Happy Apple Bread

Just back from a stay at a splendid city hotel where we enjoyed breakfast each morning under a substantial crystal chandelier surrounded by bucolic murals of gazebos, doves and vines. The breakfast buffet was on par with the decor, including cheeses of all matter of cloven hooved critters; hot and cold fish and fowl; and a mosaic of sliced seasonal fruits. Strawberries and melons, pineapple and citrus, blueberries and raspberries. Mmmmm. For three mornings, I luxuriated in a bowl of red raspberries with a dollop of whipped cream atop Red raspberries and cream for breakfast is a pretty fair distillation of the essence of a getaway.

Today, back to earth because earth, in the tactile, grainy, windy sense, is where I operate. Back to bringing in the sheaves, aka large scale mum deliveries, when we gather the fruits of our labors four by four and load them into the arks of the delivery trailers for their voyage to the cities. It concentrates the mind on the pressure points of finger tips and shoulders and knees. Back to harvesting another fruit, a humble fruit, not featured on the china plates at the Mayflower. Many of the apple trees on our farm are barren this year, victimized by chilly nights and unfriendly days for either bees or blossoms. But the quartet of trees with fruit bear heavy burdens on their branches. The apples are not perfect, but they are remarkably scab free and blush beautifully where the sun bathes them in the afternoon. These are apples I would not have to hide from my mother and father.

We had a Red Delicious and a Yellow Delicious in our side yard in Orland Park. These two seemed to grow with a cylindrical habit, without the muscular wide spread branches of the orchard at Granny and Grandpa's house. Somewhere along the line though, my folks learned how to grow fruit trees. They planted hundreds on the contour along the terraces of their farm in Moniteau county. They ran drip lines under the infant trees to forestall mortality during inevitable droughty summers and to promote fruit size and prevent fruit drop as the trees grew. They pruned and guyed, sprayed and raked up drops as the seasons demanded. One of the old buildings was refurbished into a market with an insulated, airconditioned room to keep the fruit in condition after it was picked. The last boxes of the best keepers were taken down to the fruit cellar in the pump house to be rationed deep into the winter until nothing was left of the apple but the sweetness.

Raising apples in mid Missouri is an art as much as a science. The glossy recommendations of New York catalogs bore little fruit, forgive the pun, in a climate with winter might rocket from minus 10 to 75 degrees like a pin ball machine. Trees would come and go, replaced with another more tolerant and tough. The window of opportunity for protective spraying could be but a sliver as well. Good spraying weather bears many similarities to good greenhouse covering weather, with the addition of a threat of rain. Meticulous growers that they were, they got those sprays in, because beautiful fruit was what they wanted to grow. Remember the lost Entwives of Tolkien's Middle Earth? In my father's judgement, my mom descended directly from the Entwives, so ordered and bountiful was their garden. In the summertime, we would all cool off in the shade of the market with statice and globe amaranth drying overhead, a few peaches ripening on the picnic table and the rows of tidy fruit trees marching on to the edge of the view like a vision of the Shire.

The apple season at Redbarn began in July with harvest of the immense flattened green Lodis. Lodi apples are thin skinned and don't store, but they peel easily and virtually sauce themselves. Lodis made thin applesauce that required liberal additions of sugar, but they came on early and were harbingers of good things to come, like the first robins in spring.

We weren't down there to catch every apple of the seasonal progression, but my folks kept boxes of their favorite keepers until we visited. Paula Reds were tasty handfuls for eating, but came on when the weather was warm enough, they didn't keep long either. McIntosh had to be watched like hawks; waiting one day too long for some color could mean the entire tree's fruit would be on the ground. And that would be such a shame! McIntosh applesauce is just about the best; the big apples left peels two foot long. They cooked down into a lovely pinkish hue with just enough fruity texture to have substance. A shelf of canned McIntosh will look completely different than a shelf of canned Delicious, or Ozark Golds, or Jonathans.

