Muscial Instruments

For a couple of years now, my husband Stan and I have enjoyed listening and dancing to polka and waltz music for weekly exercise and enjoyment. It is intriguing to hearing the different band members play their accordions, keyboards, saxophones, clarinets, trumpets and tubas. I became interested in the saxophone and teased in a serious kind of way that I was going to get myself a saxophone and start playing. I came home early from work on my 63rd birthday in a big Colorado spring snow storm. I was warming up in the recliner with a cup of hot chocolate. I mentioned to Stan that I should get up and make myself a birthday cake. He stood next to my chair handing me a wrapped package the size of a book commenting, “Why don’t you make some music instead?”

He kept standing by the chair as I opened the package which was a beginning book for saxophone. What a surprise. I thumbed through the book and said, “I guess I’ll have to get me a saxophone to play.”

“Why don’t you use this one?” Stan said as he brought up the saxophone case from behind the chair.

What a nice surprise and thoughtful gift. I guess he sensed my excitement when I heard the saxophones play.

Its has been 50 or so years since I played any kind of instrument. I leaned early on if I wait until the end of the day after work that I just wouldn’t have the energy to learn. So I practice every day at 5 am for a half hour before work. I plowed through the tickling of the reed at I blow sounds through the instrument. I could only hold my mouth in position for about 10 minutes as first. I needed to develop my ambusher (mouth muscles). I learned note after note until I could play Mary had a Little Lamb and Old McDonald.

I probably need a lesson, but haven’t found the time and want to keep learning on my own. I got bored with the beginning book and picked up some old piano music that was on top of our piano. I found one book that I remember trying to play as a kid on the piano, but I didn’t really have the skills to read all those notes on both hands and make sense of the melody. With saxophone you only have to read the top line of the treble cliff.

The Saxophone plays different notes than the piano. I haven’t figured out what that is about or how to translate music to saxophone music, so I just play the fingering with the notes I read. It sounds OK to me. I just wouldn’t be able to play with a piano or accordion as the saxophone would be in the wrong key.

At first I though this music book was from the 1940s as the songs were old. There was no copy write date in the book. Now that I think about it, I suspect it is music from the 20’s and the Title of the Book is 40 songs.

There are songs such as;
May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You
Into Some Life Some Rain Must Fall
It is No Secret
Piccolo Pete

Piccolo Pete is one of my favorites, but I haven’t quite mastered reading the notes, finding the correct fingering and playing up to the speed of the tune in my head.

I found another book on top of the piano for Bing Crosby’s Hits.

It included songs like:
Sioux City Sue
Give me Five Minutes More

This book was from about 1928. One of the songs was about – why did I meet you during this time when I have some many other things on my mind. I can’t say I every heard this one so I haven’t discovered how to play it yet. I was thinking about the words and the time this tune was written right before the great depression. There was certainly a lot on people’s mind at that time in history. The country’s economy had tanked and we didn’t have the social programs like social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and other such support our government both state and federals offers our citizens in need. Song can reflect the worries of the times. We could take that same song and apply it to today especially in certain part of our country that have been hardest hit with economic woos of foreclosures, plant closings and layoffs. The food banks are stretched as donations are reduced due to financial circumstances surrounding many of our neighbors and friends.

Music is the great equalizer. It brings spirits up and expresses subdued words that hid in the reassesses of our concerns.

I can imagine my Mom growing up in Greeley with a family living in poverty. There was a piano that they played and all gathered around to sing some song. Mom didn’t play, but she had a nice voice that carried a pretty melody in the middle range. These old sultry songs I found in the music books must have been just right for her to sing. She told me that Uncle Vern played the clarinet, but I never heard him so I don’t know if he was good at it. My Uncle Don Travis was a real talent. He sang and played a banjo. I remember visiting them in their apartment above the bakery. We walked up a steep long staircase to the upper floor. He would bring out his instruments and play us some music. I think he had some type of concertina squeeze box. I was just enamored over this thing and the music he played.

