wore their names. I know their faces but get the names mixed up. My minister had an idea of how to make people wear them at church. When they left church after wearing their names they would drop the name tags in a basket and then once a month we would have someone draw a name and the name that was drawn would get $10. If you went to church every Sunday in a month you would have more chances. It means that someone would have to spend time copying the names off and then put the name back on the rack for the next week but if your name was in the basket you might have four chances if you went to church every Sunday. Then you would have some person draw the name out the next month and it would be a fun game. The first Sunday of the new month you would announce the winner. It is probable too much trouble but sounds fun. I do wish people liked to wear name tags.

Entertainment

After I started dating my then to be husband I had a new world open up. In Topeka there was not much entertainment except bowling or going to the movie so Ray had a good friend and with his date we would go to Kansas City. Gas rationing was on and Ray did not have a car anyway so my mother would take the four of us to the Santa Fe depot and we would take the train to Kansas City, the big town east of us. We would arrive in the Union Station, take a cab downtown or ride the streetcar to one of the big hotels generally the Muehlbach for dinner. I know the first time I was nervous as I was out of my element and ordered chicken. When it came it was a whole chicken and when I cut it it sailed into Ray's lap. Later we would go to the Music Hall and see a play that had many Hollywood stars as well as Broadway. We like to go to the Folly Theater because you could buy chocolate, which was hard to find during the war. After the play was over we would go back to Union Station and take a Union Pacific train home. My mother would come at 2:00 in the morning and pick us up. I think she was glad when we found Topeka entertainment where we could take the bus or trolley.

Art around the house

I love being home and admiring the things I have on my walls at home. Besides pictures of my children I have the many things that my grandchildren have made me and my children. My daughter Sally has embroidered many things like clowns and sayings like our family tree and I have cute little ones done by grandchildren. I have a great picture of a rainbow done by my granddaughter Morgan when she learned to color. I have glass ones done by my granddaughter Stacy. A plate painted by my granddaughter Hayden. Some Christmas small decorations by Debbie and Erin when they were very young. I have a large woven one on my dining room wall that we got in Africa and it has stains of jello on it when grandchildren sat in their high chairs and shot jello at it. In the front hall is a large framed cow hide from the grandmother of one of our exchange students from Argentina. A picture by my niece who is quite an artist. Two pictures painted by my sister Helen, of views from the first apartment house in Topeka which we shared. One a great view of the Topeka Capitol Building and the other of her son and my first son and first daughter playing in front of the house. One picture was done by a friend who traded me Christmas socks for it. Three birds woven on a string from the exchange students aunt. Then I get kind of confused by the other pictures but love them. I never was good at art so did things like bead bookmarks and wove table mats. In one room we have clown circus posters and all the rooms have bookcases with many books. I have many bookcases made by my father along with a magazine rack he made me. In my kitchen I have spice racks my dad made along with I think was once a mail separator. I am not sure. I know my son-in-law Howard is also good with his hands as he has made a ramp in my garage for my wheelchair, and redone one of my bathrooms. I guess that is one of the reasons I am very happy here with my dog, Buster. I do crossword puzzles, read and watch TV. Who could ask for anything more? I forgot one great thing my granddaughter Hayden did - a wonderful picture frame of my 13 grandchildren . Now I have on my coffee table my two great grandsons pictures.

Contests

I love to enter contests in the mail and have even won a couple but I never did the lottery because my husband was a lottery commissioner and you cannot enter if you are one of his family which applied to our children, their spouses and grandchildren and I suppose our parents who were not interested anyway. The one contest I won as a child was a pair of roller skates which were very odd as they would not go forwards very well and went sideways when I tried to skate. The next time I won was a basket of groceries from a Milgram's store, My husband and I use to like to buy our groceries once a month and would go over to Missouri and buy them on sale and we won, Later we joined Guaranteed Foods and only shopped every four months. We did buy bread at the surplus store and I think they were still delivering milk those days. I still do not understand why the skates were uncooperative.