August brought in the Ozark Golds and the Galas. I don't know if my folks have any of these two trees remaining, though we have a couple at the farm. Galas are so beautiful, heart shaped fruit with a hint of blush on the side and so sweet and crisp! You can buy them in the store, but they won't originate in Missouri. The Ozark Golds were not as sweet, but they were a wonderful multi purpose apple and would tide a golden apple lover over until the fall apples were ready. You could munch an Ozark Gold out of hand, slice it for cinnamon sugar apples for a treat for the kids, or bake it into pies. The rootstock for the trees was just not sturdy enough for the repeated freezings and thawings of mid Missouri though and many of the Ozark Golds uprooted and blew over.

Finally the crown jewels of Missouri appledom would be ready, the wonderful main attraction in my opinion, the queen of fruity versatility, the Golden Delicious. Our family rejected the Red Delicious out of prejudice born of the thick skinned mealy fruits available year round at the stores in those days. My folks raised a few and no doubt they were tastier off the tree, but there was no getting around that thick skin. The Golden Delicious were not quite as pretty, bearing some rough cosmetic patches most years. But they stored well, made great pies, and could be canned into sauce or apple butter. We ate a dozen a day between snacks for school and harvest and lunches for all. These years of bountiful Golden Delicious were the years I started preserving my parents' apple harvest in the form of apple bread.

My mom made the apple bread first. The "old" Farm Bureau cookbook has the recipe which she would make for us when fruit was in season. When you have four boxes of apples and lots of friends and neighbors to bake for, it doesn't take long to connect the dots, head to the HyVee for sugar, eggs, flour and Crisco, and sharpen the paring knife. The apple bread recipe is just about fool proof in both construction and baking. It can be made successfully from a wide range of varieties, orchard fresh or store bought. It freezes just fine and actually slices more neatly after frozen.

I bet I've made hundreds of loaves in the big yellow Rubbermaid mixing bowl and worn out one set of loaf pans....for home, for family dinners, for holiday dinners, for funeral dinners, for breakfast, for birthday treats, for teachers, bus drivers, choir directors, piano teachers, Sunday school teachers and pastors. For gifts for friends. As giveaways for campaigns.

Just last week for Abbie's breakfast. Just today for a Farm Bureau supper.

Its a gift that keeps giving.....share the recipe, share the delight. I love it when someone walks up to the door and says, 'That smells WONDERFUL'. Its not rocket science and its no big secret.

It is a harbinger of cooler days, a pleasant reminder of fall at my parents' place, a 'remembrance of things past' that connects all the happy busy times spent with the oven warming, piles of peels in the sink, and family in the kitchen.

Happy Apple Bread.....

4 cups apples, peeled and diced

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups Crisco oil

2 eggs

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 heaping tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

3 cups flour

Mix sugar, oil and eggs. Add apples and stir. Add other ingredients and stir. Batter will be stiff.

Bake for 1 hour at 350 in 2 ungreased loaf pans. Let cool then tip out. Freezes well.

don't use off brand oil....for some reason, it doesn't work as well.

WELCOME, AARON MATTHEW!

I have wonderful sons-in-law. They work hard, laugh easily, cook well, help their wives, and are exemplary daddies to their children. They are tolerant of the foibles of their in-laws. I can never thank them enough for making their home here, close to our home, so we have the company and blessings of all our growing family, right here, on a daily basis.

BUT.....there was a time when Matt was not the flavor of the day. Just about eight years ago, we waited anxiously by the phone in the minutes between September 6 and September 7. Ann's trip to the doctor that day sent her on to the hospital with the prospect of induced labor and the arrival of their first child...and our first grandchild. We waited....and waited...not just for news of the baby, but also reassurance that our daughter was all right. We waited for the call. Not real patiently.

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Around 12:30, we received the wonderful news that Aaron Matthew was born. The new little family was fine, just exhausted. We could hardly go to sleep, but the night passed quickly. The morning of September 7 meant not just a trip to see baby Aaron, but also parking cars at the Chiefs game and watering the mum crop at the farm.

I had big plans to celebrate this little boy's birth with a new blue sheet and a can of black spray paint awaiting the number one grand baby's name. I was going to proclaim to all of Tarkio, "WELCOME, AARON MATTHEW!" Instead, in my excess excitement, I painted, 'WELCOME, AARON MAtHEW', committing the mortal sin of misspelling this brand new boy's name. ARGH! I noticed my error before I hung the big banner from the porch and painted in the extra 'T', but I was sure God and all his angels would forgive this error, much less my family, friends and neighbors.

