Taking the back road home.

Today I took the back road home. I had finished all my town chores and was feeling in a mellow mood. On the radio Dolly Parton was singing one of my favorite songs.  So when I came to the junction I turned right instead of traveling straight ahead.

We take the back road when the creek is up.  It is very handy to have an alternate way out when the weather isn't co-operative.  But sometimes we opt to just take a little different way either home or to town.

What is so special about this back road detour?  For one, I enjoy seeing the birds perched on the telephone wires because they are different from our hilltop birds.  Scissor-tailed flycatchers, hawks, and other open grassland birds are always waiting for a meal to dart or crawl by.

I love to see my neighbor's fields full of rich green grass and sleek well-fed cows.  I love his straight fence rows and sturdy gates.  I appreciate all the hard work he does making his farm a pleasure to drive by.

I always look for another friend's home place, now long abandoned but full of memories.  Sometimes the road narrows and crosses close in front of a house or two.  I know most of these people and they know me.  Makes you feel good to be near people who care about you.

But the best thing about taking the back road home is that I can poke along just as slow as I please.  Perhaps I see a flower that I can't identify without pausing a minute and getting a closer look.  Sometimes I just glory in the waving grass and far-off purple shadowed hills.  Sometimes I just like to see the wind turn the leaves in the oak tree this way and that.

Down the road further it narrows into a special spot where you can see the view of Caney Mountain through the trees.  The way is rougher here but taking my time is not a problem.  I can drive and look at the same time.

What a joy it is to have a choice of how to go home.  And sometimes the back road is the best.

38

Thirty-eight.  A nice round number.  Not an extraordinary number, but of sufficient importance in our life to make note of this month of May.  Why?  Because 38 years ago we drove our red pickup into this small Missouri town,unpacked our worldly goods and set up housekeeping.  Andy,  Me.  And little Nina.

We bought the Grandma Harlin house, up on the hill, from Harve and Cora Blisard.  While we were remodeling  we lived across the street, in the old Jim Hale house.  Skeeter and Faye were our neighbors to the west.  Pete and Virginia Klineline lived down from us to the east.  All in all, a nice place to put down roots.

Erna Johnson came down the hill that day and introduced herself.  Said she had heard that a new family with a little girl had moved into town.  Just wanted to say hi and invite us to come and see her sometime.  And we did...many times.  Loved visiting and talking to Erna.  Arles and Ivy Walker lived across the street and up one house.  Arles came over, welcomed us to town, and said that his grandson's family attended church at Center Point, out in the country and he would be sure and tell Sandy, Gerald's wife, that there was a new family needing an invitation to church.  And invite us she did.  We loved that little church, on that windy country road, and all the people who went there.

One warm morning we hiked down to Skeeters for breakfast.  And there sat Pattie Strong in a booster chair, eating pancakes.  Nina and Pattie hit it off right away.  And they are still friends.  Nina was a shy child.  She stayed attached to my knee for at least the first two years we lived in Gainesville.  Try as they might, grownups couldn't get her to talk to them.  But, kids, now that was a different matter.  She would watch them playing for awhile and then walk up and start in with whatever was going on.  For part of the time before she went to school she attended Mother Goose Daycare and made many lifelong friends there.

My first order of business was finding a teaching job.  We had been camping and I didn't have anything close to good interview clothes that were clean or ironed.  Clad in jeans and a  T-shirt, I went to ask Benton Breeding if he might have a job for me.  Sure he did.  And he needed me right away since Joe Cissna was moving up to teach high school special education, taking Mr. Beach's place after his retirement that spring.  Signed a contract that day.

And bingo.  Everyone in town knew us.  But, as usual, we didn't have idea one who they were.  People would come up to me in the the grocery store and introduce themselves.  They were anxious to make us feel at home.

I guess it took.  Here we are 38 years later.  Of course, we no longer live IN Gainesville.  But it is still our town.  Wouldn't change it for the world.

And in comes May....

Sunrise, sunset, noontide and evening.  Green hills clothed in new garments....soft wind blowing the growing leaves.  Mist in the valley.  Bird call at break of day.  Fresh scent of some exotic flower in the air.  What is it?  I search my memory and it finds a blank.  But I enjoy it anyway.  

Full moon lights the night and makes it look like day.  Driving down the road we shut off the headlights.  Can we see the road still?  No, but it is an eerie feeling to see the sky so bright and the earth so dark.