In-laws

I figure I am probably not the world's greatest mother-in-law but I would like you to know of some of my relatives' in-laws. When my sister Ethel had her first child in California my mother went out to be with her and my sister's in-laws went also as their son was an only child. After the birth of her oldest child, Leon, my dad and sister Helen went out to admire this wonder. When we got there we never saw her in-laws as they climbed out a bedroom window and went back to Dover, Kansas. Now my brother had a great mother-in-law and I always enjoyed her. I married an only child as his sister had died before he was born. It use to be the style that you had the first shoes the child wore that were not bootees bronzed. I have six pairs of bronze shoes and only five children as my mother in law had our son Steve second pair bronzed also. I have tried to give them to my children but they do not seem to want them so they sit on a high shelf gathering dust where I still admire them each day. Maybe the copper is worth a lot now so they can have them melted down and get rich. However it was my sister Ethel's in-laws who got me my first teaching job teaching at Pleasant Valley, a country school between Topeka and Dover, Kansas where I had 14 students who survived a year with me.

January 21

Today is my sister Ethel's birthday. She is no longer with us but I have very many fond memories of her. Both my sister Ethel and Helen were very good to me. She was named after my mother's twin sister who died young and she never really liked her name which was Ethel Bessie. My mother's was Edna Jessie so you can see why in the time my mother was born were great names. My sister always went by Bess. I think I spelled that correctly. She was great about sticking up for me and now my sister Helen has to do it. Of course my five kids stick up for me most of the time unless I displease them. I know my mother's twin was buried in a cemetery in eastern Topeka but wonder if the highway has displaced the cemetery. My mother said that in the fall that she and her brothers and sisters would take their wagon and walk to the cemetery and pick walnuts, It seemed like a long walk from Polk Street to the cemetery but they were hardy souls. I remember that I was there once on Memorial Day but it is kind of hazy at 87 years.

Doctors who are uncles

My mother had five sisters and one married a doctor. After our family doctor died my parents turned to their brother in law. When I needed shots or glasses he generally gave them to me. When I kept getting colds and always had a runny nose he peered at me and nodded. My dad at the same time was having some trouble but I don't remember his exact trouble but my uncle decided we both needed our tonsils out. We went to his hospital in Clay Center, Kansas and were both operated on and then shared a hospital room for a few days. After I came home and went back to school I managed to catch the measles. At that time in Topeka a nurse came out and looked at you and then put a big sign on the front door that you were quarantined. I do not remember my dad getting them so maybe I did not share them and my three older relatives had already had the measles. Later his brother who was not my relative and was a doctor in Topeka delivered my three oldest children. My first child was over nine pounds and hurt the doctor's back so he was in the hospital longer than I was.

Ice skates

My sister Helen and I share many memories. This is one she helped me with. We went to many Sonia Heine movies as the star. She always skated beautifully and won the male star, We decided to learn how to ice skate so went to the hardware store and bought great shoe skates, Then we went to Central Park in Topeka which was kind in the center of town. It was just a large pond then but was big. It was very cold. We did not get proficient but were able to stand up and move around. Our enthusiasm did not last long and neither did the ice. The ice skates found their way to the basement for 70 years where they were found by Helen's daughter-in-law, Julie who has a nice small fish pond with ice at her house. It is small so it stays frozen and now after all those years maybe the skates are going to get a life.

Measles

One Sunday I went to church with our group of five and my husband and I was to teach in the four-year-olds. I took my young son Scott to the baby sitters and found it was manned by two five graders. I realize now they would have been good but thought he needed an older care giver so took him along to the class I was to teach. Later our daughter Cindy was not feeling good so went to the doctor and found she was coming down with measles. Scott was diagnosed with them also so I should of left him with the fifth grade care takers. He probably would have got them anyway from his sister and that way they had each others company while they had them.