I always wanted to play an accordion after that. I don’t think my parents were accordion type of people. My sister Nancy was the whiz at piano thanks to some coaching with a hair brush on her butt occasionally. She filled the house with every piece of music she could lay her hands on. Church music was always a big deal at our house. She could play every hymn from start to end of the book. She went on to play in piano and then organ in the church and taught oodles of kids what she knew. Can you imagine all of them playing a song together, what a majestic sound that would be.

I took piano lessons, but they never really took. I didn’t have the talent or skills to work through those pages of notes. One summer when I was about 15, I went to summer band with my cousin Pam and friend Marlyss. Pam’s sister-in-law Willy (Sylvia) had played bassoon for years in high school and college. So on the first day of summer band Mr. Faulkner, the band teacher asked what instrument we wanted to play. Pam said she wanted Bassoon and Marlyss took the French horn. I asked for an accordion, but the band leader said accordions don’t play in these types of band or orchestras.

There was an extra bassoon, so that what I selected. A double reed instrument that only played the bass notes, what ever was I thinking. I probably played that work four years up to twelfth grade when I had to give up my band schedule for a psychology class so I could go off to college.

I played bassoon every summer and through the school in both the band and the orchestra from 8th or 9th grade through 11th. I was in the marching band. You don’t march with a bassoon so my teacher gave be a glockenspiel, cymbals and a tenor saxophone. I don’t remember really learning to play any of the marching instruments. I guess I was good enough to play with the band and keep up with the notes.

I was usually second chair bassoon. The gal that was first chair had played longer and knew the instrument pretty well. Sometimes we would be selected to go to clinic with other schools and play together, kind of like the all stars of instruments. I met one guy that just loved the bassoon and was first chair of the all-stars. I don’t know his name, but saw him playing the bassoon one Christmas at a concert. I have never picked up bassoon since eleventh grade.

I also played in the orchestra and had the opportunity to play for the musicals that the school put on each year. That was fun and the music was peppy.

My Mom always went to all my concerts. I don’t know if she liked the music or just wanted to support me in my interests. That was nice of her now that I think of it. Dad was Nancy’s big supporter. He was really proud of her accomplishments and had her play for all the relatives and enjoyed her playing in church.

I don’t remember my brother Alan playing an instrument. He was a big singer at school in a barbershop quartet. They had white sport coats and black shirts. It was impossible to find a black shirt in the stores in 1958 so Mom had died one for him to wear. He still sings every week in a barbershop quartet. For my 63rd birthday he called me up and all his buddies from the barbershop sang me a Happy Birthday. It was happy indeed.

Buttons

I am making a little pink dress for my nine month old granddaughter Anya. The pattern included a hat with a bow that I decided to pin on so the brim could be used pinned up with the bow or down without the bow to keep off the sun. When I was around age 2 or 3 my mom always made me wear a big old straw hat to keep out the sun and to minimize the freckles. There was no sun screen for kids in those days. The hat didn’t do much good as I would run around the yard lickety-split and with the hat trailing down my back hanging from the string around my neck. Yes, freckles galore.

I had bought a package of hooks and eyes for about $1.79 to sew on the back of Anya’s little dress at the top of the zipper. I decided she needed a little cloth purse to match the dress to hold the dolly I was making her. I was scrounging around my sewing drawers looking for a scrap of blanket satin for the dolly’s arms. My friends with more grand mothering skills than myself remarked that Anya would need something soft to touch.

What a bunch of unusual items I found in my sewing drawers. I must have had twenty packages of snaps and hooks / eyes that I had picked up over the years or collected from some of my Mom’s stuff. Some of the packages were labeled for ten cents. Others were three for a dollar. None were for $1.79. Boy the cost of inflation over the years. I put them all neatly in a tin box I bought recently at a garage sale for a quarter. At least I feel that I didn’t waste my quarter as I now have a use for what I bought.

I found a sandwich sized bag full of old buttons. Some were really pretty. A couple looked like black and white checker board. Big brassy metal ones had ornate designs and probably came off a coat or the top button of a cape. Three were grey green and shaped like a small bow. Groups of the same buttons in yellow, white and green were strung on a thread to hold them all together in hopes they could be used for a blouse again. They will probably never be used for that purpose. I haven’t made myself a blouse for years as it is a lot of work and patterns never really fit. I’ll keep to the little grand daughter dresses that fit just about right with minimum work.

