Journal: It's A Real Zoo

 

The skies have been covered with ducks and geese lately.  Quite a sight – and quite a noise!

Last Tuesday, I received a notice that Aroma Ridge was having a 10%-off Valentine’s Day sale.  Lookie what I got – and there was free shipping:

That day, February 10^th, was National Flannel Day.  I like flannel quilts.  Here are the flannel pillows and shams on my flannel Log Cabin quilt.  That Log Cabin quilt, plus the pillows, was one of my earlier quilts.  I had no rotary cutter or mat.  Over 5,000 ‘logs’ were cut using templates and scissors... ’cuz... ah din’t know no bettah!  And still it turned into a quilt, regardless; think of that.

A week ago Saturday, a friend called and asked if I might have any old pictures she could put into albums for the upcoming 25^th ministerial anniversary for my nephew Robert.  I spent the next four hours hunting through old photos for pictures of my father, mother, and other members of my family when my father started our church back in 1953, along with photos of some of the original families that were here then. When my father first began preaching here, there were only 36 members.  Now there are somewhere around 475.  He would be so amazed! 

I uploaded 417 photos to DropBox for my friend, hoping there were some she could use.  Many of my old photos are a bit blurry, on account of under-par cameras.

I need to find more, as there are still some blank pages at the ends of the albums.  It would be nice to fill them up.

Unbeknownst to Robert, we were planning a big shindig for Wednesday evening, complete with the brass band playing, special speakers, pictures on the big screen and in the aforementioned albums, with cookies and ice cream afterwards in the Fellowship Hall.  Every time someone asks me for pictures, I’m glad all over again that I’ve scanned all my old photos.

Here is my sister’s family:  John H. and Lura Kay, David, Robert, Susan, and Kelvin.  Kelvin is the oldest.  Hard to believe that now only two in that photo are still alive – Kelvin and Robert.

I very well remember that little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy we all called ‘Robby’.  I took this picture in 1976.  Kelvin, on the right, is the one who’s been fighting colon cancer for... ? 9 years, I think.  David, on the left, was killed when a drunk driver smashed into his home in the middle of the night in 2002.  Susan passed away two years ago this month of breast cancer.  My brother-in-law John died in 2021, and Lura Kay died last fall.  All of the children have families with quite a number of grandchildren.

Some of the old photos I have make me scratch my head.  This one, for instance, with my sister holding me when I was little.  Why is there a homeless person camped on top of our refrigerator?

Well, what’s it look like to you?

Last week, there was a lot of ice raging downstream in the Platte and the Loup.  Quite a sight.  It’s really something to hear, too.  The audio on videos generally modulates, so you can’t tell what it really sounds like.  There’s this constant rumbling, crackling noise, interspersed with big BOOMS and rushing water noises.  Huge shelves of ice get pushed suddenly upwards, and they tower before crashing back down, sometimes smashing into smaller pieces.

This video is from Storm Chaser Jaden Pappenheim:  Significant Ice Jam Flood Near Grand Island

Here’s another picture of Caleb in November of 1994, working hard at this new walking business.  Look at that little tongue in such a studious attitude. Gotta get this right!

There’s Keith helping Caleb turn around, get balanced, and walk back to Larry.

A fellow quilting friend posted this:  “A good way to get out of a conversation is to take off one of your socks and hand it to the person talking.” 

I gotta try that someday.  On whom shall I try it?

When the kids were young and someone would come visiting unexpectedly, I’d sometimes start picking up toys or whatever and handing them to the person.  One friend looked sort of bewildered, but finally laughed after she couldn’t hold any more stuff even though I kept handing her things.  I tried it on Rhonda, Larry’s sister.  She didn’t even pause with her conversation; she just started finding good places to put everything.  I tried it on my sister Lura Kay.  She snickered – and headed for the door, arms heavily laden.  The kids ran to ‘help’ her – it was their toys she was absconding with, after all!