As it has turned out, there is no one more forgiving of his grandma's foibles than this number one grandson, Aaron. I know his mommy and daddy worried and lost sleep during his first months, but I can only remember little Aaron plunging out of his mother's arms to reach out to me at about six months of age. As a very little boy, he loved his uncle Ben's Brio trains, especially the cranes with magnets. Over and over again, we would load the 'cargo' onto the little cars from the little trucks. Downstairs, we would hide the 'gold' in a fortress of blocks, then destroy the building and liberate the gold, loading it with another little blue crane and pushing it with a little orange bulldozer.

Aaron helped bake, perched on the counter or the high stool...he still sports remnants of the giant goose egg that is his grandma's greatest guilt trip and regret. We read Thomas the Train, Smoky (the train), Hobo Dog, McDuff, and the Big Farm Book over and over and over. We searched for Lowly Worm and Gold Bug in Richard Scarry books. He took full advantage of the bath room just off the living room, using the 'cups and spoons' to concoct all manner of delicacies and laughing uproariously as the frogs would squirt or the "monkey" would climb up my back or slide down my leg. His mother would caution he was getting 'too big' for any number of activities whether climbing or getting picked up. Well, he is now, but he wasn't then.......

Instead of going up to the second floor to bed, we would build a wall of pillows and blankets to make a dark cozy spot for a little boy to snooze in til Mom and Dad came to pick him up. More than once or twice, the little boy and Grandpa would be snoring harmonically in the quiet of late evening.

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Eight isn't grown up, but its not "little" any more either. Instead of a cocoon of pillows, Aaron falls asleep with the Mizzou snuggie. He can deconstruct the 'body' book or the Stephen Biesty cross section book. We read about weather, water systems, and electricity now. He can build a better Lego from parts than I can from directions. We're learning piano now; Aaron mows the yard for his mom and dad; he's got a pretty good grasp of the flowers in the greenhouse, helping more than one customer find what they need. This spring, we hiked the hallowed halls of our Capitol together; he drove the simulator at Air and Space with his grandpa and uncle Ben....this summer he's been driving his dad around in the golf cart, helping to pick up mum orders.

It is fun to have Josh crawling around the house these days, even if he plows through anything on the floor like an ice cutter in the Arctic sea. It was pleasant to pore through the pictures watching Ben grow from scrapbook to scrapbook last month as we celebrated his birthday. But Aaron (or the Big A, as my dad calls him) could just as well be dubbed the big S at age 8 as he soaks up knowledge and experience like a giant sponge. What a wonder it is to have adverbs on your tongue at all times, to have learning explode like the 'Incredible Cross Section' book, to run, throw, bike, at warp speed, and to rest from it all in a sleep so profound, nothing short of a tornado drill or earthquake could arouse you.

.

Eight is great. Happy Birthday, Aaron!

Because You're Mine, I Walk the LIne

They're out there. More than any other summer, I hear them coming and going, thanks to the Doppler effect and the 30 mile an hour speed limit sign just over the hill crest north of town. Trucks, not just our normal grain trailers, but all manner of loads from many corners of the country. Even with the wait where 136 tees with 59, Tarkio will come and go in the time it takes to shift all those gears.

I'd like to think some of those drivers welcome a change of scenery. Northwest Missouri on highway 59 is a topographical world apart from the I-29 route even with the Missouri in its banks. Sometimes an out of state plate will roar past me on its way north without noticing the one, two, three punch of semi trucks ahead. Not everyone is enthralled with the forced march on the blue roads.

On the other hand, there is more variation in those trucker's daily travels than there is in mine. The drive out to work changes subtly with the seasons. These days I admire the unreproducible hue of the big bluestem seed heads. Oh how I wish I could give it a name and put it on a wall or a rug! Each day the corn stalks lose some green too as fall knocks on August's back door.

But when I get to work, the days take on a Ground Hog Day regularity. Down the gravel I walk, ear phones in one hand and go cup in the other. The rows of mums await. I jerk the handle of the hydrant, plug in the cord on the tank and.....

...walk the lines.

