KC Scholarship

     Not always does your past come back to haunt you.

      It came in the mail in a big, white envelope, the kind with a bubble wrap lining inside.  Life insurance maybe, or a calendar or something, from somebody wanting money.  My first impulse was to head to the recycle bin with it. 

     There wasn’t an accompanying return envelope with a little checkoff box with suggested donations, no sob story with heart-rending pictures.  There was nothing in the envelope but the certificate inside a folder.

      I decided to keep it for a while.  I didn’t know any Cheryl McConnell.  Of course, I knew some Cheryls when I was teaching school.  Any of them could have changed their last names.

     Sure enough, a few days later, there came a letter from a Cheryl McConnell who signed her maiden name.  Sure enough, she was a former student who had graduated in the late 70’s.

     In her note, she explained that the KC Scholarship was funded in part by the Ewing Kaufman foundation, which triples her donations.  Apparently, Cheryl donated enough to allow her to select the name for the scholarship.  I was chosen for the honor.   

     She went on to say that I had taught valuable lessons, like how to write a term paper, or to have fun with literature.  And the really big one (my emphasis, not hers) “a lot” is two words, not one (like “a little, a gob, a bunch” are all two-word phrases, so is “a lot”).  “Allot” is one word and means something entirely different, to distribute, divide, spread, share and has nothing to do with a______lot, two separate words.  We all have our petty pet peeves, I guess.

     I can only imagine what kind of battle I would be fighting now if I were still teaching writing, text message abbreviations, u no what I mean?  LOL etc.  

      Texting does exemplify one thing I tried to teach, brevity.  Avoid wordiness.  The other part of that was to have a thought or feeling worthy of communicating.  Text receivers can be the judge of that.  I am spared that battle, anyhow.

     A certificate and a brief letter from a former student once again disinter memories of the long-buried past.  I am reminded of one more thing from my teaching career.  I once told a girl who had fallen in with the wrong crowd and was engaging in some questionable behaviors, that on judgment day, a huge Sony Jumbotron would flash her life across the sky for God and everybody, including her mother, to see.

      The Jumbotron may be replaced by a 5 x 5 card arriving in the mail some time before judgment day.  Not all the things coming across the screen will be bad or embarrassing.

       Disclaimer (following congress’s example):  I am exempt from any and all the rules of good writing that I used to try to teach.  I will be wordy if I wish, and I may express ideas that are totally without value, if I choose.   

Holy Moses!

     Yul Brynner was turning Charlton Heston out into the desert with one day’s ration of food and water when we turned the telly on.  We had just returned from a mini show at our local library where an elderly lady did an impersonation of Matti Silks.

     Matti Silks was the madam of a “parlor house”, otherwise known as a house of ill repute during the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  She began her “career” in Kansas, Dodge City, Hutchinson, Hays, Great Bend.

      She relocated her “family” to Colorado, Leadville, Denver, Florence, Cripple Creek, and even to Alaska for a while.  (She left Alaska because she had to pay both the local gendarmes and the Royal Mounted Police, too expensive, she said.)  Matti recounted some of the details of her personal and professional life, including a duel she fought with another madam over a man they both favored.  (They both missed their target.  The object of their affection received a bullet wound to the cheek.)

      “Matti” recalled many of her fellow “Madams of Colorado”, the title of her show.  The last of the great parlor houses closed down in the 1980’s.  It was in Lusk, Wyoming.  Matti credited the Lusk house’s longevity to the fact the madam owned the local power plant and threatened to shut off the city’s power whenever authorities tried to shut her down.

      The library mini show started at 7 p.m.  We were home a little after 8 p.m.  “The Ten Commandments” must have been on for an hour or more when we tuned in.  It reminded me of the first time I saw it, in a theater.

     I didn’t see the beginning of that one either.  It must have been 1956 or 1957.  It was an October day.  I had been to a “slumber party” on Friday night.  Saturday morning was beautiful, but Saturday afternoon was overcast and starting to cool off.  Several of my fellow slumberers left for home before noon, but my ride home was my dad who was at the time engaged in converting Eric Carlson’s garage to Evelyn’s beauty parlor. 