A cousin who lives a little farther north than we do asked if I had seen any robins yet.

“Yes,” I told her, “but I’m not so sure they ever left!  Maybe, for a month, they went a bit to the south.  They like the dried crabapples and chokecherries that stay on my trees throughout the winter.”

Tuesday morning was a sunshiny day, 41°, on the way up to 46°.  I hoped to get another photo album scanned that day.  In the last two months I had scanned 4,710 photos.  When I did that monumental scanning project four or five years ago, I scanned 37,315 photos.  That’s a total of 42,025, with six albums to go.  If you figure there were four photos on the glass scanner bed for each slide of the scanner’s light bar, that means the scanner bar traveled back and forth about 10,506 times.  And it was still hale and hearty, though it did make a squeaky protest or two a couple of weeks ago when the temperature in that upstairs room when I first entered one day was down around 45°-50°.  The HP Envy PhotoSmart 7100 series printer/scanner has worked long and hard, with quite a lot of printing along with all the scanning.

Two hours after I wrote that, one of the hinges for the lid on the scanner broke.  The scanner was still working, but it sure was unhandy with a lid that wouldn’t stay properly in place.

I took a close look at the hinge, in the hopes of finding some replacement hinges online – and realized the hinge wasn’t what had broken, but, rather, pieces of the lid itself had cracked and broken off, taking the hinge pin with them.  The hinge had nothing to hold onto.  Furthermore, when I was looking at the broken side, the other hinge popped open, leaving the lid completely loose.

It’s not just the thin top lid where the plastic is broken; it’s on the ‘next’ lid – the big part that holds the scanner light bar.  That’s the part that one lifts in order to replace the ink cartridges or resolve paper jams.  It wouldn’t be cheap, even if HP sold such a thing, and even if I could replace it.  This printer/scanner is getting old – 8 years? 10 years?  I can’t remember for sure.  I’ve used it a lot.  It wouldn’t be worth the money to try fixing it.

Guess I’ll limp along through the rest of the albums without a lid.

Larry went off to Missouri that day to pick up – of all things – a truck he bought.  Just what we need.  🙄  Now he needs to pick up some trailers he also bought.  Possibly one of his coworkers will buy one, maybe even two.

For supper that evening. I had Panera Bread’s loaded potato soup, Chicken ’n Biskit crackers, half a banana, and a skinny piece of French bread fresh out of the oven, with butter and sugar and cinnamon.

In spite of the scanner’s lid breaking, I finished one more album that day, scanning, cropping, editing and all.

As I turned a page in an album I was scanning a couple of days earlier, I found a blank greeting card with a beautiful picture of the mountains on it.  I’d tucked it in there 30 years ago – 30 years ago!  Seems unreal, saying that.  I was saving it for something special.  I think Robert’s 25^th anniversary as a pastor qualifies, don’t you?  Wednesday, I wrote a note of appreciation in it, signed it, and tucked it into an envelope. 

I put it into a big basket for cards on a table in the Fellowship Hall that evening.

I went on scanning photos until time for the service.  Here are Bobby and Hannah at the Fourth-of-July picnic (we had it on the 3^rd, that year), 1998, in their early days of dating.  They celebrated their 25^th wedding anniversary last June.

We didn’t get home until after 11:00 p.m. that night.  Here’s the service, if you’d like to see it:  Pastor Robert Walker’s 25^th Ministerial Anniversary Service

Robert was at Brother Chamberlin’s church in Broken Arrow last Sunday (he’d planned to be there two weeks earlier, but that big ice storm hit).  So our son-in-law Bobby (he’s the band director on the video), who had the evening service Sunday, told the congregation about all these plans at the end of the service (after the live stream was off – Robert likes to watch it, when he’s gone), saying with a laugh, “I’m not sure if 475 people can keep a secret; but we’re going to try!”

We did it.  Or so we thought.