In truth, walking the lines could be rote, but one rarely has that luxury. There are weeds to pull from around the mum pots. There may be pots tipped over from wind or animals that go bump in the night. From a distance the mum lines look uniform, like bunches of broccoli in a produce case. But up close, some are smaller and need the leader pulled aside for a watering or two so the plant will dry out, and grow roots rather than rot. There are wilted plants; perhaps the leader has been knocked out, but more likely it is plugged with algae or a mineral accumulation from years of well water. I'll pull out the leader, get a shower, plug it back in and hope for the rewarding dribble of water that means the plant can stay put. By late August, the bigger varieties are tending to grow together, so I'll spread the plants to the extent I can. A mum should be a globe....not a cylinder!!

By the time I've walked two rows up and down, its time to change the hose to the next line. Walk to the other end of the patch and repeat. In an hour or two, the hoses will meet in the middle of the patch; it will be time to fill the tank and move on to the next patch. Up closer to the house, Lee is performing the same ritual ballet.

What makes this not boring? Well, nothing. It is work, after all, and frequently its sweaty and buggy work that leads to some of the soggiest and stinkiest shoes around. I have to leave them outdoors when I get home, or on the hood of the Jeep after I've finished.

But it is also craft of a fashion, requiring concentration and attention to detail. Is there a yellowish tinge to that foliage? Wait, is that a web? Was it there yesterday? Which variety is budded? How soon will there be color? Should I water that line, or skip it today? Each plant is one of thousands, but each plant is one promised to a customer for a price too. Is that straight out of Poor Richard's? "Take care of the pennies and the pounds....etc." ?

If this part of the routine is successful, we'll begin another soon after Labor Day. The mums lines will empty, four by four, as we pull out the leaders, grab a pair in each hand, and walk them up into the trailers. We'll leave behind the losers, the ones with broken branches from wind or animal damage, the ones that are not quite big enough or lopsided. This is harvest Hurst Greenery style, just as satisfying as dumping trucks in the bin. After months of walking the lines, we drain them, roll 'em up, and fold the ground cloth under concrete bricks against the winter winds.

This is a humble sort of accomplishment. By the time the plants are arrayed in glory, they'll be planted somewhere else, part of someone else's grand design or an integral player in a harvest motif. Stellar Purples in K.C.; Tabithas in Lincoln; Dianas and Megans in St. Joseph; Wilmas and Ericas scattered down south; assorted versions of Cheryl in St. Louis. No grand burst of creative juices; just persistence, consistency, and a willingness to attend to every individual plants' requirements in addition to the bare necessities for all the mums. No room for shirking; the margin of error for a growing green thing in a black pot on black ground cloth in the blazing month of August is a small one.

There won't be a trophy for a job well done either. Like the truckers at the end of a trip, what we hope to accomplish is no more than the opportunity to do it all again the next year. Going forward, growing, beats the alternative.

Day by day, because they're mine, I walk those lines....

Shattered Glass

The storm was still foaming at the mouth when we pulled into the driveway the other night. It had been a white knuckle ride home, wind driving the rain across the road like an insane coachman cursing at his team. Several cars ahead stopped dead in their tracks in the middle of the highway, hazards flashing. We crept north, emerging from the heaviest rain as we pulled into Tarkio, then forced to zig and zag our way on the city streets dodging downed tree limbs. No shock, then, when we drove across the grass to avoid the leafy sycamore beast across our own driveway.

There was wreckage enough obvious as the brief blasts of lightening illumined our way to the back door. The summer flowers would never recover: sawed off at the pot were the big coleus and Persian shield. Several pieces of pottery had crashed on the concrete. We turned a blind eye and resolved to worry about it all in the morning.

Sure enough, it was as bad in daylight as we thought it might be in the dark. The windshield on the red pickup took a direct hit. There was enough debris to fill the flat bed and warrant a trip to town with a chainsaw. The siding on the back of the house was cratered like the moon.

And the window to the dining room was broken too.