     We didn’t go directly home.  My younger siblings were at the theater in Limon taking in “The Ten Commandments.”  We sat in the car parked near the theater waiting for the movie to end and we could all go home.  I mentioned to Dad that I hadn’t seen the movie, so he fished out 50 cents (or whatever the price of admission was) and I entered the theater in the middle of the movie.

      I don’t know that I have ever seen the beginning of the movie.  I don’t remember if I saw the end of the movie either.  I recollect Dad coming into the theater before the movie was over.  The Lincoln theater had the distinction of being one of few movie houses where the patrons enter from the front of the theater, so the movie-goers could see who was coming or going without turning around and gawking.

      We saw Dad come in, so finding us in the dark theater wasn't too hard to do.  He said it was beginning to snow heavily and we needed to get home before it turned into a regular blizzard.  I don’t remember if we convinced him that the movie was almost over and we could stay until the end.  I do remember seeing the stone tablets getting chiseled by the lightning, one of the many special effects in the movie.

      I didn’t make the end last night, either.  With five minutes of commercials every twenty minutes or so, the movie ran well beyond my bedtime.  I stuck it out through the Passover and the great exodus.  I watched as the great sea closed over Yul’s army of chariots, horses, and soldiers.  At the first commercial after that scene, I called it quits.

       It was a great movie.  Even though some of the special effects seem rather corny now, they were great for the mid-fifties.  The Goodwife mentioned the painted backdrops.  Maybe they looked better on the big screen.  We hadn’t had television for more than two or three years at the time, and it seemed a great movie then.

      I doubt I will ever see the whole thing start-to-finish.  With my limited capacity to stay awake in any movie, and my diminished ability to concentrate on anything for very long any more, I don’t see me sticking with any movie for four hours.

    Hey wait!  Maybe it could be featured on trans-Atlantic flights.  That would take up a big chunk of seat time.

     Whoever said life was about the journey, not the destination, never flew non-stop from Denver to London.  

Dry Spring

     “. . . [T]he most significant amount of moisture since July,” said the radio announcer.  It was March 24.

     The old joke says that when it rained for forty days and forty nights and Noah boarded his ark, Eastern Colorado got 1.75 inches.  Around the first of March, when Kansas and Oklahoma and parts of Texas and Colorado were on fire, it wasn’t funny.

     We were a little more fortunate than Denver, catching a narrow, streaky thunderstorm about the third of August of over an inch.  It wasn’t enough to get wheat up in September.  Things dried out pretty rapidly after that because everything around us that didn’t get rained on was so dry. 

      Since August, we have had nothing of note until March 24. The fire danger was quite real.  An assessment of the farm revealed plenty of fuel around the farmstead.  There wasn’t enough snow all winter to tamp down the dead foliage.

     I celebrated Saint Patrick’s Day by mowing a firebreak around the yard.

     About a week later, it really did rain, then blow, then snow.  The prelude of rain was a Godsend, preventing topsoil from blowing in the wicked wind that followed.

     The storm coincided with the end of another drama.  The wind energy company sent the 2017 rent check to the wrong bank.  Then they posted a check to Kansas (haven’t lived there since 2014). 

     Finally, they UPSed it to the farm.  I wasn’t there when it arrived.  The UPS guy left it between the storm door and the main door.  He failed to get the storm door properly latched.  The wind blew.  The snow fell.

      

      There was no package between the doors.  I used my detective skills.  The wind had to be from the south to swing the door hard enough to shatter both panes of glass.  The gallon jug flytraps went north.  I found the envelope by the northeast corner of the garage.

      The envelope was soaked.  The cardboard deteriorated in my hands.  The accompanying statement went to pieces when I touched it.

     Was I in for more futile communication with the folks in Florida?  Thankfully, the check was made of sterner stuff.  New meaning for “watermark”?  It dried out just fine.  It cleared the bank.  End of that story—for this year.