Communion

I was helping another woman with teaching children at Sunday School about the ways of the church and the different functions and the other teacher, Doris, decided we should teach the children what communion meant. I asked our minister and he said that he would not like to have the children in church during communion. I accepted that but the other teacher did not. We had been telling the children that they would be given a small piece of bread and a very tiny glass of grape juice. The children thought it was interesting so when we our church had its next communion the other teacher and I sailed into the church with our young group right to the front of the church so no one could miss us. The children were very good and handled things well and then we marched out and back to our classroom before the adults left. I think we were right behind the servers. I think the children understood everything and they actually seemed to enjoy it. Doris was braver than I was.

Autographs

I have in my scrapbook some autographs that I got in Lawrence, Kansas when they had a premire. I think I have John Wayne, Roy Rodgers, Gabby Hayes and Walter Pedgion. I know from other occasions I have Shirley Temple and Charles Sheldon (He founded my church in Topeka), My husband did not let any of us to ask for autographs. He himself asked for some. He maintained authors like to autograph books and he had many writer friends, Those books have autographs. He had a good friend that wrote a funny book and worked at the K C Star so when his book was published the fellow writers retired to a bar to celebrate the occasion. Ray took his copy and then turned it over and moved the cover to the back and him sign again so he thought Ray bought two copies. My daughter Sally has it now as I did not want it to get thrown away ever. I know the only pictures we have with an autographs are Richard Nixon. Walt Disney and I think Robert Kennedy. (I am not sure about that one). There may be others on the shelf above the washer and dryer but from a wheel chair I cannot check. I know when he wrote a book he loved to have people ask him to autograph them. He loved to take us with him on assignments of famous people but just wanted us to look at them.

Bible class

Our church offers third and fourth graders a class that teaches them how to use a Bible and how to find things in it. The year my grandaughter Stacy was the correct age a man in the church was appointed to teach the class. He did a poor job and then moved to Lawrence, Kansas. I and my two daughters Sally and Cindy decided we would try it. We had a great group of kids and a lesson book we only had to follow and it was fun. My job was doing games for a little relaxation from their studies=Sally and Cindy taught the class from the textbook that was available at a Bible store. I generally played "Hangman" using something from our lesson. We and the kids had a good time. Sally and Cindy along with my grandaughter Stacy have been teaching the class since. I expect this year I will retire as I don't do well traveling in a car any place but the three of them will be doing it again this year with my blessing.

Snow and sleds and cars

We had a neighbor who had two sons and when it snowed he like to tie sleds on the back of his car and take them for a ride. Sometimes my sister Helen and I went although I do not think my mother ever really approved and worried about us. We loved it. Our best sled for that was sleds my father had made us and were very sturdy. Mr. Bossler would tie them on his car and we would go down 13th street and around the lightly traveled streets. Most people stayed in during snow so there were not many cars out. My memory sort of fails me on this. This will be a short one unless I remember something besides my face being really cold.

Snow days

When I was growing up we did not have snowdays. I expect we did not have TV to tell us not to come to school so we put on snow boots and trudged off to school. It would be nice if the teacher made it. I had to go 6 blocks to school but sometimes my mother took me and my sister Helen. I do not remember ever having school called off or being sent home because there was no teacher. We did not go out for recess but played games in the classroom. I think we went home for lunch also, I know the teachers had lunch across the street from the school where the person who lived there provided lunch,

Basketball Uniforms

When I was in high school girls work lovely gym suits which were kind of bloomers and had three buttons on the shoulder to fasten them on and men wore very tight pants. Now they both men and women wear decent outfits. They look much better. I wonder what made coaches wise up and fix things. Now as to football when my father played back in 1913 they wore cheap shirts that when they tried to tackle them they ripped. I think that it was 1913 the lasst time Washburn College beat KU at football. Somewhere there must be a designer who helps make these changes. This is short today because how much can you say about uniforms but I do wonder sometimes.