May has come to my hilltop home.  I revel in the beauty of the season.  Spring brings out the best in the Ozarks.  It is a reward for icy winter snows and frigid winds.  If you can make it through the winter, you get to experience Mother Nature in all her glory.

Turkeys are gobbling.  Fish are biting.  Gardens are being readied for planting.  And the constant mowing of grass.....that is the challenge.  It grows overnight.

But I'll not complain.  Each precious day is a jewel to take out and show off to the world.  See what I am blessed to be a part of?  And I promise myself to enjoy each day....for May has come.

And the others....

My Grandfather Stimpert, Dave as he was called, had eleven children.  His first wife died in childbirth.  There were four children in that family, three boys and one girl.  He married his deceased wife's older sister and with her he had two girls and one boy.  And when she passed away, he met and married my grandmother.  They had two girls and two boys.  The picture above is a combination of two "batches" of Stimperts.  My mother was fond of calling them that, just as if they were cookies, or biscuits.  Quite a family.

You have already been introduced to Jenne, on the right, looking very regal in her Sunday best.  She would have been around 15 when this picture was made.  Standing to her right is lovely Rosa, one of my mother's favorite people and also her role model.  Rosa was just one year old when her mother died and she was frail and tiny until she was grown.  Her ambition was to teach.  And travel.  And she did both.  She went to France.  She taught at Kemper Hall, where I went to school, in the 1930's.  She met her husband, my Uncle Tony, and they adopted two sisters, my cousins Mary and Ann.  Their teaching career brought them to the University of Oklahoma where she was a professor of Romance Languages and he was a professor of German.  So interesting to talk to her and Uncle Tony.  They had wonderful stories to tell.

The tall boy to Rosa's right is my Uncle Alfred.  A true blue Illinois farmer.  His farm was part of my grandfather's acreage.  I always enjoyed going to visit Alfred and his family and his wife Clara.  He kept everything just so and he was very successful.  My mother always said that she felt very much at home when she visited Alfred.

Sitting on the sofa next to Jenne is Ernest, the oldest of my mother's brothers.  He ran an implement business in ElPaso until he sold out and retired.  I wasn't around him much until I grew up.  He visited us many times where ever we lived and my mom liked to travel places with him and her cousins.  A favorite place for them to vacation was Florida.  He was not a patient man.  My mom took forever to get ready to go anywhere.  One day she and Ernie were going away for the day.  He got in the station wagon and started it up before she got out the door.  He had to back up so she could get in.  She was aghast.  He explained, "When I say we're leaving, we are leaving."  She believed him then.

At the other end of the sofa is my mother's favorite brother Edward.  They were just about a year and a half apart.  And they competed in everything.  They would try to see who would beat the other one home from school in the afternoon.  Whoever was first drew their initials in the dirt in front of the gate.  My mom was first most of the time and she would draw "F.A.S" Florence Alberta Stimpert.  When Ed would get there he merely put a line under the F. and it read "E.A.S." Edward Albert Stimpert.  My mom would be furious.  And Ed would just grin.  He enlisted in the Army during WW II.  He died fighting the Germans in France in June of 1944 and he is buried there.

And this brings us to that charming little princess seated between her brothers.  The belle of the ball, my mother.  She looks so sweet.  But we all know that there was iron behind that innocent grin.  She was probably 4 when this picture was made.  Her sister Katherine wasn't born yet.  Taty, as we called her, would complete the Stimpert family.

I love learning about my family.  Some the stories I hear are new to me.  But most have been handed down over the years.  Are they true?  Who knows.  But they make a good tale.  And there are plenty of Stimpert stories out there.  With eleven children and all their kin, how could there not be?

 

 

 

 

Jenne

Solid.  Dependable.  Quiet, but always aware of what was going on.  Ready to help in any situation.  These words describe my Aunt Jenne.  My mother's older sister by 11 years, Jenne had to take on responsibility in the Stimpert family at a young age.  I  remember her telling me the story of doing the wash one day with a younger sibling in her arms.  Before she knew it the baby had put his arm in the wringer.  Thinking fast, Jenne was able to turn off the machine before any harm was done.  But that memory stuck with her for as long as she lived.