I found some really cute little children’s buttons smaller than a dime that looked like teddy bears, pigs, clowns and more. I think Mom must have bought these for a special project she had in miniature, maybe for a dollhouse, but she never used them. They must have been special for her as she had them separated from the rest of the buttons. Mom used to shop with my Aunt Shirley Waymon. At one time, Shirley was building and decorating a dollhouse with my Uncle Don. I imagine it was one of those types of projects that Mom had in the back of her head to work on.

I remember Mom did love to make little crocheted Christmas trees that she decorated with small ornaments and sometimes sewed on Christmas type buttons. Sometimes her miniature trees were made from green thick chenille like pipe cleaners that she pressed into a Styrofoam cone.

My Grandmother Anna Swanson had a grey round metal container where she kept all her buttons. The few times I was left at her house as a young child to be babysat, I remember her situating me on the first couple of steps in her day room with a big long string of heavy carpet thread. She had treaded it on an extra large needle and tied off a button on the bottom of the string. I sat for hours loading that string up with buttons. There was no purpose really to this task except to keep me occupied while she worked at her sewing machine next to the stairs. When I had finished, these buttons had to go back into the button box for future use to fix shirts and skirts.

One time I went to visit my Grandmother Anna by myself. We lived about two miles from her house. I had to be at least 10 or 11 as that was when I had my horse Queenie. I saddled her up and off I went through the back fields under the railroad trestle and through the scrubby trees along the creek where my brother trapped beaver from time to time. I remember stopping to talk with Uke Murora and her two kids, Kenny and Judy. Uke and Jim were tenant farmers for my Grandpa Carl.

I had tied my horse loosely to the clothesline pole. Queenie got spooked with all the excitement and got loose some how. She ran and caught the saddle horn on the clothesline wire making a slice through the leather. I got her back in control not knowing if the clothesline needed repair after that or not. I went across the street to my Grandma’s. I thought she would be thrilled to see me as I was happy to see her. After I tied up my horse, she invited my in. I’m sure she gave me a cookie or two while she rang up my mom to find out what I was doing over there. All I remember is her saying on the phone, “Guess who showed up at my doorstep today.”

Dahlias and Irises

Along with the garden we always had along the edge of the grassy area by the driveway when we lived at the Swanson Farm, Mom planted purple dahlias in a row in the front yard by the mail box. They were three feet tall and filled with royal purple flowers in the summer. I’ve tried dahlias in different spots in my yard with mild success. This summer I have a couple of bushes that are growing thanks to the rain, but usually by hot July days they just give it up. Mom's were beautiful. Her success in growing dahlias must have been the handy irrigation water that ran in the ditch next to the house that Dad used to flood the lawn close to the strip of dahlias. He probably added a lot of cow manure right before she planted them too. But they were hers and any compliments went directly to her.

She had several colors of iris in different flower beds. She could name her friends who she had traded plants. She had some real early purple iris which she called weed iris. They weren’t the giant hybrid flowers that you can pick up at garden shops today. They were the unpretentious smaller and shorter purple that are harbingers of spring after the long cold of winter. I have some in my garden that I brought home from Mom’s garden years ago. They still bloom early and remind me of her nickname of weed iris. They require no care to speak of and probably get skipped in the water department more that they should. But I love them, because my Mom had them in her garden.

I had a couple of other iris plants that I picked up at Mom’s. One was an light orchid color of lavender. I think it finally died off. I have another that blooms every other year that had a smaller flower with a tall stem that has two colors of shades of light purple. It might have been hers.