grandparents

We were to write about our ansectors this month in my writing class and I realized I did not know as much about them as I thought. My own mother was a twin and they say twins run in the family. I know she had a sister who I think had two sets of twins which did not live. My mother's twin only lived a short time. She named my oldest sister after her twin. My own children weighed a lot when they were born but there was only one of them. Just nice fat babies. I knew quite a bit about my mother's family as she let me interview her once when I was making grandparents books for my grandchildren. My dad's mother never talked much about her family, I knew she had a clever brother who became President of a college and convinced my father to get a college education but one grandfather died before I was born and the other one knew my name but did not tell me about his family but then I was 10 when he died and doubt if many grandfather have long talks with grandchildren even now. I knew all my dad's brothers and his one sister, He never talked about his uncles or aunts. When my grandmother Burkhardt died and was buried I know they buried her beside the wrong Burkhardt and my dad had to pay to have her moved by her husband, At the time our local minister said a few words over her and she was laid to rest beside the correct husband.

Boston Creme Pie

As our children were growing up my in-laws like to visit us most weekends and one weekend I thought I would make a Boston Creme Pie for dessert. It was not cooling very fast so I put it out in the garage on the car to cool. We had lunch and were ready for dessert and Sally said she would get it. Cindy went along to help. Cindy came back first and sort of picked at my sleeve. It seemed Sally had dropped it. Sally came in soon with a sad looking dessert. She had done a good job of picking it up and except for a little sand on it's top was okay. We ate it.

Three Musketeer Candy bars

When I was growing up along with 2 sisters and a brother the girls in the family washed the dishes. I stood on a stool as I was kind of young and short. After we finished we got a treat. My mother bought a carton of candy bars from my Uncle Percy who ran a drug store and after we did the dishes we were offered the candy bar to share, I always hoped I would get the chocolate one but the vanilla and strawberry were not bad. The candy bar now is just one bar but they still call it by it's original name. It is chocolate so you do not have to worry about getting the right piece. I wonder if it is still delicious, The commercials make it look delicious.

Dogs

I love dogs and I married a man who did not care for dogs as he thought they were unsanitary, among other things. My father-in-law was a sanitarian so maybe that is where he got his attitude. The first dog was named Skippy. I was about six but he was hit by a car so my Dad did not want any more dogs. The 2nd was named Tarbabby and belonged to my sister, Ethel. He was a black cockerspaniel and we were great friends. However she moved to San Diego and took her dog with her. Then my husband-to-be gave me a blonde cocker spaniel I named Cokey. He was great. However when Ray asked for my hand in marriage, my dad said "You can have her but not her dog." Then we had birds as I needed a pet. But they only chirped.

The week before our youngest son was born, a newspaper friend gave Ray a dog which we named Pogo. He was very smart and could trail anyone, even my mother-in-law when she went for a walk. We had him about seven years. Then he was hit by a car and had to go to a vet. It was near labor day and Ray drove a racing car and ran into a brick wall and had to go to the hospital. The day he came home I got him settled and then went to get the dog. When we got home from the vet, I opened the car door and let him out. He ran to the porch and dropped dead. I called the vet and two came out. Later they called me to say he had died of cheer joy.

Our next dog was named Snoopy. It was about the time that we were being interviewed to have an exchange student and we put the dog out when they came but someone let him in and he rushed into the front room and stood on his hind legs and played the piano then went over and threw up in front of the committee. They gave us an exchange student from Norway as they said if we could survive the dog we could stand anything.

After he died we had Bimbo and she was with us for 17 years. Ray still did not like dogs but when the dog died he was writing a column for the K C Star and he wrote a sad column about the dog. The kids asked why since he did not even like Bimbo. We were offered a dog which we got right before Christmas and named her Holly. That was fine until we got a granddaughter named Holly and we would yell at the dog and this cute little girl would turn up to find what she did. After Holly dog died we did not have one for awhile and then Scott had a great dog named Abe and was going to Washington for the summer and left the dog here which was a mistake as I did not want to give him back. He lived 14 years and died of a tumor.

After Ray died I was lonely and my granddaughter, Erin, had gone to California and left her dog with her parents who loaned me a black lab named Ashiki. She was named after a KU football player. Needless to say Erin came home and I did not want to give her back and Erin let me keep her. Then not being a good driver I ran into a building and did something to my knee so my daughter took Ashiki home to Wichita, where she died. She was seven years old and her brother had died just before she did.