At the start of Wednesday’s service, as the music plays, the cameras flick to an elderly man and his wife coming in — I’ll start at the beginning.

The man and woman are retired Pastor Laurence Justice and his wife Lindy.  He pastored a church in Kansas City for many years before moving to Mississippi.  Some 20 years ago, Robert and Margaret and their family of five girls and one boy were vacationing near Kansas City, and, after a bit of online searching, chose a Baptist church to attend that Sunday.  It was Pastor Justice’s Victory Baptist Church.

Through that meeting, Robert made a lifelong friend – and became friends with a number of other like-minded pastors around the States.  These were a help to him as a young minister just beginning his preaching career.  Through them, we also became acquainted with some of the missionaries we now support.  Our congregation soon grew to be friends with many of these pastors’ congregations.  It has been a great blessing all around, for these many years.

Pastor Justice is in his late 70s now, but he still has the big booming voice, and sings beautifully.  Another pastor friend, Daniel Chamberlin from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma (whose son has married one of our nieces), was visiting this week, and Robert, as usual, asked him to give the message Wednesday night.  This played perfectly into everyone’s [so-called] clandestine plans.  One of our Sunday School teachers, Kevin Gehring, asked Pastor Justice to write a letter to Robert, and Pastor Chamberlin planned to read it to our congregation.

And then one of our cousins bought Laurence and Lindy Justice plane tickets so they could attend in person.

Pastor Justice arranged with our ushers to save him a particular spot to sit, as he wanted to come in a minute or two late.  Then he walked down the aisle to where Robert was sitting with Margaret, clapped Robert on the shoulder, and said, “Could you scoot over and give us some room to sit here?”  😄

A bit startled though Robert was, he quickly began to oblige – but Brother Justice grinned and said, “It’s okay, we’re sitting over here –” and he and Lindy went to the pew just across the aisle.  Meanwhile, the men running the cameras, knowing what was going to happen, caught all this on video.

When we started singing the first song, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, everyone was so pouring their heart and soul into it, I thought, Imagine what Daddy would think, to hear this!  Back in 1953, when my father started as the minister here, seven years before my time, there were only 36 souls on the membership roster.  I, who have apparently become a sap in my dodderage, had to fish out a tissue.  At least I wasn’t the only one!

The song the choir sang before the sermon, The Savior Has His Hands on Me, was the same song the choir sang 25 years ago, the night we voted Robert into the ministry for our church.  So it’s always been very special to him (and to us, too).  The piano playing during the 17-minute slideshow at the end is by his late sister Susan.

I was pleased that I was able to contribute some of those old photos – several of which I had just recently scanned.  Here’s a picture of mine that one of my great-nieces put on one of the big picture boards:  it’s the last picture I took of my father about a year before he passed away, and he’s chatting with our little Hester.  He loved her so much – and she loved him right back.  Daddy was a minister for 48 years.  In this picture he was in front of our first school building; he’d been watching some of the construction that late afternoon.  It’s not a topnotch photo by any means, but I treasure it.  You can tell by the shape of Hester’s cheek that she’s grinning up at her Grandpa.

Here’s a screengrab of the first church, taken anywhere from 1953 to 1969.  We’ve rebuilt, twice. I was 9 years old when they did the first rebuild, and had a front-row seat, living in the parsonage right next to the church.

Below is the second version of the church, and this was after the original school was built on, there on the far side.  I took the photo in 1996.  I don’t seem to have any pictures of the original church except the one above.

My nieces will send me what they have if I ask.

When they did this rebuild, they laid white stone right in front of that old arched window over the front door (see above).  As you can see, the new roofline was oriented in the opposite direction, right over the original one.  There was a little crevice where a person could access the old attic, if that person wasn’t too large.  