My Aunt Belva was proud of a few irises she had in her yard. She gave me a pale blue, white with purple edges and butterscotch. The blue is long gone. The purple edged one is around and blooms once in a while, but not this year. John had one of those in his yard in Boston. It really grows well with all the moisture they get all year. The butterscotch one, well that is a weed iris for sure. It had probably lasted 20 of the 33 years we have lived in Lakewood. I separated them and planted them along the outside fence. They get no care or water. There they are blooming away in their big mundane pale butterscotch color flowers. Every year Stan comments on how these guys are so not the prettiest flower in the spring. But there they are making life more cheery for the rest of the iris. Giving the neighbors a chance to compare and contrast and make choices about splendor of the season. I like them well enough to not dig them up as they are hardy.

My Grandma Anna Swanson had a few irises in front of her house too. They were bright yellow. When John lived in Longmont, I planted a few in his front yard. They took off and always brightened up the spring. He has a few of those in Boston now too. I never did get any that would keep growing at my house.

There is a place in Boulder that had rows and rows of irises. They let you dig up brown paper sacks full of plants and roots for a price. It’s a good way to fill your yard full of blooms in the spring, but not near as memorable as knowing a family member had them in their yard also.

Grandma Anna also had three big peony plants along her driveway. I think they were pink. They must have been there a hundred years. I’ve heard that about peonies, that they last hundreds of years. I planted several bushes in my yard along the fence lines. Most are pink, but I have a few white bushes in the front on the corner. Stan is not too happy about white peonies either. He is kind of an opinionated guy about the silliest stuff. I think they are pretty. At one time, I had all white flowers on that corner in early spring from tulips, tall wild iris that were there when we moved in and the white peonies. I sprinkled some phloxes seed on that corner too that I had gathered from Mom’s yard. Once all the white peony flowers die off, up bloom the phloxes in soft pink.

Hair Styles

I was born with red hair and lots of it. It shined like a new penny in the morning sun. It was pretty much unheard of to take little girls to a beauty show or boys to a barber. So the girls hair just grew and grew. Boys maybe had a trim from their Mom, hence the chat about the bowl cut. It seems my brother must have gone to the barber with my Dad as he really didn’t have the bowl look.

By the time I was five or six I had really long hair that my mom French braided on both sides. I would run through the house like a mad man when she took out the brush. When she caught me, she would try to brush out the tangles, part it down the middle, slop on lots of wave set then put in those braids tighter than a drum starting at the forehead. Each real fat braid was tied off with a rubber band.

I had one picture taken of me with my long hair unbraided. It was kinky from the braid and hung below my waist. I was sitting in front of the light colored oak dressing table with the big round mirror on the bench. I hope to find a copy of that picture someday.

My sister Nancy had light brown colored hair. She also had braids, but I think she had to do them herself as she was ten years older than me. I remember her sitting on the piano bench playing away with her braids all wrapped around her head.

recently, we saw the movie Public Enemy about John Dillinger in the 30’s. For years my mom wore hairdos like the ladies in that movie. She would wet her hair down with wave set, the 50’s product for hair gel. Then she would slap that hair down slick to her head and form waves with her fingers. She would hold them in place with long aluminum clips. It was such a thing to be able to form those big finger waves.

My Aunt Ruth would fix her hair on Saturday. When we went over there on that day she would have a big colorful cotton scarf wrapped around her head and tied in a big ole knot at her forehead. You could see the pin curls tacked down with bobby pins through the scarf opening. When my Mom and Nancy changed their hair styles to more curls, I remember watching them maneuver that strip of hair around their fingers and then open the bobby pin with their teeth and slip it over the curl.

In the 1960’s bobby pins were replaced with pink plastic rollers. You would fix your hair at night and sleep on those silly things. Hard plastic rollers replaced the soft ones. I’m surprised anyone could sleep wearing those. We also had a hair dryer which was a big plastic hat with elastic connect to a plastic tube. By that time ratting or back-combing your hair became popular to make your hair into a smooth bubble. Then you would spray the dickens out of it with hair spray so it wouldn’t move a hair during the day. Sometimes we clipped on a velvet simple bow right in the center by our bangs.

My hair always had a mind of its own. Pretty color, but it curled in places that never quite made a hairdo. Mom would send me to the beauty school to have them fix my hair on Saturday so it was ready for Sunday church. This occasionally included those smelly permanents. I’m sure the students did the best they could even though they were training to be beauticians, but it never was a pleasant experience for me. I would rather do anything than sit around a beauty shop listening to mundane talk about nothing with folks awing about this style or that and exclaiming how pretty everyone looks when all hairs were in place.

