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Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Leo and Betty, Christmas 2009

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Bananas
When I was on Guam I often stayed while my assistant crew chief took a trip, and he stayed when I took the trip. That gave me time to walk out into the jungle to see what I could find. I had seen large bananas that others had brought in, but they were empty skins much as a lima bean pod before the beans grow. They had been picked way to early.

When I found some that were real fat but short, I took that bunch and not knowing better assumed that the reason they tasted so good was simply that they were mature and ripe. The taste was great.

The next time I saw some was in Colima Mexico and I heard them called apple bananas. If I remember correctly Madeline remembering them from when she was a little kid had another name for them. Here at the store they were called finger bananas. I had seen some several years ago but they werent good but these looked good so I did buy some. They were packed six to a bag and labled from Honduras. When I got home I ate one and it was good.

Back to Guam, instead of simply chopping the banana stalk down I took Jim Caves on my shoulder so he could reach the bunch, which he did. But as my face touched the dry leaf the wasps came off their nest and about nine of them rearranged my face.

When I went down to the flight line to meet my plane, wearing a clean uniform and a puffy face Hough Wragg the assistant, didn't recognize me. NJR

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Monday, August 24th, 2009

Remembering 1 and 2
Today Dick Prior was interviewing profesor Henderson, who had made news some years ago by being the first black man to buy and move into a house in Norman. That set me into remembering all the times that I had been aware of black people.

In Blackburn up to the time we moved to Stringtown, when I was five, there was Mary Jane who regularly helped Mamma with all those Runge kids, including me,Ortwin and Omar. She lived half a block East of the parsonage, with her husband Taylor Coons.

I don't remember hearing Mary Jane's last name but heard many years later when Carl and Ernest spoke of the profuse greetings from Taylor Coons when he saw them in Blackburn. I suspect that the name written would be Koonce, but the use of Coons was so prevalent in those days to refer to any black man. If I had made that connection while Floyd [Koonce] was alive I would have talked to him about that.

Well maybe I should give some background. Amalia worked as a clerk in the general store for some years, till she married Ed Steinbrueck and moved out to the farm six miles from town.

Johanna was born harelip, and Papa took her to the hospital in St. Louis for repair surgery. Her appearance being affected they decided to send her to business school, and when she graduated she went to work in the bank where she set up the bookkeeping system. She did so well that the other bank hired her to do likewise for them.

Most of her life she was employed as a secretary. I was in Palatine on my first visit with my folks,who were living with her, when Martin came to make his first visit to get her to marry him and be a mother to his daughter and son.

The Steinbrueck farm was three hundred and twenty acres, and Ed needed a lot of help to farm it. Carl worked there some time, and Ernest did too. Henry worked there till he was drafted into the army at about thirty. When he came out he worked there some and bought a house in Blackburn.

Teddy worked there while she taught at a nearby rural school, before she moved to Concordia and taught in the public school. Some years ago one of the old ladies who was here told me that her third grade teacher was Teddy.

Erica worked there between other jobs and working on her teacher training schooling.

Louise told of the time she and a black woman who came occasionally to help with canning and extra work were out in the summer kitchen gettin something ready to can. They were talkin about movies, and Mary said that she liked to see colored movies. This was when the technicolor movies were just coming out. Louise said that she had heard that they were hard on the eyes.

Mary bristled and said "I don't see why they should be any harder on the eyes than white peoples movies".

I wrote more but guess this is enough.
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This is the rest of what I had written in the first message but thought that I had reached a good stopping place then, so here is the rest of the story.

My time living with Ed and Amalia was part of the summer when I was seven, and Roland was born while I was away.

Again when I was eleven and at thirteen -- That year I was mowing the big pasture along the Salt Fork creek. I stopped to give the horses a little rest and became aware that we were on a bumble bee nest and they were stinging the horses. So I scooted down in front of the seat and said giddie up and got away from there without getting any stings, which lead me to believe that they wouldn't sting me. That theory was disproved several times somewhat later.

The year that I was fifteen I was driving a wagon for threshing crew. I was impressed by the thirteen-year-old black boy who was turning out as much work as I was on about half the food and water that it took for me.

Out there in the flat country I learned to make the load as wide as I could. And the next year I was at Lohman and they told me that I was going to loose a load, and I answered that if the load dumped the wagon frame would go with it. And on one of those sloping places in the farm road that is what happened. So after that I loaded much narrower and got along without dumping any more loads.

Even at age sixteen I was able to learn if the lesson was driven home strongly enough.NJR

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Friday, June 12th, 2009