That broken window tortures me. Why? Obviously, I don't like the idea of a hail stone shattering my leaded glass window and melting on my dining room table. But there is also a very famous theory about broken windows, a corollary of the slippery slope. The gist of this theory is that one broken window, one tipped over trash can, one abandoned vehicle, can lead inexorably to increased vandalism, crime, and worsening living standards and quality of life for the folks in the broken window neighborhood. While he was mayor, Rudy Guiliani put this theory to the test in his war on crime in New York City, increasing the police presence in neighborhoods and cleaning up vandalism and other symptoms of entropy. There are plenty of detractors to the broken window theory, most of which argue that this method of keeping order attacks the symptoms, not the disease, but appearances count in this vale of tears and cities still use James Q. Wilson's idea as a starting point.

This theory makes a lot of sense to this resident of small town America. I fixate on my shattered glass, fallen tree limbs and flattened flowers as indications that I don't care, rather than the results of a short and nasty act of God. I felt better the minute Ryan pulled out his chainsaw and sawed up the sycamore. From the roar of small gasoline engines in our end of town and the parade of pickups hauling debris to the refuse pile, most of our neighborhood had the same response to damage I did. This week, a visitor would be hard pressed to find evidence in town itself of the severe storm that rolled through here not long ago.

Tarkio will not be mistaken for Main Street in Disney Land. Storm or no storm, we have a fair share of continuing dilapidation. And broken windows are contagious.

Aye, there's the rub. Contrary to mainstream opinion, small towns are not bastions of rigidity, conformity and intolerance. Rather, we tend to have a more libertarian attitude most evidenced by the canard 'one man's trash is another man's treasure.' Using this definition, some property owners are rich indeed, in their own eyes. Their neighbors, on the other hand, may be more "eye-sore".

What to do? The up and down side of our little town is its crazy quilt-i-ness: its ability to take most comers and live and let live. But there can be too much tolerance; any curmudgeonly survivor of the 60s and other decades of excess will tell you that. I hope we can claw our way upwards to the imaginary point where we hold our own, winning some and losing some, tearing down but also building up, chalking up some progress on the growth chart that measures the life of our community.

But right now, all I can do is fix my window.

Another Country Song

"These times are troubled and these times are good
And they're always gonna be, they rise and they fall
We take 'em all the way that we should
Together you and me forsaking them all
Deep in the night and by the light of day
It always looks the same, true love always does
And here by your side, or a million miles away
Nothin's ever gonna change the way that I feel,
The way it is, is the way that it was

When I said I do, I meant that I will 'til the end of all time
Be faithful and true, devoted to you
That's what I had in mind when I said I do."-- Clint Black

Long ago and far away....no, that's not it.....
Once upon a time....no,no,no, not what I mean at all....

Not a fairy tale romance, not a negatory romance: given our current status as grandparents, some might argue we're long past romance by any definition. But we're veterans of this game; there's not much we haven't seen or been through....together. We've had our 'blessed events'; we've spent two decades with our children under various roofs. We've lived our entire married life in the same county surrounded by half our family. We have toiled as partners and endured the vagaries of work and weather. We know how to hurt and know better than to use that knowledge. We're older, sometimes wiser....we've learned.....

'You come from a long line of love'....How could we not succeed with a portrait gallery of wedded ancestors? Every anniversary with a zero at the end is a mile marker. We're rookies compared with the pictorials in my scrapbooks....35, 40, 50. We're not there yet, but we pray we make it and we'll hold the kids up for good parties when we get there.

I got lots of advice before my wedding. I was young, giddy, and probably looked like I needed all the help I could get. But anniversaries are not earned by reading a 'Marriage for Dummies' manual. There is no head start, no magic potion, no yellow brick road. 'Every thing we got, we got the hard way.'

What's an anniversary anyway? Sometimes you eat steak together; sometimes you send a text. Sometimes you celebrate; sometimes you reflect; sometimes you go to work and its just another day. I guess that's a measure of accomplishment in itself: secure in life together while working to make that life better. Love may be a many splendored thing, but marriage is a million little nit picky details day after day and year after year. Remembering the cell phone charger; forgetting the socks in the couch....

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Out here on the edge

Love dared us to try
Baby,some people fall,some people fly

Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails....

Any mixed family...and by that I mean one with sons and daughters, knows one of the great mysteries of life: that boys and girls are NOT the same hearts and minds dropped into different bodies. I get to relive this adage on a day by day basis with grandchildren, but twenty five years ago, it made me more than a little apprehensive. With Lee and Ann safely out of babyhood, and being female myself, I could feel as if I had an inkling at least of how to deal with girls. Baby number three was still a mystery, but we had been unable to pick a girl's name, so I guess we were expressing preference by default. John Benton arrived; we had our opportunity to say 'vive la difference!'

