The weather, the first week ….
The weather, the first week of February, has been just grand. Let’s hope it stays that way. We did have a day or two when it almost got to 40 and thankfully the snowbanks settled a bit, enough that pulling out onto 98 from Beaver Street isn’t the big “is anything coming” guessing game it was for awhile.
It has been interesting to drive around the countryside and watch the little streams running as well as Bear and Rock Creeks. Getting chilly every night helps a lot, as it slows the runoff.
This nice weather may end as the weatherman said tonight there is a chance of snow in the forecast. Let’s hope it is just flurries.
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This has been what I call the “Big Week”. It started out with the Super Bowl on Sunday, then continued through the State of the Union address and the conclusion of the Impeachment Trial.
Everyone I talked with seemed to be happy that the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl. The game played out like someone had written a script for it. Or as Florence’s mother used to say, “it was rigged” when her favorite team didn’t win.
Channel 13 runs a poll almost every day and first they asked if everyone liked KC as the winner. The majority did. The next day they asked if they enjoyed the halftime show. I was with the majority again when 70 percent said no. To be honest, I can’t stand the type of entertainment that generally runs, so I was busy making my supper at halftime and only saw bits and pieces.
To think it has been 50 years since Kansas City last played in the Super Bowl, but time does march on. Thankfully they won that game as the team that lost is still looking to win one.
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The rest of the week could be described as somewhat wild as we moved from the final arguments in the Impeachment Trial, to the State of the Union, to the vote and then today the attacks began again. What next?
I was in the minority who listened to the State of the Union address. I don’t know why I did, but I stuck with it well over an hour.
The high point to me was Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, tearing up her copy of Trump’s speech. She said later that it was just a manifesto of lies.
The low point would have to be handing the Medal of Freedom to Russ Limbaugh. I can’t think of anything he has ever said that would earn him that award. The crusher came when they tried to equal it to Mother Theresa and Rosa Parks. How the value of that award has suddenly disappeared.
It was almost a television production instead of a State of the Union address when he made a big production of bringing home a serviceman from the Middle East, but never mentioned the 50 servicemen who were injured in the Iranian missile attack last month, which he first claimed never happened.
Someone also caught the new name for our schools. They are no longer public schools, but government schools, and as he put it, thinks not the best.
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If the name calling wasn’t bad enough before, on Thursday he spent an hour bad-mouthing anyone who might have disagreed with him. One congressman said, on a news show, that he felt many of those who voted for his acquittal did so in fear.
I know I’m not the only one who fears that we have left our democracy for a monarchy.
But hold on, the next day he began by firing people who had testified with the truth in the Impeachment Trial. The firing of Lt. Col. Vindman should go down as an abuse of power. Here is a young man, who his father brought to America from Russia, and who worked at the White House. I don’t feel too bad about Ambassador Sondland. He had paid Trump a million dollars for his job.
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Last week I was telling about things that come to mind when I can’t sleep. Well, the list gets long and I’d mentioned cars. I guess one of the biggest changes that shocked me as a kid was when they designed the car and hid the running board inside the doors.
Before the change, the front fender was a perfect hill to drive my toy car or truck up and down and then on to the running board. I guess another change I remember as a kid was the removal of the exterior radiator cap. It was a perfect place to hang your bathing suit after you had been swimming and it got well dried out by the time we got home.
Another chore every fall was to take your car to the garage or filling station and have the oil and grease in the transmission and rear end changed to lighter weight.
Another trick was to take a shovel full of hot coals and place it under the transmission. Everyone had a favorite trick to get started, it seemed.
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Maybe I’m to a point of having outgrown all the things we grew up with. One of the kids asked one day about how old I was when we got our first bathroom. When I told her I was 16 she could hardly believe it. Before that all the water we used in the house came from the pump located just outside the door. You either could pump it by hand, or let the windmill do it for you. Some of the neighbors didn’t have windmills, but used what was called a pump jack and a gas engine.
The windmill was fine as long as there was a wind. Our house and barn were located on the highest point on our farm. I suppose grandpa planned it that way. The problem came when there was no wind. Hopefully it wasn’t wash day as that took a lot of extra water.
Water was heated in our tea kettle and the reservoir that was at the back of the cook stove. Of course, you had to have a fire to heat the water which meant the kitchen got kind of warm at times.
Bath time was always Saturday nights, and since I was the youngest, I was always the first one to take my bath. For a tub, we just used Mom’s big wash tub and everyone just kept adding hot water when their turn came.
For sure, running water and electricity were two things that made living as a kid a lot more bearable. One nice thing about being the youngest in the family was not having to put up with the old fashioned way of doing things.