     The rain gauge said 1.5”.  There was probably more, since it was in the form of windblown snow, which the gauge doesn’t capture very well.

      “When it rains, it pours” isn’t exactly right, but we did get another storm on March 31.  It started with a day of foggy drizzle.  Then Mother Nature April-fooled us with heavy wet snow that measured .45”.  The entrance to the gauge was plastered shut when I went out to check it, so there was probably more moisture.

     A lot of the snow melted shortly after it fell.  It collected on some of the grassy areas and in the trees.  The metal roofs caught enough to create a few snow slides.

      The fire danger is greatly reduced.  Blowing dust is no longer probable.  The wheat crop is still questionable.  Emerging seedlings are filling in bare spots of last October, but it’s not nearly 100%.

      The grass and the dandelions are breaking dormancy.  Time for humans to revoke hibernation.  “April is the cruelest month,” said T.S. Eliot.  Maybe there will be asparagus soon to comfort us. 

Frankfurt

     After the flight from Denver to London, the trip to Frankfurt was easy, a couple of hours.  Thanks to the European Union, we didn’t have to clear customs in Germany.   (Does Brexit mean that folks will have to present passport or visa when they leave the Chunnel?)  

      We walked to the car rental place and were soon on our way.  We spent two nights in Dinkelsbuhl, an old walled town.  I missed all the interesting stuff, a walk around town, taking in the wall and all the old buildings.  The next day, I called on a doctor, who thankfully could speak English.

     Virus, he said.  He prescribed a “soft” antibiotic that would prevent me from getting a secondary infection, a dose of Ibuflam 600mg (ibuprofen, 400mg available over the counter), and some nasal spray to keep me breathing through my nose.  I went back to the hotel and slept the rest of the day. 

      I got up, dressed, walked four or five blocks, had a sausage and kraut, and back to bed.  The others had a good time, I think.

    The next morning, we paid our hotel bill and took off for Goppingen where the in-laws live.  We took some less-traveled roads, much more interesting than the autobahn, which is lined with trees or manmade walls, which keep the traveler from seeing much of the countryside.

     As we drove through towns and villages, we saw folks dressed in costumes.  We were told it was “Dirty Thursday”, preceding Mardi gras and Ash Wednesday.  On Dirty Thursday, the women of the village capture the mayor, who is not allowed to say anything for four days.  I’m guessing the custom gives women control of things for most of carnival week.  It is also a good excuse to drink a beer or two and begin the great celebration that ends with Mardi gras. 

     After checking into our hotel in Goppingen, a niece, Isa, came and led us to her parents’ house where we had supper.  It was here my disappointment in German beer sprouted.  It wasn’t bad beer, it was good beer, but it was Pilsner.  My imagination had conjured up a nice dark, malty, foamy brew, but so far, I had only Pilsner beers.

     We weren’t the only guests, as three other couples, were also present, all members of the family.  Fortunately for us, nearly everybody knew some English, and could translate for us when German broke out.

     On Friday, we all piled into one car and headed for Stuttgart.  We made a mandatory cathedral visit on the way.  We stopped in a smaller town with a big clock tower.  It also had a shopping center where the Goodwife was allowed a few minutes to take a look at a sewing shop.

     In Stuttgart, we toured the Porsche factory where Isa works.  Porsche has brought the assembly line a long way from Henry Ford’s time.  Many things are automated, but some things still have to be done by human beings.  Parts carts are totally automated, but it takes a person to load the carts with the right parts on the right tray before the cart wanders off to the assembly line all by itself. 

      The assembly line is multi-storied, but rolling off one conveyor, onto the elevator, off the elevator and onto the next conveyer is all automated.  All parts are timed to arrive “just-in-time”.  We watched two guys putting heads on engines.  One person hooked the head to a hoist, which moved over the waiting engine.  One person placed a gasket properly and they both carefully aligned the head as it was lowered onto the engine block.  A power wrench came down and zapped all the head bolts at the same time, about two seconds.  The engine headed for the next section.

