The Imps

 Andrew to me the other day, "Grandma, I just spit on your shoe." (And yes, sure enough, he did.  A nice little pool of spit was just sitting there on my shoe.)

Adeline to Grandpa Kent as he was carrying her on a hike through the woods, "Where we are, Grandpa?"

Andrew and Adeline tonight at our New Year's Eve get-together...dancing on the table, uprooting the aloe plant, dis-leafing the parsley, in the tub washing their feet together...regular little imps.  Just missing their third partner in crime, Chappell.  

Oliver M. Chappell

 Oliver M. Chappell

Toliver Chappell and Mary Mink’s boy

Born in 1872/3 date unknown

Died aged 11 years old

Cause and date unknown

Records lost in courthouse fire

He was Hattie Chappell Simon's brother 

In 1880 he was eight and Hattie was six

(Amazing how much Peter Harding looks like him.)

Letter from Grandpa Marion to Grandma Opal ( shared with me from Uncle Jim)

 

(From Jim to me on May 3, 2018)  Following is a letter Marion wrote to Opal in Oct 1929. It is not the complete letter but only three pages of it.  Opal would have just turned 19 and Marion was 24.  He was writing from Flint Michigan.  You must remember Marion only had a fifth grade education if that much so I made a few corrections to spelling and grammar.  From the way the letter was going Opal may have censored the last page and made sure it did not get saved.  Pure speculation on my part. We can thank Ty for locating this. He was the finder of the treasure.

Here it is:

Oct. 28th 1929

Miss Opal Simon,

My dearest loving little girl, I will write you a few lines tonight. How are you and what are you doing to pass the time off?  I wonder if you are thinking of your old lonesome boy tonight and wishing you could be with him to cheer him up.  Baby, life sure seems dull sometimes, if I didn’t have you to think about I don’t know what I would do but I know we will be together sometimes and so it makes me glad about it.  Because I can have you for always, Baby girl, isn’t that nice for us to be together for always and for me to love you for all time.  It just seems so good honey I can hardly stand to wait for I want you so bad.  Oh! Opal darling I know we will always be happy together.  For I could be happy with you anywhere on earth and I know you would always love me and we wouldn’t be jealous at one another because we wouldn’t do anything to be jealous over.  Opal darling don’t you ever doubt me for I will always be true to you, because I know I love you and I don’t want other women.  I would rather kiss you than any girl I’ve ever known and Opal darling I know just how you are.  I know it would be lots nicer if I had lots of money and I could give you anything you wanted.  But Baby girl I haven’t got it. I can only give you my love but sweetheart I can work for you and we can get by.  Opal sweetheart as much as I love you I would give you up if you could marry some man with lots of money and you could be happy with him.  But it sure would be a pain for me to have to give you up.

Fall and Winter Doings

We at Fernnook have had a busy Fall and start to Winter.  Having Ken and Kenny Joe here have added to the ideas for fun and festivities.  One tradition we started was to enter a Fernnook float in the Doniphan Lighted Christmas Parade.  Somehow we didn't place...but we did have a blast.  Even Grandpa Jerry Martin joined the Potbelly Gnomes as an Honorary Leading Citizen of the Province of Fernnook.  Unfortunately KJ fell off the float.  It was embarrasing for him, but there were no broken bones.  His motto, as it should be, is, "Whatever it takes to get Fernook on the map!"

A few weeks later on Christmas Eve we had our traditional appetizers and gifts.  But, we broke tradition on Christmas Day, and instead of having ham and picnic sides, Ken and Kenny Joe did a reverse sear on some lovely prime rib.  To make the day more perfect, we were blessed with a lovely warm day...the kids had a blast playing kickball and riding their bikes.  Some of them (the younger set) were playing pirates in Papa Bob's boat.  Somehow the key from one of the tractors ended up in the boat, and it took Papa a good while to find it the next day (oops!)    

 

A few nights ago several of our grandchildren were here long after dark.  It is just that time of year that the glow worms start to appear.  I love their magical, fairy-like, quick wisp of a glow that fades back into the deep dark of the night.  (For the uninitiated, glow worms are the common name of the larval stage of several beetles and even flies...in this case they are the larva of fireflys).  You only see them in September and October (or at least that is the only time I have ever seen them) after the weather begins to cool down a bit.  

So, the children were running around in the dark, some with flashlights and some without, when one of them noticed a glow worm.  Soon, they had brought me a plastic cup with a lid, and every few minutes, one would run up with another glow worm to add to those collected in the cup.  Now, if you look at the picture above, you will see what a glow worm looks like.  Really, they are a bit creepy, but that didn't phase the children.  Even the girls, Kathleen, Elsie, Opal, and Adeline were gleefully catching them and depositing them into the cup.  What a wonderful time they all had.