When our new school was being built and they were tearing down the old school and church (which was the Fellowship Hall for a time), Robert was peering into that crevice – and spotted that old arched window, still intact!  They carefully chipped it loose – concrete and mortar had gotten all around and on it, making the job quite difficult.  Then they chipped one more piece away, and the window suddenly came tumbling out, and Robert caught it only about 30” from the ground.  

They had that old window – along with the very first big wooden church sign with my father’s name on it – on display in our Fellowship Hall Wednesday night.

Today I found a picture with the old church sign.  You can’t see it very well in the shot, but it’s there!  My sister Lura Kay is holding me. 

She made me the little navy coat for Easter, and there was a matching dress under it.  I loved those little white gloves, but they felt funny, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands!

There were two people taking pictures that day, and one had a better camera.  Here’s the one taken with the better camera – but you can’t see much of the sign at all, we’re off-centered, and we weren’t looking at the camera.  And I still didn’t know what to do with my hands.

Here’s our new church, along with a Google Street View that also shows the school.

I had finished scanning an  album Wednesday, and gotten about half of the cropping and editing done.  Thursday, I finished the cropping and started on the next album.

Below is Caleb at 19 months blowing dandelion seeds, May 20, 1995.

It was still 52° here at 6:00 that evening.

Late Friday morning, at a quarter ’til noon, it was 44°, on the way up to 63°.  The birds are starting to sing their springtime songs (or maybe they just knew it was Valentine’s Day the next day).  😉  A Northern cardinal was warbling loudly (not his normal whistle, but a more melodious tune) in a nearby tree, and another was answering him in like fashion from a little distance away.  They were males, probably attempting to establish their territories and impress the ladies, both at the same time.

I found the photos I took of the sweater I embroidered for my mother in early 1995.  I remember embroidering with all my might and main in an attempt to finish before baby Joseph was born.  I can’t remember if I got it completely done or not – but these pictures were taken April 27^th, and Joseph was born April 24^th.  I gave Mama the sweater for Mother’s Day.

Mama loved the sweater.   She wore it often, and liked to show it to people who visited her.  I was pleased she liked it so much.  I have it now, and I, too, wear it fairly often.  It’s held up well.

I’m glad I at least gave her this sweater, if I didn’t ever make her a quilt!

As I toiled away at the photo scanning, I sipped hot Apple ’n Cinnamon tea from Christopher Bean (they mostly sell coffee beans).  Mmmm, good!

When that was gone, I trotted downstairs and made myself a tall mug of Watermelon Ice Celsius, and poured the last little bit of Peppermint Mocha cold-brew coffee into a cup.

That kept me going until 7:30 p.m., when  I decided it was suppertime, whether Larry was home yet or not:  lettuce salad with some kind of funny little curly pieces of lettuce, several kinds of vegetables, the icky regurgitation cheese that I don’t like (but ate anyway), little croutons, bacon bits, and raspberry vinaigrette dressing... the rest of the previous day’s Panera Bread potato soup, S’mores Flip yogurt... and a couple of slices of Mozzarella cheese, which I do like.  Oh, and a cup of watermelon strawberry juice.  

Saturday morning, we went to Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, where we met Joseph and the children, Justin and Juliana.  

Jocelyn had a previous date set up with her friends and coworkers for one of their birthdays, so we didn’t get to see her this time.

This was partly for Justin’s birthday, and partly because it’s something we’ve (ahem, I’ve) been wanting to do anyway.  The high that afternoon in Omaha was 55°, and it was mostly cloudy until we left the zoo at 3:00 p.m. and went to eat.  By the time we left the restaurant a little over an hour later, the sky was bright blue – at least until the sun went down.  Ah, well; we spent a good deal of time in the indoor displays, including the Mahoney Kingdoms of the Night, which is the world’s largest nocturnal exhibit, located beneath the Desert Dome.  This dark, immersive, year-round exhibit features various nocturnal animals, such as over 150 vampire bats, Seba’s short-tailed bats, flying foxes, spear-nosed bats, fishing bats, aardvarks, springhaas, bush babies (galagos), sloths, and pygmy hippos.