I came home and was lonesome again and my daughter Cindy and my granddaughter Holly got me a five-year-old dog from Pet Smart that had been raised in the prison at Lansing, Ks. We named him Buster since he busted out of Lansing Prison. I do love having a dog. However I like cats also and have had a few.

PTA President

When my children were in grade school our school had a carnival to raise money. We had a President who had sticky fingers. One year after the carnival was over we found while we had checks the cash had disappeared. Since the vicepresident of the PTA was the wife of the Shawnee Police Deptartment we had no trouble getting help from the police. It was about $800.00. Her mother put up the cash so we did not have a trial and put her in jail. Then the women did not want anything to do with the PTA so my husband Ray and another father took over. At the same time I had the daughter in Campfire and they sold candy. The mother kept the candy money and the candy her daughter had. The first father ran the PTA for a year and Ray was the program chairman and then the following year Ray was president. The family moved away but always sent me a Christmas card. You meet interesting people in the PTA.

What I did in World War 2

My grandson, Taylor was told by his teacher to interview his grandparents about the War. This is what I wrote for him, I graduated from high school in 1941, I attended Washburn College in the fall. My family owned a family car and a pickup truck. I got to drive that the most as my sister had a boyfriebd without a car so she took that. On December was Pearl Harbor. I had known about the European war because our neighbors to the north had to move from the Nazis. He was a psychrist at Mennigers while he got a US license. His stepdaughter was half Jewish. The male students started leaving the school. My husband to be was in the ROTC. My mother became a driver for the Red Cross and wore a neat uniform. Every holiday we had soldiers as guests. We had gas rationing and gas and meat stamps. I worked for my father and he had a filling station so I took care of gas stamps. Everyone rode the buses or if it was nice I rode my bike. My dad put it in the pickup and I drove home with him. A lot of his customers used the barter system for that was a time when you had your groceries delivered and we shopped at whatever grocery had a bill. College classes went on as usual except men students kept leaving for the armed forces. I do not think any of my classes were with air force but were with the navy. They took over the dorm and the sororitys. We had to move off campus. We went back to playing KU and KState. On December 1942 they tried a blackout in Topeka. It was not successful but the Japanese never attacked. My sister's boy friend went off to war as did my best friends and they decided we should do more then be hostesses at the USO so we decided to be Red Cross nurses aides. We went to class and Martha gave up but Helen and I stuck it out and got neat uniforms. We worked every Monday night and every other Sunday morning. Helen alwas worked maternity but they moved me around. There was a registered nurse on every floor. Monday nights I put people to bed. I gave them the bedpan and put all their flowers in the hall so the flowers would not take their oxygen while they slept. If I spilled the bed pan which I did once. It was my job to mop it up. There were no emergency rooms then at least not in Topeka so sometimes we were there. My mother had always told me to wear nice underwear when I went out in case I had a wreck but I found my job was to cut off whatever they were wearing and I never noticed if their underwear was great. We did great as USO hostesses as we had grown up with a pool table so played good pool and knew when it was polite to lose. As hostesses once a month they had a dance in the city hall which was fun but you were not allowed to turn anyone downwhen they asked you. By the time the war ended we had an airfield in Topeka and they were just back from the war. They did not want to talk they just sat and looked at you. Also you had to ride in a canvas topped truck and it was cold. At college we had a war bond rally and I was chosen to represent my soroity, I got third. I wore my $65.00 fur coat and was gracious in losing.Ray who I was dating at this time and he was editor of the school paper wrote an editorial about the football team wasn't very good but we should attend the school dance anyway. The team shaved off his hair. It had grown back when he was called into service and they cut his hair again but better. I finally graduated in 1944 and went to San Diego to visit my older sister Ethel. My mother stayed on and I had to get back to teach school. They had blood drives and I always gave blood until they told me I needed my blood more than they did but I did get my gallon pin. (More another day).