Later, as I was driving Joel's kids home, I told them about all the fun I had as a city kid visiting Fernnook and running around after dark with my cousins.  Kathleen said to me, "Grandma, do you ever wish you were still a kid?"

That was an easy one for me.  I loved my childhood, but I truly do believe that maturity is worth more than all that has gone before it.  I do miss people from earlier times.  I miss my mother.  I miss Grandma Opal.  How I wish I could play one more game of High Five with them and laugh until we were silly.  But, I don't want to go back to those good old days; rather, I want to somehow pull them into these new good days.

Well, I couldn't really explain all of that to Kathleen, so I just said, "No, honey, I wouldn't want to go back to being a kid.  If I did that, I wouldn't have you precious grandchildren that I love so much.  Honey, these are the good news days, and I love them!"

 

The other day, Tyler and Adeline stopped by for dinner.  Adeline was carrying a little watering can and told me this was her friend.  It was a frog.  "How cute," thought I.  "She is so good at pretending.  The watering can is her pretend frog friend."  During dinner her friend sat on the table, and she tried to squish a pear down the spout.  Then when we told her to take the pear out of the spout, she popped it in her mouth...ugh...but so 3 year oldish.  Why did she try to put a pear down the spout?  Well, to feed the frog, why else?  It wasn't until quite some time had passed, that I happened to look into the watering can.  And what did my little eyes behold?  Why, a frog, of course.  A green, sticky, long, skinny frog just sitting in the bottom of the watering can.  That watering can made a nice little home for her little frog.

Another Adeline story happened last week.  Kent was watching the kids outside during Wednesday night Bible study.  Two of the kids were on the swings, and there were only two swings and Adeline wanted to swing.  So, she turned to her grandpa and said, "When will it be my turn, Brother Kent?"  That's what you get from going to church where your grandpa is the pastor.  And tonight I heard that little Kate Smith was playing with her Barbie dolls with her dad.  She handed her dad the Ken doll and said, "This is Brother Kent.  Will you put these sandals on him, dad?"  

This post has nothing to do with garden spiders really.  I just like this picture that I took a few years ago.  I have had a few of them (garden spiders) on the porch in the last week, and I do love me a good garden spider.  The bigger the better.  They fascinate the children with their trampoline web skills.  And...I did have a cool, huge wolf spider (or maybe not a wolf spider, but whatever it was, it was huge) that had an egg case hatch out on my porch.  There were thousands of teeny-tiny spiders on my gardening shelves.  But, what really caught my attention yesterday as I was tooling down Fern Hollow Lane (towards Mike and Deb's place), and the real reason for this post, was something in the middle of the road that was flopping back and forth.  My glasses are not the right prescription anymore, and I had a hard time seeing what it was until I was right nigh on it.  Then I could see it was a snake. At first glance, it looked like a two-headed snake (like the one at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Building).  After I was able to untangle it in my mind, I could see that it had just one head with one very large and open mouth trying to swallow a huge frog.  I must have spooked it because the frog got loose, but only for a second.  The snake snatched it back up and quickly slithered off into the weeds with the frog squealing.  It was a nice size black snake-maybe two feet long.  May it live to have many successful hunts.

Oh, I received a text today from Natalie.  She said, "I was going to take a picture of Peeta's new praying mantis pet but a hen ate it."  She knows that much as I like spiders and snakes, I do not like praying mantises.  I answered her, "Poor Peeta; happy hen."

 

Photo by Dick Daniels

A few days ago, I noticed a nasty smell near our front door.  At first, I though, "Oh, it's from the Japanese Beetle trap."  Mount Doom, my beloved crepe myrtle, has been poorly this year.  Some might think it is because it is confined to a hole in our little concrete patio...but that is not the problem.  Mount Doom was totally infested with Japanese Beetles this year, and I was close to heartbroken over it.  Japanese Beetles, though, I have learned, are easy to trap...so trap them I have been doing.  That and beating Mount Doom in the evening with a rake and then joyfully squishing the bugs that fall off onto the patio.

But, the reek was not from the beetle trap.  It does stink, but this stink was really and truly by the front door.  So, I said to Kent, "There must be something dead under the porch."  At least, I hoped it was under the porch.  Under the porch is hard to get to, but under the trailer is much harder...I did not want Kent to have to go under the trailer to drag out some dead critter.  So we hunkered down and pointed a flashlight back into the recesses under the porch.  There was a something there, and it looked like a big duck.  Joel and Nat have ducks and I was afeared it was one of theirs.  Or, possibly one of the wild ducks that sometimes paddle around in our small pond.