In the Australian Zone (Eucalyptus Forest) are Tamar wallabies, short-beaked echidna, freshwater crocodiles, and various turtles, reptiles, and fish that are adapted to the dark.

There’s a boardwalk over a swamp, and a huge beaver hut with one side made of glass so people can watch the beavers doing what beavers do (sleeping, as it turns out, at least when we walked by).  We went through a ‘wet cave’, with stalagmites and dripping stalactites, and a ‘bottomless’ pool catching those drips.

From the Zoo’s website:  The world’s largest indoor swamp is located under the Namibian sand dune of the Desert Dome.  Experience the 160,000 gallon, ¼-acre mysterious swamp with a boardwalk.  It features a Trapper’s Cabin, a beaver lodge, cypress trees and 38 swamp animal species in barrier-free habitats.  The swamp is home to nine adult American alligators including a white, leucistic (reduction of all skin pigments) alligator on loan from the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans.  Five beautiful murals decorate the Kingdoms of the Night.  Educational kiosks and displays are lighted throughout the journey.

We hadn’t been to the zoo for many years, and there have been many improvements during that time.  Henry Doorly has been a world-class zoo for a long time.

It was much nicer traversing the zoo in 55° weather, as opposed to 105° weather.  (We’ve tried that, too.)  One problem, though:  we were dressed for 55° weather; but the temperature in the Desert Dome, Kingdoms of the Night, and the Suzanne and Walter Scott Aquarium was between 65°F to 75°F (18°C to 24°C).  Too hot, too hot!  It was a relief to get outside again.

We made it through less than half of the zoo; that’s a huge place.  Hopefully we’ll be able to go back again before too long, maybe with other members of the family.

At 3:00, we went to a nearby Mexican restaurant, Los Portales.  The food wasn’t bad, but it certainly couldn’t hold a candle to the food at the Mexican restaurant we went to in Council Bluffs not too long ago.  However, Joseph recommended their Agua Hibisco – Hibiscus iced tea – and that, at least, was scrumptious.

Before telling them goodbye, we gave Justin his birthday gifts – a Wrangler’s cap and a model train engine made of wood.  Here’s what it should look like when it’s done:

The sun was low in the west as we headed toward home, and for a little while it made for miserable driving, it was so bright.  

But finally at about 6:00 p.m. it dropped below the western horizon, and we were treated to a beautiful sunset.

A bright sun rose in the east a few minutes before 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning.  It was only 27°, but was on the way up to 71°.  I refilled and rehung the bird feeders – some just half full, as I was out of seed.  Where’s the sunflower seeds I ordered? I wondered.  I looked on the Walmart website – and discovered that the order had been canceled.  That’s the second time that’s happened with black-oil sunflower seeds.  Maybe the delivery person canceled the order him- or herself, because he or she is too wimpy to carry a 40-lb. bag of seed?

I reordered, and we picked it up last night, along with some groceries.

After the morning church service, Larry made pancakes.  While we ate, I looked at the pictures I’d taken Saturday.

“What are male and female giraffes called?” I asked, poised to label the photo.  I’d started to write ‘cow and calf’ on one shot, but, wanting to make sure, pulled up Google.

“Ma and Pa,” Larry told me helpfully before the page loaded.  “Or Mr. and Mrs.,” he added.

They are called bulls and cows, just as I thought, rendering their offspring ‘calves’.  We saw six giraffes at the zoo.  There are five or six more, but they were probably in the big barn or another area of the grasslands.

After the evening service last night, Robert thanked the congregation for the 25^th ministerial anniversary service for him Wednesday evening.

Then, after saying he was indeed surprised by all the various details in the service, including Pastor Laurence Justice and his wife Lindy coming, he said that he had, however, gotten a few hints now and then. 