My son John saw a photo of me when I was about 13 with one of those hairdos and remarked how I looked like a boy with curls.

I finally escaped the 1950s hair styles when I went off to college and learned a few things from my roommates. I had long hair that finally fit into the style with a flip that was popular at the time. I also piled it up on top of my head in a ponytail and ratted it into a cascading fall from on top. It was interesting. We also wore wigs. How hot they were. We had cascading locks of all types in a variety of colors. Today people attach hair extensions. I remember giving my mom a cute shorter typed wig with grey hair. She was so nice she never said anything about the color, but I'm sure she didn't enjoy being reminded of her changing hair color.

I mostly stayed away from those permanents for years. My friends and I all had Farah Fawcett dos for a while. We would bend over, brush our hair forward and gather really long hair in a clump about 5 or so inches from our forehead. Then trim where we were holding it. It did fall in layers just about like Farah’s. It seemed a lot more natural too.

About the time I was getting married in 1973 I had an inkling to get a permanent for my wedding day. My girl friend Char gave it to me. What was I thinking. I’m really surprised Stan still married me seeing all those curls on long red hair that day, but luckily he did. We moved to Texas where the humidity is as high as the temperature. It wasn’t too long after we moved that the curls were all cut off for short hair that I could deal with.

A couple years later I tried a permanent again. Stan’s nickname for me was Clarabelle for all the red curls I had. Mostly I keep away from permanents after that.

Nancy and Mom always had permanents. When the Afros were popular in the 1970's they had transformed their hair into brillo pads. Even my brother-in-law Bob, wore permanent curls for years. His son Jim had long strawberry red hair curled up for his High School graduation.

Now, thanks to my daughter-in-law Rachel’s suggestion, I press out the natural curls every day with a flat iron. I happy and my grey-red hair seems manageable for a change. It is long enough that I can pull it into a pony tail on hot days.

Gardening

My Mom always had a big garden when we lived at Swanson Farms. She probably had one at Tipton's too, but I was too young to remember much about it.

The garden at Swanson farms ran north to south along the strip of grass between the house and the driveway. In the grass was the clothesline filled during the week with breezy dried sheets and the family's laundry. Mom had a clothespin bag that would slide along the line as she speedily hung up the clothes; doubling up at the end of one item pinned to the next one to save on space and pins. These were the snap clothes pins not the slip on pins.

The slip on pins looked like a head with legs so we used them for craft projects to make little Christmas ornaments. We drilled a hole in the sholders to slip in a pipe cleaner for arms and cut out little felt pieces or calico fabric for coats and dresses. We would paint on little faces and color part of the head blond, black or brown for hair. For the girl dolls we tied a very small bow and glued it on the back of the head. Some of the slip on clothespins had more shape at the top so the dolls looked like they had a bouffant hair style. Boy I haven't used the word bouffant in a sentence since the 50's or 60's. Get out the hair spray everyone.

Back to the garden next to the clothesline. I figure that Mom had a little help from Dad in preparing the soil as I really don't remember her turning the soil. I like that Dad or Alan probably ran some type of farm equipment through the dirt to loosen it up, dumped on some manure or other chemicals to perk it up and then Mom took over. I just don't have that tractor handy when I prepare to plant something in my yard in the spring. So I use a shovel and fork to turn over the hardpacked clay soil to mix in some compose.

I remember a few tomatoes growing in Mom's garden. She really didn't like to eat them as she got older, but told of how good they were from her mother, Lydia's garden. They ate them just like an apple off the tomato bush.

We had a porch on the Swanson Farm. Mom would park the almost ready tomotoes in on the window ledge to rippen. I would take one and eat it like an apple. It was delicious.

Mom had a lot of really good neighbor friends that she communicated with during the week. Sim Kagahara was one of her neighbor friends that lived about a mile or so away. Sim would grow peach trees from seeds. Mom had one in her garden for a few years until it died away during the cold winters.

