Raggedy Ann Dolls

Whenever I went to the hospital to give birth to a child I took along something to give the kid or kids left at home when I came home. When our fourth child was going to be born, I got the idea of making Raggedy Ann dolls. The three children we already had loved the stories. I got my pattern and went to work. It was fun. We had had a bad incident with a doll with Sally when she was young inhaling the stuffing so I looked around for something safer that I could use and I got the idea of nylon hose. I asked my friends and relatives to give me their cast off nylon hose when they had runners in them and stuffed a Raggedy Andy for Steve and Raggedy Anns for Sally and Susan. They loved them. I can't remember if I did any more or not and expect the patterns are still on the shelf over the washer and dryer.

balloon sticks

For Christmas I received a lovely amaryllis and it has many blooms on it. It is now reaching the end and is bent over. I knew I still had some balloon sticks in my closet so got one to hold it up. It did not work. I was thinking how I got the sticks.

We moved to Shawnee in 1951 and Shawnee was founded in 1856. In 1956 we were celebrating and my cub scouts were to sell balloons at the parade. I don't remember how we blew them up but we stood by the parade route and were assigned a spot on Shawnee Square. It was nice little park. It now has Shawnee City Hall. But then it was a small park in the center of Shawnee. The town jail was across the street north of the park. It had been built by the first prisoner. They later moved it to the new Shawnee park west of the original one but changed it so much it did not look the same. Two blocks south was the street that led to the Indian cemetery. It had been on land that the Methodist church owned during the Civil War. Across the square was the Shawnee Bank on the corner of Johnson Drive and Nieman. Nieman Road was named after the first banker. The second president was named Pflumm and we named things after him also. Of course Johnson Drive is named after the man who started the Shawnee Mission Indian School in Fairway where they taught the Indian children. He was killed by some robbers from Missouri who thought he had money. Cantrell must have camped in the little square before he went to raid Lawrence. There are many springs in Shawnee and I expect there was a good one in the park at one time.

My mother and cutting off the head of the bed

We moved into our new house that my father had helped draw the plans for when I was three. My two sisters and I had a southwest large bedroom. We had new iron beds. I was not long out of a crib. My mother thought we looked like a room at an orphanage because of the many beds. She decided it was the kind of beds with high headboards. She took a hack saw and sawed off the heads and made the foot of the bed the head of the bed. She had bedspreads that covered up her work and we looked very fancy and up to date like a picture in "Household Magazine." It really did improve the appearance and we did not look so much like a dormitory. Ethel and my bed now had their heads against the west wall and Helen had the head of her bed against the east wall and closet. In the summer time to get the breeze the three beds were lined up with their heads against the south wall. If we had guests they moved the beds closer together and I was generally picked to sleep in the crack between the beds. I generally fell in the crack. It wasn't bad. It was fun to be close to my visiting cousins.

Be the secretary of an organization

I learned early that I was not really presidential material but liked being secretary of a group. Presidents have to go to all sorts of meetings that secretaries do not have to attend. I loved taking minutes and reading them at meetings and since you read them yourself you did not have to spell correctly. My husband, Ray, liked to be president and I don't think he ever joined anything without ending up president. Once he was elected treasurer and that was not good as he never understood bookkeeping and I was the unknown treasurer. He did a better job as president. Over the years he was president of the Shawnee Mission Indian Society, the Sister City Committee of Kansas City, many PTAs (with five children you are a member of many PTAs). As president of Sister Cities, we went to Spain and Japan for Kansas City. We went to China but that was a trip offered us when the China government was taking travel agents to show them what they had to offer for customers. Other places we went like Africa and South America he was covering them for the Star and they let him bring me along. I still enjoy writing minutes but since I do not hear well it is not a career so I think I will become a famous writer instead. Now if I could just think of a plot I would be on my way.

Doors

I am really mad at the way they have made doors. In my father's house which was built in 1926 they knew the width doors should be but lately they have made doors smaller. We did have one small door on the downstairs lavatory which was not good but the other doors were the correct width that a person in a wheelchair could roll through. The doors on the house I live in now was built in 1951 and the doors in the back bathroom are narrow like that. However they are all correct for my walker. The walker I have for being a short person are just right for the doors, but not the wheel chair. However they used to be wrong if I was an inch taller. When we added on to our house the neighbors were changing their house and did not want their doors so our contractor purchased the doors. They were like the original ones in the house. It was nice to tell the world about doors and now I will relax and just let them be what they are meant to be--divide the house in parts.

Birthdays

Today is my granddaughter Holly's 18th birthday. I remember when I had mine how important it was. Now you can do thing earlier but then there were many restrictions which no longer existed when you turned 18. Holly says one bad thing is you can not rent a car until you are 25. I never thought of renting a car so that did not matter. I just used the family car or truck. I was very good with the truck. You get to sit up higher and see the world from a different angle. I generally just rode my bike. I had a fancy bike. I had applied for it as the war was still on and got a really nice one with balloon tires that I would ride the two miles to work at my father's garage in the office and then at night he would put it in the back of the pick up and go home. I did not have to ride the bus that way unless it was snowing or rainy. Happy Birthday Holly.

Another flag

I forgot my cold weather flag. It is penguins. I love it for it is so happy in cold weather. It likes the snow and likes flying from the house and reminds people there is a time between Valentine's Day and Saint Patrick's day. This is short today as I got everything said yesterday about flags.