I’m really mixed up. I ….

I’m really mixed up. I went to bed the other night and was 92. When I got up Monday I was suddenly 93. Thank goodness I can say that until November; then I’ll switch to going on 94. Really something to look forward to.

Celebrating my birthday comes a close second to Christmas. It isn’t just an evening or afternoon affair. While the actual day was Monday, it got started last Friday. Jackie came and got me and our first stop was at Perkins. While I ordered potato pancakes, they weren’t the real thing as I know them. Sue promised I could come some day and have some real ones. I know; I’ve been there many times for them.

Then after that we went shopping, but as it turned out I did most of the buying. Jackie picked out the item and I got to pay. That was for a pair of shoes she thought I would enjoy. So far they have met everything she bragged they’d be.

Then it was on to Walmart and some new t-shirts she claimed I needed after looking through my clothing drawer. On Saturday I offered to show them off, along with the new underwear shorts I bought. For some reason they balked at that idea.

She also brought some gift cards and even paid for them. So if you get one of those, it was her choice, not mine.

The next day, Saturday, we drove again and met with my daughter Sue, son-in-law Mark and grandson and his wife, John and Breanna, from the Milwaukee area at the Munson Bridge Winery north of Withee.

I’m not sure how this ever got started, but John loves it as he can go to Frenchtown Greenhouse for a supply of plants.

I don’t know if I should consider this a birthday gift or not. But I am.

I’ve written about the scholarship fund drive I started in Turtle Lake the year before we moved to Loyal. We managed three $300 scholarships.

Thanks to the support of the Turtle Lake Times newspaper and the special effort a couple of Lionesses put into it, this year they are giving out twenty $700 scholarships. Makes me very proud of my old hometown.

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I can’t let May go by without mentioning the beautiful flowering crabapple trees. Always something to look forward to. As beautiful as they all are, the one in our yard at home still stands out as the prettiest and most unique. My dad never mentioned how it got there. He did tell us about the cottonwood tree he planted when he was 12. It just grew and grew. We always called it the big tree. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago a limb broke off and went through the roof.

But the flowering crab grew at the end of our driveway. Since we lived on a dead end road, it grew where the driveway made a bit of a swing to the right into the yard. It looked like a big bouquet with none of the stalks over 8 to 10 inches in diameter. When it bloomed, it was a solid white and the thing was alive with bumblebees.

We drove by my old house in Loyal Friday and the two flowering crabs I planted years ago are getting big now and were in full bloom.

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I can’t let Mother’s Day go without mentioning what seemed to me to be extra special this year. There is no way to ever say it was overdone.

Saying nice things to or about your mom can never be overdone. Maybe I could be called a mama’s boy, but it just ended up that way. I kept the wood box full, brought in fresh water from the well and carried out the wastewater until we got running water. I was 16 by then.

In the winter with most of the cows dry, I stayed in the house after supper and helped with the dishes. Mom was also the one I went to for money when I was going to high school. Five dollars went to pay for my bus fare and hot lunch. Three dollars for the bus and $1.60 for hot lunch and I got to keep the rest.

She also helped me get my first paying job. It was the spring of 1944 when we went down to clean up the area around my brother Ernest’s grave. The cemetery had never been cared for, so we took our hand mower and just cut around his grave. It looked so nice the next year she talked me into mowing the whole cemetery. Then she suggested maybe she could get the Ladies Aid to pay me for mowing. So the last two summers I was home, I got paid. Five dollars for the summer and when I mentioned the hand mower, it was the old-fashioned reel type. I don’t think power mowers as I think of them were even invented yet.