     The Goodwife noted that most of the women were working the sewing machines in the upholstery section.  They were working with cowhide to cover dash as well as seats.  United States hides are verboten because the barbwire used to contain the critters scars the hides unacceptably. 

     To keep assembly line workers from complacency, they change positions every two or three weeks.  The engine people this week may move to bodywork next week.  Since several people can do several different jobs, one person’s absence doesn’t hold up the line.

    The day we were there, the factory planned to turn out 240 cars.  Needless to say, none of them were ours, though a future owner could watch his/her car being assembled.

     Timo and mate joined us at the Porsche factory.  Timo was a foreign-exchange student in Atwood for a year around the turn of the century. We all met the extended family in a local eatery, a pub-like place that served only wine, no beer.  It was noisy and I still didn’t feel very well.  No beer?  In Germany?

     On Saturday, we took three cars of folks to Lichtenstein castle.  It is not the country of Lichtenstein, just a castle named Lichtenstein.  It was remodeled into a hunting lodge.  The owner still uses it for that occasionally.  It was February and the castle, made of stone, was cold.  Living in a castle would be a sentence, not a privilege.

     We went for lunch to one of the family’s apartment.  It was nice enough to take a walk followed by a nap.  Isa and Martin hosted us for supper our last night there.  Politics was on the agenda.  The family sang some folk songs for us.  We couldn’t join in.  Someone translated.  We would probably call them ballads, sad songs about life.

     We headed out Sunday for Dortmund with Timo leading the way.  We stopped to have a light lunch along the Rhine.

    

   

   We didn’t take the Viking River cruise.  We watched a ferry make a U-turn across the river with its load of autos.  No bridge in sight.

     We got to Dortmund in time to go to the brewery museum.  Dortmund used to be the Milwaukee or Golden, Colorado of Germany, a beer producer.  We didn’t see the modern brewery, just the museum.

    That evening, we met Timo’s family at a modern looking restaurant.  Inside, it was quite antique with heavy wooden beams and tables.  Outside, in the town square, a carnival was set up to celebrate, what else, the end of carnival season. 

      On Monday, Timo took us for a walk around a former site of a foundry.  It had been converted to a lake with luxury houses all around the perimeter.  Following lunch at Timo’s apartment, we headed back to Frankfurt.

     Tuesday (Marti gras) was one of the longest days of my life.  We got a wakeup call at 4 a.m.  We took the rental car back to the airport, and walked up to the terminal.  This time, we were ready for security, all our bottles in a plastic bag.  In preparation for our return to the states, we breakfasted at McDonalds in the Frankfurt airport.

    Our 7 a.m. flight took us back to Heathrow.  We had to change terminals.  They loaded us on a bus and we went through the back alleys of the airport.  We arrived at Terminal 5.  Though we had never left the airport, we had to go through secruity yet again.  I got my fourth and final pat down.

     At about 11:30 a.m. local time we departed for Denver.  Nine hours later we would land in Denver.  It was about 3 p.m.  We chased the sun all day.  At 7:30 p.m. I crawled into bed.  We had been up for nearly 23 hours.  Our European journey was over.  

     Some observations on Germany:  I expected Germany to be clean and neat, which it mostly was with a couple of exceptions.  The taggers are set lose there.  Walls and signs sport the same graffiti as we see in the States.  In Dortmund, near the brewery, it was very trashy.  Timo’s lady companion says whenever she has to travel that area, she makes sure her car doors are locked.  They blame it on the immigrants, who lack the German sense of order.

    We saw a lot of modern looking buildings, such as the restaurant, with antique interiors, as mentioned.  We also saw many ancient looking buildings that survived the war, as in Dinkelsbuhl, that had completely modern interiors, modern beyond what we are used to.  An example would be flush toilets with two choices of flush, one for liquid waste, two for solid waste.  They are water-savers.

     One final note, when we get to the “beam me up, Scotty” stage, foreign travel will be a lot easier.  No need for a pat down, maybe?