What are little boys made of? Band-aids and scar tissue. Ben started young, pulling the microwave down on top of him before he was old enough to walk. Results: scars next to his eye masquerading as laugh lines. An end gate fell out of a farm truck, sending us to the emergency room in St. Joseph. Results: stitches, a wide white bandage and two plastic motorcycles. Two concussion scares, the last following a fall from the top of a park slide somewhere east of Bent's Fork in Colorado. Results: a really colorful black eye recorded for all posterity in a vacation picture. "Jumping" ("falling?") out of the loft of Grandpa's barn on Easter day. Results: two broken bones in a foot and a short term guilt trip by the parents who told him to 'be tough, you're OK.'

What do little boys do? Build: blocks, Brio trains, Lego rockets. Ride: on tractors, combines, pickups, lawn mowers. Sometimes they take a notion to drive as well: under the not so watchful eye of his sister, Ben managed to lurch our antique van over the curb and nearly into the plate glass window of a flower shop in Rock Port. He couldn't reach the clutch; he was two.

Little boys are enthusiastic. Hunting. Astronomy. Ham radio. One computer game or another. A newspaper. A future astronaut. 'A general' at age six. A fancier of Hercule Poirot, Horatio Hornblower, Nero Wolfe from time to time.

Little boys are single minded; this characteristic can make their parents tear their hair, but can also be channeled into the laudable attributes of persistence, perseverance, commitment and endurance. It can take a young man through two a days, ruck marches, and outlines hundreds of pages long.

Little boys are curious. Between the farm and the greenhouse, we've never lacked for an inventory of broke stuff....the mechanical version of a medical cadaver..to be dissected and examined. These items were never the same.........and never reassembled, but some inner urge to know, or destroy, was satisfied before the parts were pitched. To see the big picture, to bring order from chaos, to see beyond superficial to the root of a matter: this can be the productive side of the inquisitive 'why?' of the child.

Little boys can be adventurous. I subdued panic many times before Ben was too old to be my personal responsibility. He wasn't worried if I couldn't find him. He might be down at the pond or the rock. At Elephant Rocks State Park, he told us all he knew a quicker way back to the car. And I guess he did. Ben was there before Blake, Lee, Ann, me and a whole troop of Boy Scouts could find him. He was five.

Little boys grow up. They quit worrying if their sisters are "looking at me". They don't have to duck down in the car so no one can see them. They become heroes to their little nieces and nephews in the same way they idolized older aunts and uncles. They worry about their own broke stuff, set their hobbies aside for work, save adventures for the future.

But......

Whether five or twenty five, they are still true to their team. Happy Birthday, Ben!

And, Go Cards!

The Wheels on the Bus Go

Ann, Matt and family are on their way home from vacation. She says, 'Can you believe school starts next week?' I'm watering the pots and the hummingbirds are zipping around my ears. The sun is noticeably lower in the sky at 7 pm. For the first time in weeks, I am reluctant to head indoors for the evening: the temperature is less than eighty and my skin drinks in everything refreshing in the atmosphere. The lyrics that come to mind change the song for the affected sense: 'on a calm day, you can hear forever.' A normal farm day requires sifting the conversation through the filter of a howling wind. The dog walkers are out in full force and the good people of Tarkio, more sensible than some of the city folk I've seen, are choosing tonight to cruise through town with their 'tops rolled down'.

So, yes, given the weather this evening, I guess I can believe school starts next week.

And yet, I understand her question. School means an end to evening trips to the pool, to watching "late" movies any old night of the week with Dad, to running wild with your cousins out at the farm. School means a return to structure, to the morning rush, to getting picked up, to wearing something different every day, not just what's on top of the wash pile. Hair must be combed and fixed. Homework must be done and packed. Dates on the calendar must be filled: picture day, treat day, homecoming, Grandparent's day and a host of others, too many to remember.