Kent slithered in through the hole and put that big dead thing in a trashbag.  Now, it is dark under the porch, so he didn't get a good look at it then, but once he got out and handed me the bag, I could see it was not a duck at all.  It was a big black headed vulture.  I do not like black headed vultures.  They have migrated into our area, and they are calf killers.  They are also a very creepy bird.  They love to hang out in dead trees and old buildings, like in the old Simon barn that is in Tyler and Jen's field.   

Bill saw a hurt vulture on the lane the other day.  This guy must have wandered all the way to our porch and crawled under it.  Thanks to Kent, the smell is gone.  That is good news for all the folks who walk through my door.

And, totally unrelated to the vulture, I have high hopes that Mount Doom will yet blaze with blooms this year now that the beetle population is getting under control.  Squish, squish.

Opa and Oma Tidbits

The above pictures of Opa and Oma are from quite a few years ago.  They are both 90 now, and Oma has been in rehab with a broken femur while various family members have been staying with Opa.  I am with him this week, and I have been asking him some questions.  I do not doubt that most of the older Hardings know these stories, but I wanted to get them down as best I could.  He struggled a little in telling them, so forgive me (you who know the stories best) if I have told them wrong.

I asked Opa about what Christmas was like when he was growing up.  He said that his dad, Papa, would go out Christmas Eve to get the tree and then DeeDee and Papa would decorate it.  If Papa did not come home with a really nice tree, DeeDee was not happy.  Sometimes some of the gifts would be tied to the tree as part of the decorations.  

There are two gifts that really stick out in Opa's memory.  One was an electric car that he could ride in.  The other is part of a sad memory for him.  His dad gave him a really nice, rather expensive watch, and that was the only gift he received that year.  The girls though (Opa's 3 sisters), received several gifts each...toys, clothes, and various other things.  Opa feels bad because he hurt his dad's feelings over not appreciating his watch.  He was upset that he only received one gift.  He came to understand, though, the value of that gift in later days.

Opa's mom had a temper, but his dad was usually pretty easy going.  There is one time, though, that Opa remembers Papa being very angry with him.  When Opa was 17, the family moved off of Humphry Street where they had rented for years to a house that was outside of the city.  It took a ride on two different buses for Opa to get to his old friends.  One Saturday, Opa rode back into the city to hang out with his friends at The Pool, a pool hall they frequented.  Because it was a Saturday, when Opa headed home, there weren't as many buses running as there were during the week. This meant he had to wait extra long times to catch the two buses he needed to get home, and the outcome was that he arrived at the house past his curfew.  To top it off, he had forgotten his keys.  So, he knocked on the door.  Usually, when one of the kids was late, it was DeeDee who would answer the door and give the miscreant a piece of her mind.  This time, though, Papa answered the door.  He was so angry at having to get up in the middle of the night to let Opa in that he just hauled off and hit him in the face.  Opa said that was the only time that Papa ever struck him.

But, then Opa turned his mind to one of his favorite memories.  He was leaving for the army during the Korean War.  Oma was going to stay with Papa and DeeDee, and Papa drove Opa to the place where he was meeting all the other recruits to ship out.  Papa put his hand on Opa's shoulder and asked him if he was really sure this was what he wanted to do.  He told Opa that if he was not sure, he knew some people that would be able to work towards getting him out of leaving.  It was a very tender moment for Opa, and it made him feel very loved by Papa.  Opa, of course, chose to stay enlisted.  He felt that Papa was sensitive about the military because he hadn't served in WWII since he had a family.  Instead, his war effort was put in here in the States producing food.

And...just so they don't get lost somewhere, here are a few tidbits I learned today.

Papa and DeeDee met at work.  They both worked for a place that made car parts.  The business is no longer there, but the building is.  Opa said that DeeDee would come in late so often that she was fired.

His favorite cousin was Ardell Jr.  He could walk to Ardell's house from Humphry Street.

DeeDee really spent a lot of time and effort to make sure the girls were dressed nicely.

Then, a bit of a zag here, Oma has been talking with her half-sister, Bobbie, a lot since being in rehab.  Oma was an only child (we thought), and her dad, Addison, left her mother (Honey) and her when Oma was a baby.  She never saw him after that.  (He did come to Honey once and ask to see Oma.  Honey let him look at her across a school playground.  Then Addison left and was never heard of by the two of them again.)   Just recently, through some research on Ancestry, Bill connected with a half-sister of Oma's that we knew nothing about.  That is Bobbie.  They haven't met, but they do talk, and recently quite a bit.  Bobbie told her that some years ago, Addison's wife (who was from Ohio) and Addison were driving in Colorado when he had a heart attack and died in the car.  She drove him to a funeral home there in Colorado and left him.  

Nothing big or exciting or earth-shattering...just some family lore I would like to save for future generations.