A week ago Saturday, for instance, when he was at Broken Bow visiting the Chamberlins and preparing to speak on Sunday (including at the Spanish service, where he would have an interpreter), he got a text that Brother Chamberlin had intended as a response to Kevin Gehring, saying yes, he would be very pleased to take part in the commemorative service Wednesday evening. 

“Brother Walker seems to be completely clueless about it,” Brother Chamberlin assured Kevin.

Robert looked at us.  “I was,” he said. 

He then told of happenings on Wednesday afternoon, while he was in his office.  He has 29 screens that monitor the cameras in and around the building.  They all look fairly uniform in coloring and hue and depth of focus.

Except one.

That one glowed bright red.

It didn’t take long for Robert to take note of it. 

It was the camera for the Fellowship Hall.

Robert rewound the footage – and discovered that one of the boys had shinnied up and put a red sticky note over the lens.  However, before he got the paper in place, he looked square into the camera.

“Can I tell them who it was?” asked Robert, looking down at the rows of boys.  He looked back at the rest of us, gave a little resigned tip of the head, and said, “Alvin says no.”  😄

“The thing you might not know,” continued Robert, “is that all of the cameras also have audio.”  He smiled.  “It was fun, listening to all the activity that afternoon, even if I couldn’t see what was happening.”

He gave us a solemn look then.  “I do have some advice for you.”  ((...pause...))  “If any of you go into the bank-robbery business, do not hire Alvin as your get-away driver or security-breach accomplice.”

Alvin is about the same age as Levi – 15 years old.  

One time Hannah was in the grocery store with Levi, age 4, and Alvin’s mother Karen was in the grocery store with Alvin, also 4.  All the way through the store, their paths kept crisscrossing, with the boys greeting each other happily each time it happened.

They got to the checkout stands at the same time, and went through adjacently.  Both little boys stood on the rubber-covered steps at the end of the conveyor belts, where the bags hang there by the catchall areas, and industriously helped their respective mamas put groceries into bags.

Finishing nearly simultaneously, they headed for opposite doors.  

“Tell Alvin goodbye,” said Hannah.

Levi turned back to do so, and Alvin, instructed similarly by his mama, also turned back.  They met at the end of one of the checkout stands, and stood facing each other.

“Goodbye, Alvin,” Levi said solemnly, holding out his right hand to shake Alvin’s hand.

Without batting an eyelash, Alvin took Levi’s hand, gave it a heartfelt shake, and said soberly, “Goodbye, Levi,” just like two serious old men about to leave each other for opposite ends of the earth.  They gave each other a smile, and then marched off.

The ladies cashiering could barely, barely wait until those little guys were out of earshot (or at least far enough away that they wouldn’t know the hilarity was about them) before they burst out laughing.

This picture is Robert and his father, John H. Walker – a screengrab from the picture show at the end of Wednesday night’s service.

We have another sunny day, 53° on the way up to 67°.  We’ve gone from flood watches to fire weather watches in less than a week.

I cleaned a bathroom and the kitchen, did the laundry, and paid a couple of bills.  I have more zoo photos to edit; I won’t get back to scanning old pictures until tomorrow.  The Common grackles are back; I just saw one at the feeder.

Speaking of birds, here’s a Red-billed hornbill, a bird from Sub-Saharan Africa, and below is a Masked lapwing from the same area, a roly-poly little bird on stilts.

Larry left at 9:30 tonight, headed for Bloomfield Township, Michigan, to pick up one of the two trailers he bought there.  It’s a 12h 9m (812 mi) drive.  He therefore imagines he’ll be home in 24 hours.  Or close. 

And he’ll have to drive it twice.

As of right now this very minute, I have 5,701 photos scanned since December.  The album I’m going through now is one of those troublesome ones wherein once the plastic film is drawn back, the pictures all fall off the once-sticky page.  After I scan them, I must then tape them back onto the page.  This slows progress.  But... there are only 4 ½ albums to go!

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,