I moved into a house in Lakewood with a big yard and several fruit trees; plum, cherry and peaches. At one time I had 30 different trees crowded into the yard. After 35 years most have died off except a beautiful apricot that we sit under on sultry summer evenings. It never has had apricots as the blossoms freeze off in the early spring, but it sure has nice shady leaves.

I toss peach pits into our compost pile. When I use the compost those seed invariablly make a peach tree. Some are free stone and some are stick to the pit. The years there are peaches (about every 3-5 years) the fruit if extra delicious and juicy so that it drips down your arm as you eat one right off the tree. I make usually make some peach jam to give away at Christmas or other occasions. It is great on pancakes. Making it is the most fun.

Sewing and Crocheted Afhgans

I learned to sew from my Mom. She was a 4-H leader for over 20 years.

She loved to sew, mostly clothes for her daughters and mending worn shirt collars for my dad along with the ebb and flow of his size changes on his pants as he gained weight and lost weight. Every evening she would sit in the living room with some type of needlework in her hands. She had a basket of supplies next to her lounge chair. A big ole safety pin was attached to the side of her chair that where she slide her special little scissors so they were handy.

She turned out a bundle of work over the years. Pillowcases were embroidered with colorful embroidery thread. The edges were crocheted with white cotton to add to the decoration. These were white pillowcases in the late 1940's and early 1950's as colored fabric for that purpose was not used until much later. The fabric was so stiff made of pure cotton that it had to be steam ironed to get out the wrinkles.

I still have a couple bags of that embroidery thread that I use to tie the quilts I make. She had every color in the rainbow.

Mom also made doilies while sitting in her lounge chair. Some were circles that she sewed together and some she went round and round until they were big enough to put on an end table. It was strange what women did with these doilie creations. Some laid flat for a space big enough for a lamp or candy dish to sit on. Then they added rows and rows that included extra crocheting. The trend was to starch these stiff with sugar water and lay them on a broad to dry pinning the pattern so it was perfect. The ones with the extra crocheting where dryed so the pattern made scallops. It was a sight to see when I think back on those silly stiff scalloped doilies. Big dust collectors too.

Once Mom brought out the yarn to work on she was in pig heaven. She crocheted up and down the rows to beat the band. As we started to get married and move away she took on crocheting afhgans like there was no tomorrow. She had several patterns she loved and made many of those. One pattern included two colors of yarn at the same time. It was ribbed and showed mostly one color on one side an another on the other. She made them for each person on the family: daughters, son, grandchildren. When she finished one she would set it aside until she visited the person so she could give them their gift. It seems that we had a beige/brown one and a blue/cream colored one. On the handle of her sewing basket that was parked permenantly by her lounge chair she had looped through a scrap of the yarn from each afhgan she had made for her family members. She enjoyed showing you these scraps of yarn and taking about the person who received this special gift. She had a story behind each one and told you why she had picked certain colors for each person.

When John was little about 2 to 10 we moved back to Colorado and decorated his room with red, white and blue. The wall paper was attached to the upper two-thirds of the wall. It was line drawings in red and blue of stamps with a white background. We were going to paint the botton with bright blue, but decided it was way-way too bright and decided to just add a strip of blue wainscoating with the bottom painted white. It was really cute. I don't know how I had time to really think about this decorating, but I did. I wanted a different afhgan pattern for John as I had seen so many of those double colored ones before. I requested the chevron pattern in bright red and blue for his bed. We still have it as we saved it all those years even if his room changed colors many times and now he had move away and has a family of his own.

When I was in college I started skiing. Mom made me several ski sweaters with all the patterns where you change colors of yarn. A couple were in mauve/pink and one was angora in bright blue and white. One she embroidered flowers on the bottom with crewel yarn. It was quite intricate. It was so long that you would sit on the embroidery. Not very practical, but interesting. What a lot of care and effort she took to make all those things.

My Grandma - Anna Swanson, always had a crocheted white table cloth on here dinning room table that she had made. I never saw her working on crochet projects with the intentity that Mom did. Maybe it was because when we saw her we were there to visit so she kept her work put away.