The start of school when I was little meant two things: new shoes and a new lunch box. I was less excited about the shoes than most kids would have been. This was before the days of wearing "tennis" shoes (or gym shoes, or sneakers or athletic shoes or whatever the term of choice) to school. My feet resisted all efforts to fit into cute Mary Janes or any kind of loafers or even saddle shoes. Nope, my poor feet spread out like camel pads when I stood upon the metal shoe sizer and needled over at width E. E!!!! Just let me tell you what shoes were available in width E. One kind: Hush Puppies. Tie oxford Hush Puppies. Big, wide, sueded tie oxford Hush Puppies. That's it. I knew without a doubt what my new school shoes would look like. Resigned to a choice that was no choice, I made a pretense of picking out the ......color. Sage green, tan, brown, dark blue, black. Year after year, I'd wear one or another of these hues in E width suede Hush Puppies home from the store. The only compensation was that the Hush Puppy on the box was kind of cute with a melancholy expression that reflected exactly how I felt about my feet.

Lunch boxes, on the other hand, were one size fits all. My dad took his lunch to work every day in a box of the classic style one sees in black and white prints of workers from the '40s on...a dented metal box with a high domed lid to hold a Thermos, a black plastic handle and two fold over latches. My father never got a new lunch box; instead, when the handle broke, he taped over it and finally replaced it completely with a piece of chain. Hinges or latches were rescrewed when they rattled loose. Thankfully, we never had to resort to recycling lunch boxes. Instead, we were allowed to choose whatever design of square metal lunch box we wished. There are two I remember in particular: one was a Scotch plaid in red and green and the other a white box with little pink roses dotted across it and greenery as a border. I don't remember ever bringing home plastic wrap, but I know I was expected to bring home my baggies for re-use. Nothing was thrown away but apple cores, napkins and milk cartons.

Because Westboro had such outstanding cooks and lunches, the kids never picked new lunch boxes. But the annual excursion to purchase school supplies was a pleasure trip for all, Mom included. It was a ritual and demanded a trip out of town....at the time there was no Place's or Pamida here. Shoot, there wasn't even a Wal Mart in Shenandoah until Ann was in high school!! (We drove home from a volleyball game in Sidney to scope it out when it opened). I guess we went to the old WalMart in Maryville for our supplies, or, more likely, the Alco in Shenandoah. As time passed, the first box of eight jumbo Crayolas gradually evolved into fluorescent highlighters and sticky notes. Picking out folders, pencils, erasers, pens, scissors and Crayolas was fairly inexpensive entertainment, a good thing since we probably could have scratched together enough of the previous year's supplies for the first day of school. That would have broken the spell: by August, summer is old, summer clothes are old, sandals are old, the school itself is hot, the classrooms are certainly old and even your teacher might be the same, if you went to Westboro. But the notebook you pull out of your bag is smooth and unfrayed. The pencils are sharp and the eraser is flexible and clean. The crayons still fit in the box. New Year's itself pales in comparison to the first day of school if you are a kid.

For whatever reason, we also bought new jeans and undies at the start of school, even though jeans weather was at least a month off. The socks were a necessity; a summer of playing ball, gardening, biking, choring and other sundry outdoor activities would relegate the old tennis shoes to "farm" work, but required the summer socks to sent to the trash without passing GO or collecting $200.

On the first day of school everyone was ready before the bus came. With no coats and no chores and a bright sun to wake to, no poking or prodding was necessary. Before the bus arrived, the mom had to fulfill her end of the first day of school ritual: taking the obligatory picture of the students before they climbed the bus steps. Year after year, that photo fills its slot in the scrapbooks just after vacation shots and before Halloween. Even if the kids have had a bad hair day or are squinting evilly into the rising sun, the commemorative photo is still in the scrapbook.The big yellow bus would pull into our driveway, the kids would clamber on, and then......quiet. First one little student, then two, then three of wildly varied sizes....then back to two and finally a few years of just one, heading off to college under his own power.

Next week, Aaron, Lizzie, Gabe and Abbie will don their backpacks. I'll look forward to hearing about Aaron's new teacher and what new kids are in the little ones' class. Way out east, Ben will have his final first day of school, finishing off his academic journey. We'll eventually get used to the quiet hours when school is in....... and the chattering that commences when they come back home.