The grass is greening up, shirtsleeves seem sufficient to keep the breeze off, and we got in a damn car accident yesterday - rear ended at a stop light. I went to the emergency room afterwards, had a CT scan and the doctor reported he saw a hollow chamber within the walls of my skull. Well, I am still mobile and the other party’s insurance will take care of the repairs (they say).
We will be heading to my aunt’s funeral tomorrow in Lisbon where I will be a pall bearer. This leaves my dad as the sole surviving offspring of Charles and Tillie Bueling. Eleven brothers and sisters have preceded him in death. He is 94 years old, now lives in a home, and still makes plans for the future. I am taking carving tools and wood along since he wants to start carving his creations again.
There is still work to do preparing for the auction sale, so any spare time tomorrow will be spent at that job. We’ve come across many items of interest when we sort and box things up, some to be sold, some to be kept as heirlooms. An example of this is an old postcard addressed to my grandmother Clara. The sender located at St. Cloud, MN said, “It is easy to go to the show here, just jump on the street car and away you go. The Birth of a Nation is coming … Saw Charlie Chaplin in the movies some time ago. He sure is some funny guy.” A long letter stamped with two one-centers to Grandma and a one cent postcard are written in Norwegian, a language I took a class in one time but still cannot read.
Yellowed newspaper clippings abound, some announcing engagements, some obituaries, some four or five generation family pictures, etc. Lots of beautiful old Valentine cards of outstanding quality were saved, crafted with a quality you just don’t see in today’s. Loose pictures, mostly of relatives and acquaintances who have passed on (which makes me stop to think of my own mortality). After all is said and done with this transition period there will be many more stories to tell and pass on. This blogging effort of mine has always been intended as a method of letting my sons and their descendants know more about me and my thoughts.
To conclude, the most yellowed clipping I’ve run across in this memory trip speaks to my folks' life period probably the best way it can be stated. It is a poem entitled “The Old Milk Cow.” Its first verse goes like this: When crop failure hits / And we’re down to two bits, / With our creditors we’re in for a row. / To another crop it appears / We will have to shift gears, / And go back to the old milk cow.