Look down as you walk in the Corral

My brother Alan reminded me to always look down when walking across a corral.

There were things we did from a young age that we never gave a second thought about. I guess if I were born today I would work on being a gymnist. We played in the stacks of hay. Walking up and down wobblely bales of hay stacked next to the corral ready to feed to the cows.

When we moved from the Tipton farm to the Swanson farm I remember that corral fence intimately. My goal was to walk on the top of the two inch railing from the edge of the milk barn to the back covered shed. The hardest part was the wobbly gate. I would balance as best I could to walk quickly across without falling off. Toward the yard I would fall into the dirt in front of the gate. If I fell into the corral - well you know what was the largest make up of that dirt. There was one side of the corral that I didn't walk on as it held the pen for the bulls. I didn't want to fall into that pen. The fence was not open rails like the rest of the fence, but solid so the bulls would not be provoked if they looked into the yard.

Mostly, I practiced every day doing this balancing act. No spotters or people watching me in case I fell. My knees and elbows were mostly skinned up during my childhood.

Later it seems that Dad go rid of the cows and my horse Queenie had the run of the corral. She would come over to the fence when I did my balancing act. I would slide on her back, grab hold of the tuft of her mane and trot around the corral. She was a lazy type horse that enjoyed that more than the big ole heavy saddle. That was the time of Annie Oakly and circus acts. I would imagine that I was a circus performer riding around the ring. I was too scared to really stand on the horses back or do any real tricks.

My cousins Pam and Corky came out to visit frequently to ride the horse, play in the stacks of hay and the barn. They lived in the town of Greeley, so this was a treat. One time, probably when we were still living at Tipton's Corky fell and broke his arm while jumping off the stacked hay. He was probably about 2 or 3.

At Swanson's we had this great ole barn that Dad used to keep his machinery. The best part was the hay loft on the second floor. You had to climb up rails along the wall and then crawl through a hole in the floor to get up there. I think there was a step that could be lowered down by rope that the adults used, but kids always tried to shimmy up the wall and through the hole.

Not much was up there except tall gables of the barn, piles of burlap sacks used for the onion harvest and stacks of old horse harnesses used at the turn of the 1900's when they used horses to farm instead of tractors. There was a big closed door that lead to the front of the barn and a smaller one that was always open that lead to the side of the barn into the corral and covered shed for the cows. The most fun was to dare each other to jump out into the corral from a story high into the manure pile below. Sometimes we hung from the edge of the door opening and dropped down. Other kids were braver and just plan ole jump out the one story window. I don't remember getting hurt and it sure was fun.

Once I was older it seemed harder and harder to shimmy up the wall rails and go through the floor to the second floor of the barn. I guess confidence wains as one gets older.

My cousin Pam would have been a great gymnist. She could even do back bends with ease and keep the momentum going. I never could get the back bend right and usually fell on my butt in the process.

Tammy Tammy

When I was little, maybe 12 or so, there was a popular song on the Hit Parade: Tammy Taammmmmy. I can't remember the rest of the words, but we heard it on the radio all the time and sung the lyrics over and over.

My friend Lois from down the a half a mile and I would meet up a farmers path almost across from the school where there was a grove of green ash trees and an irrigation ditch. We kind of set up camp there. We had some dolls, make shift tables out of scrap wood balanced on rocks and such other things to set up housekeeping. This place was called Tammy after the song. We played for hours and hours and pretended until our imaginations were exhausted.

We must have imagined a store to buy groceries as I remember using the small pods from the ash tree as currency. Today our neighbors have several of those trees with the seed pods. I don't consider these pods as currency anymore as I have thousands of volunteer ash trees sprouting in my flower beds and along the edge of the grass from the heavy spring rains. I may have to rack a little more carefully next fall to rid our yard of the "currency" from the neighbor's tree.

Some how Lois and I thought this was our secret place away from parents, sisters and brothers. I fact now that I think back on it, I'm sure the neighbors told both parents what we were up to and the whole neighborhood knew about our secret place.