I am going to do this. It may not be good, and that is okay, 'cause I am going to do it anyway. I started blogging just to explain some of the things that happen in our past and are lost with the "progress" in our future. I am going to take a little sidestep today, because my life has taken a big sidestep, and it is consuming my thoughts. I want to tell you about Jim.
Jim was born on November 19, 1974. He was the youngest of 4 children: Tim-11, Ann-8, and Ben-1, awaited his arrival at our home near Merna. He was the snuggliest baby I had ever had....He ate like a little piggy, and settled in to be held as often as he could. As he grew, he tried very hard to keep up with Ben, and got labeled as "accident prone" because he thought he should be in on everything. They were the busiest pair of boys I have ever seen, and without the help of Tim and Ann, I think I would have never gotten them raised! When they were still quite small, they were playing in the fenced yard while I was scrubbing floors. I would rise up and check on them regularly, when all at once, I realized they weren't there. They had helped each other crawl over the fence and had taken off. In the cornfield south of the house, we had put in a big gun irrigation system. The water pipes were buried 8 feet deep, and they had leaked and washed these deep trenches throughout the field. I knew if they went to the cornfield, they would surely fall into these water trenches and drown. I ran yelling throughout the area and finally got in the car and headed down the road past the field. When I didn't see them, I knew I would need to go back to the house and call Bill Williams to fly over the field and see if he could spot them. Just as I reached the end of the field and turned around, 2 little boys came out of the rows carrying a corn cob. They had found the only dry trail through the corn, had chased a ground squirrel and had an old ear of corn to show for their adventure. I thanked the Lord profusely for watching over them. However, for the rest of the summer, only one of them got to wear shoes when they went to the yard. I figured that would slow them down considerably, and it did.......they wouldn't leave the other one behind, and I used the stickers to my advantage.
1-9-09 Jim was a little thinker. He had a good business mind, which was evident from the time he was quite young. When he was 8, he bought 3 ewe lambs to take in 4-H. They received the best of care, and he worked hard at showing them. He didn't sell them after fair, and they became the foundation for his little flock of sheep. When he was about 10, he met a lady in Kearney who told him about the guarding instinct of the Great Pyrenees dogs, and he simply had to have one, which he purchased with his own money. This was "Queenie". Later, we acquired another female, "Princess", and a male, "Smokey." Now, we were in the dog business. The puppies were wonderful, and we had no trouble selling them over a 5 state area. This led to a lot of trips in the pickup. We saw the world in 3 days and $100....that is all we had! Anyway, back to Jim. Jim showed one of his offspring in 4-H ("Ima") and won grand champion. In the meantime, his old dogs guarded the sheep, the calves, the colts, and the kids. It was great fun for all of us. Ima was hit by a car on the highway, and we broke the speed limit many times getting her to the veterinarian clinic. As Diane, our dog vet, tried everything to save her, Jim held her in his arms and encouraged her, to no avail. I cried, Jim cried, and the vet cried.
Jim also showed horses in 4-H. He rode a big palomino mare, "Frosty" that was his love, and she felt the same about him. She tended to be obstinant with the rest of the family, but never with Jim....probably because he never crossed her. The judge pulled him out of the reining class once to tell the audience that Frosty had won the reining, but that he wasn't going to give it to that horse because the kid was just along for the ride, and the horse did it all!!! Well, that's the way it always was! Whatever Frosty thought was right, was okay with Jim. However, once when he was entered in the poles, he really thought Frosty needed to speed it up. Matt Thomas cut him a branch from a tree to use as incentive.....a locust banch with thorns, no less. Jim whacked Frosty with that thorny whip, and she took off like a streak of lightening ....zigzagged through the poles like a pro, and headed for the gate. Just before she arrived, she looked up and the fence was right in front of her. She put on her front brakes and popped Jim up in front of the saddle. He sat on her neck, trying to figure out how to get back over the saddlehorn and finally just pulled up his reins and rode her neck out of the arena....she raised her head and acted as if it happened every day! I looked across the arena and Bob Yantzie was rolling in laughter.....all over the back of his pickup!!! Things like that just happened to Jim.
One year, at the fair, the entertainment was Reba McIntire. We never had enough money to go to the shows, but being inovative in that area, Jim went over to talk to the band members. A couple of them wanted to ride a horse, so he and Ben let them ride their horses in exchange for tickets to the show....front row...back stage passes...the works! Reba McIntire signed their ballcaps, and they were right up town. Later those band members were killed in a plane crash, but they had a privilege that few knew, as the boys never let others ride their horses.
Jim had probably started riding Frosty way before he went to school. I remember the first time, as my dad was there. I looked out the window, and Jim was on Frosty's broad back, legs sticking straight out, trotting to the back yard where the other kids were working their horses. I let out a yell and headed for the door. That mare bucked on a regular basis. My dad stopped me, and he said, "Look at that mare. She isn't going to hurt that boy....she loves him." She never did buck with him. He had a way with animals., and they all felt the same about him.