Jenne was a nurse.  I assume this picture was taken when she was new to her profession.  She worked as an RN at the TB Sanitorium outside of Bloomington, Illinois.  The only time I saw her when I was growing up was when I would visit my Aunt Taty in ElPaso .  Jenne would come there on her day off.  She loved all of us.  And she was good to us.  Books, special candy treats, and always a shiny new quarter(unheard of wealth in our day when we usually were given a dime) were her gifts to us.

But she shared something else with her family.  Unquestioning loyalty.  Persistent love in the face of overwhelming odds.  We had several "thorny" people in our family.  Jenne was the peace-maker.  It might take a while.  One month, a year, several years, and then the errant wanderer would come back into the fold.

After she retired she was the resident nurse for the family.  She stayed with her older brother and helped him until he died.  I know she had some problems with him.  He was cranky and used harsh words on almost all occasions.  Jenne said she had a fool-proof solution to keeping her temper.  "I just go in my room, close the door, kneel down and pray, and generally God gives me the answer.  Anyway, when I feel better, I go back and ask Henry just what it was that he wanted.  And then he is happier too."

Inner strength.   And an unstoppable belief that God would make things right.  That's what Jenne taught us.

She loved to read.  Andy and I gave her a subscription to The Christian Science Monitor one year for Christmas.  She would read through the issue and clip out articles she thought we would like.  And mail them to us.  Along with a box of no-bake cookies.  She was so generous...in all things.

When she passed away in the early 80's we were on vacation and unable to go the services.  But afterward when we went to the cemetery to visit her grave we found out that she wasn't there.  She had written in her will, and kept it from the family, that she wanted her body donated to science after she died.  So there was nothing to bury there in that family plot, near her dad and other family members.

But she lives on.  If I had had another little girl her name would have been Jenne.  She lives in our hearts.  And when good things happen to me, I look skyward and say a little prayer....Thank you Jenne for teaching me how to look beyond myself and see the real reason I am here.

She was truly one of a kind.  

Growing

The older I get, the less certain I am that I have all the answers.  And this is a good thing.  I  can remember being a rash and judgmental teenager.  I knew what was right and I was sure that everyone else should feel the same way.

And then life intervened.

Little by little my prejudices have lessened and my life view has widened.  When you see the world with blinders on, there is not much to see.

To say that it has  been an easy task to be a quiet listener and thoughtful speaker would be a lie.  Inwardly I have seethed and tossed and turned at night over perceived wrongs and what I could do to make them right.  But with time I have learned to wait....and pray...and listen for the Inner Voice that leads me when I make decisions.

Some times I falter and fail.  But I hope that in the end I will find a certain peace and contentment knowing that I have been just a part of what someone was seeking.  A helper, not a stumbling block.  A healer, and not a source of hurt.  A person who shows love and not hate.  A true believer in the good. 

But....I am still growing.  Pray for me.

 

Daffodils

A sure sign of spring is a road bank or walkway lined with these spring beauties.  Daffodils.

I spend my time when riding down our country byways spying patches of daffodils that linger in fields and under towering trees.  They almost always tell of a long-forgotten homestead where some flower-loving farm wife dug the soil and planted spring bulbs to brighten her yard. 

Andy is the gardener in our family.  When we bought our property...in the fall...he ordered bulbs so we would have daffodils in the spring.  We planted them in three small patches, near the place where we thought the house might be.  We covered them with straw and chicken wire and hoped for the best.  The extra protection was to discourage our local herd of armadillos from digging up our plants in their search for grubs and worms.

The next spring we kept an eye out for the green shoots to appear.  And they did.  A few at a time.  And soon we had some blooms.  Not many but enough to know that we had been successful in our daffodil planting.

As the house was built and the yard came into being, we dug up the bulbs in the fall and replanted them on the bank that sits on the edge of our driveway.  Trying to figure the best placement was a chore, but we finally decided on rows that we hoped would fill in with time.

That first spring followed an unusually mild winter.  The daffodils started to bloom long before it was really time for them to show their flowers.  And then we had snow on the first day of spring.  I have pictures of those yellow heads drooping under a cover of white.  But they survived.

This spring they are blooming in profusion.  The wonderful thing about daffodils is that they spread and, as they become settled, more flowers appear each spring.  I walk down to check on them and pick some for a bouquet or two in the house.  But mostly I like to leave them blooming there on the side of the hill.

I like to think that when we are no longer here  perhaps someone will drive up the road, spot those lovely spring blooms and think, "Some body who loved daffodils lived here a long time ago."  And they will smile to see those yellow rays of sunshine, growing on my hill.