Losing our old ones

It's going on 50 years ago that I met Marge while attending Chadron State College in Nebraska. Marge's sister had married a cousin of mine, and she was and is a really neat lady. So, in a way, I had heard about Marge and the King family up north of Ashby, Nebraska. Marge was a special lady. She had grown up north of Ashby out in the middle of the Sandhills some 30 miles from a really small town. She was raised on a cattle ranch, so she knew how to work. She could cook. And she was good looking. That pretty well sealed the deal. After courting her, along with a few setbacks, we were married and started our life together. It's been a good ride. We have a couple of fine men as sons of whom we are really proud, as well as a couple grandchildren and a daughter-in-law of whom I totally approve.

And along with Marge came her family, which consisted of her three sisters and one brother and her mom and dad and grandpa. Good people. All of them were workers or had worked. Her grandpa had moved to Alliance after retiring from the ranch. Nice old gentleman. As time has passed these past several decades, we have lost several of the family. Always sad to lose family and friends. It kind of leaves a hole that can't ever be filled. But at the same time some darn good memories still hang around in our memories. Just a couple weeks ago, we lost another family member, Marge's mom.

Helen had lived to be 96 years old. She had always wanted to live to be 100, so she came pretty darn close. Good lady. We never did see eye to eye on everything, so there were disagreements. She was born stubborn, but so was I. So every now and then we'd lock horns and agree to disagree peaceably.

Many a weekend, Marge and I'd load up and drive up to her place and spend the weekend. We'd get there late on Friday and drive back home late Sunday. Helen always had enough beds. We'd get up Saturday, and Helen would have the day planned out for everyone. Her yard always needed mowing, and it consisted of an acre of grass. So Saturday morning was a great time to go fishing or find a prairie dog town. She normally found someone to put on the mower.

With everyone showing up and staying, someone had to do the cooking. Helen was a good cook, if you could slow her down enough to actually cook. But with three daughters, she really didn't have to. Marge's one sister was a home economics teacher, and Rosie could cook now. One thing Helen could cook to perfection was fried chicken. She cooked on a propane range and always used the old, big cast iron skillets. There was always a container of bacon grease on the stove so the chicken was fried in lard probably with a little bacon grease to give it some flavor. Helen would start the chicken, turn the burners down low and almost forget it was cooking. Mmm good.

Helen was born in the Sandhills, and she spent her whole life up there. She was raised in a sod house about 2 or 3 miles west of where Keith and she lived and raised their family. Most everyone who grew up in the early 1900s in the Sandhills grew up in an old sod house. The old sod house had fallen down by the time I came along, but you could still see where it had been. She taught school for a while before getting married and starting her family. (Do a duckduckgo search of Sandhills.)

Helen was the last in our family of that old generation born in the first quarter of the 1900s. She lived through some tough times down through her lifetime. Droughts and hail storms and invasions of grasshoppers were common back through the years. She lived through wars and conflicts and travel to the moon and back. In her last years she had dementia, so at times she would travel back in time. One time she was living in the mid-1940s in her mind and was worried about how the troops in Europe and around the world were going to get home from WWII. Helen went from an old hand-crank phone on the wall with a party line to a rotary phone. I don't think she ever figured out the cell phone. She had a hard time with the TV remote.

Some would say Helen had a hard life and she probably did, but it was a good life. Her life was filled with family and friends. She always had a passel of outdoor cats, which she made sure got fed. At times they lived on bacon grease and bread or whatever would soak up the grease. We went back to Nebraska from Missouri way back when, and Helen was worried about her baby cats. So we loaded up four baby cats and hauled them back to Missouri in the cab of our little Nissan pickup. Long trip! She loved her way of life in the Sandhills where the closest neighbor was like 6 or 7 miles away.

Helen passed away a couple weeks ago, and, as she requested, she was cremated. And in time her ashes will be returned to the Sandhills and placed with her husband's ashes, where they can rest together. We'll miss her, but the new generation will miss that "never give up persistent positive attitude" that the old timers seemed to have.