1-11-09 When Jim was small, actually he was never small so should say 'when he was very young', he choked a lot. One day he choked on a piece of hamburger, and couldn't cough it up. As I was panic stricken, I yelled at Ann to get on the phone and call the emergency number in Merna, and I kept working on him. Finally, I flipped him upside down, held on to his legs, and whacked him on the back hard enough to really hurt, but the hamburger shot across the room. Just as I did, Eldon and Nancy Duryea pulled into the yard. Eldon had taken the call, and they jumped in the car.......Nancy said they literally flew over the railroad tracks, and she was more afraid for her own life than she was for Jim's!!!! Jim was just mad 'cause his back was sore!
Jim would get sooo tired, trying to be a big boy, that when he ate, he would finish his meal with his face in his plate....sound asleep...mashed potatoes in his eyebrows, and everywhere else.
He was sick a lot of the time. He had terrible earaches, and the thing was to give kids antibiotic. Since then they have learned that doesn't help, and I would have told them that then, but give him antibiotic we did. When he was 8, I took him to Hastings to have his adenoids removed, thinking that would help the problem. Before surgery, they were afraid that he wouldn't be safe under the common anesthesia, so they substituted something slower acting. That was the longest surgery in history, I am sure. I was scared, and alone. He came out of it fine, and later they put tubes in his ears. The first thing he said when we got into the car was, "Turn the radio down!" That didn't help long, however, and he built up a tolerance to antibiotics. When he was 4 years old, he and Ben were digging a hole in the dirt, and he dropped onto his knees just as Ben whacked at the dirt with a hoe. The hoe poked a hole in his knee, and I took him in to the doctor. They sewed it shut, and he got an infection that was extremely fast acting. By morning, he was in the hospital and had IV antibiotics for 14 days. Mac McMeen did the rehab on his knee, and if you notice Mac's gray hair, know that many of those white ones were due to 4 year old Jim. Though Jim was not disagreeable, neither was he about to go along with anything that didn't make sense to him, and he was the most stubborn child I have ever seen. Being this stubborn was probably what enabled him to face a lot of the problems he had later, but as a little boy, they were a source of frustration to all of us.
Jim's hearing was damaged by the ear infections, and it made it very hard for him to learn his sounds. This problem was verbalized when he kept telling me that Ben was saying the "F word." Of course, Ben got his mouth washed out with soap. The next time Jim reported, Ben got a spanking. The next time it happened, I was right around the corner and said, "He did not say that(F-word).... I was standing right here!" Jim said, "Well, how could I tell....I don't even know my sounds!"
One really January day, the snow was melting and the creek below the house was running fairly full of the ice cold melt. I saw the boys heading that way, and I grabbed a blanket and took off running. They had crawled under the barbed wire fence and were leaving a trail of clothing between there and the stream. I waded in and grabbed 2 naked, blue bodies from the water, wrapped them in the blanket and headed for the house. I deposited said bodies in warm bath water (after I warmed their bottoms) and when I got them out, the cold/warm had made them very sleepy and I put them to bed. Later, I heard them waking up. "Us shouldn't have done that." "No we shouldn't have done that. We got in trouble." "Yep, we in trouble." Jim replied, "'Cause us didn't have our fwimmin' suits!" I don't think that was the right lesson, but they stayed out of the icy water.
The stories are endless, and I want to write them down for "Tater", Jim's little 3-year-old, because he is just as full of wonder as Jim was. But not today.....I will probably put that off, too.
I have regrets as a parent, and one of them Jim taught me several years ago. He said once that I didn't listen to him, and I said, "Jim, I did to listen to you. We talked a lot." He replied,
"You didn't REALLY listen, Mom, you were always peeling potatoes." Truth....I was, and I learned that you never feel like you are being heard unless the listener looks you in the eyes when you are talking. I'm sorry I didn't learn that sooner....back when I was peeling potatoes.
Jim died November 22, 2008. He had been sick for several years, and they thought it was a rare auto-immune disease. After we went to Rochester on Oct. 29, we found he had Mesothelioma. Where or how he got it is a mystery, as it usually takes 20-30 years for it to present itself ......Jim was much too young for it to be a suspect. Jim had stayed home and raised his kids for the last 3 years, and we had talked nearly every day. He never stopped planning on what he was going to do when he got better, until the visit to Rochester. Then he started planning how he was going to die. He taught me far more than I ever taught him, and I miss him terribly. I guess I always will, but, as Jim would say, " Everything happens for a reason, and that which does not kill us, makes us stronger." Someday I am going to be strong like Jim.
