This is Home, Part 32 - Jack Frost, autumn, setting up the stove

This is part 32 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Jack Frost

Something I keep forgetting to mention. When the house was warm and moist inside like the kitchen was, and it was very cold outside, water condensed on the glass -- a lot of it -- and froze at night. Then in the morning, it looked like a picture of beautiful leafy trees and woodland paths and fences.

I have no idea how it was every time transformed into a picture. Uncle Doc used to tell me every morning to come and see what "old Jack Frost has painted." It was always amazing to me to find this picture.

Autumn

Everything changes in the country, or did at that time, when the seasons change. When it becomes fall, the wild geese fly South. One hears the noise -- the honking noises -- and looks up to see a V formation of geese flying overhead. I looked them up and the book said they are in a club formation with a leader out front. There are geese inside what I think of as a V. The birds leave, too.

The nuts fall off the trees and Mom used to take us and we would all gather them. There was usually a squirrel there gathering nuts, too. We left him some. That tree had hickory nuts. I missed it when lightning struck it and it burned down except for a tall, blackened stump.

We had trees with walnuts, too.

Setting up the stove

Also, in the fall, the stove in the living room had to be brought back in and put up. The metal square was put on the rug. The stove was carried back in and placed on it. The yellowish plate with the flowers painted on it was removed from the wall where the stove pipe would go in. The pipe was joined with one end in the wall and one end in the stove. It was time to build the fire.

The door from the living room to the porch was closed and locked. The old fashioned door had a rectangular metal plate on each side, with a metal part extending above it on the inside that could be pushed forward to lock the door and backwards to unlock it. Of course, the knob was there, also, and a key hole. I don't remember if all of them had a key hole. The key hole was in the metal plate, not the knob.

The couch used to be moved back against the door, but after we got the Aladdin lamp it was put in a different place so Uncle Doc could get the lamp out.

This is Home, Part 9 - Missouri spring, spring rains, a Rainy Day, lightning makes a call, tornados, when the wind is green

This is part 9 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.

In the section on tornados, she refers to one that hit Moberly. The actual date for the tornado strike was July 4, 1995 (which matches what she said, a year or two before 1997, on the 4th of July).



Missouri spring

The whole year was interesting back home because there was always something to look forward to with each season. In spring everything was new and growing. The grass, the flowers, the baby animals. The spring showers really did make the grass and flowers grow, just like the song says. The lilacs bloomed and the next month the roses. The bridal wreath bloomed. It looked like a big snowball with all the white blossoms all over the branches and the fact that the branches all drooped.

Mom had made two flower beds -- one large rectangular one and one large round one. They were near to the honeysuckle on the end of the little porch, but nearer the three cedar trees. They could be seen from the road. She planted different kinds of flowers so they always looked beautiful.

Mom had a knack with flowers and with everything else she tried. She had different kinds of house plants inside. My favorite was the Boston fern.

I loved the old washing machine that she had taken everything off of and painted red. It was made of wood. She planted different kinds of moss in it. Some of the flowers were double. It set in the front yard near the well and between two cement walks.

You haven't lived until you have experienced a Missouri thunderstorm. The crack of the thunder is so loud it sounds like a tree trunk is being split in two right beside you.

I used to be afraid of it when I was little. The North bedroom felt very far away from the kitchen where Mom was working. I ran and jumped in Charley's bed and pulled the covers over my head.

But afterwards, there was a wonderful smell of freshness outside and a beautiful rainbow. Mom said the rainbow showed that God remembered his promise to never again destroy the Earth with water.

She looked forward to the birds coming back again. The wren, the blue bird, the robin, and the cardinal. She thought they made things cheerful. They didn't really stay around the yard much. Sometimes, one would sit on the fence in the back yard for a few minutes.

The wren seemed to get busy building her nest. We would see her fly by with something in her bill for the nest.

Anyway, we had the woods just above the Missouri henhouse.

Mom used to take us to the woods sometimes. We had picnics there and Mom used to make sounds like the different birds. They would answer and fly to a nearby tree. She could even sound like the whippoorwills and bob-o-links. They would also answer and fly to a tree near us.

One time when we were there, we watched a beaver (maybe two) build a dam across a little body of water. About the size of an ordinary ditch, only wider (Stephen said it sounded like a ravine).

Sometimes we found wildflowers. Mom knew the name of each flower.

Across the road in the hogs' upper pasture just inside the fence were berries to pick at the proper time. What I really found interesting there was the mimosa, or shame briar as it was called. It had long leaves similar to a fern. If you ran a finger along the middle of the leaf, the sides of it folded together.

I loved the dandelions when they came out. When I was small, I was sure I would find an elf sitting on one someday. After all, they are the color of gold.

I looked for four leaf clovers, too.

I also used to try to dig to China. I was just sure I would find their upside down feet on the other side of the world.

Spring rains

Often, spring rains caused the East Fork to flood and we couldn't go to school. Jean and I were just delighted if we woke up and found it had been raining all night. We knew we probably were staying home. Unfortunately, the teacher made us make up any work that we missed.

A Rainy Day

Charley used to tease me in grade school and it made me so mad. He used to say, "Well, tomorrow is Thursday," then he would grin, "unless it rains. Then it is a rainy day."

I used to argue, "You can't do that -- what happens to Thursday?" but he just grinned and repeated that it would be a rainy day if it rained. This wasn't only Thursday; it could be any day.

One time when high school got out for the year, it immediately started raining and rained steadily for a week. Martha Riley (my best friend) and I had really been looking forward to all the things we would have fun doing. Instead, we were stuck in the house writing each other complaining letters.

If Daddy had put any of the crops out when there was a rain like this, he worried that it would be ruined or washed away. If he hadn't put the crop out yet, he worried that it was getting late in the season.

Lightning makes a call

The fiercest storms at home are in the spring. I don't know if the following happened in the spring or not, but it sounds like it.

I used to like to explore upstairs in the house. I found interesting things. One time I showed Mom an old fashioned telephone I found. She said there used to be a party phone line through the neighborhood.

She said when Daddy came home from work in the evening, he used to call a neighbor and all the other neighbors would answer also, and everyone would laugh and talk to each other.

Then they had a really bad storm. The lightning ran in on the phone lines and tore our phone off the wall and slammed it across the room. After that, Daddy didn't get his phone and lines fixed and no one else wanted a phone either. If anyone wanted to make a call, they went to the switchboard at Darksville.

When I was pretty small, Daddy had someone add several lightning rods to the house.

Tornados

In all the time we lived on the farms, there were no tornados. But the grade school gave instructions each year about what to do in case of one. They said stay away from trees, lie in a ditch if there is no water (fat chance!) or lie flat on the ground face down. Always protect the head. If home, get in the middle of the house in a doorway or in a cellar or basement, if there is one.

Charley said he had seen a tornado. He said it drove a piece of straw into a tree.

A tornado finally struck the area. The second farm that Mom sold in November 1966 when she moved out here was three miles east of Moberly where I went to college. About a year or two before David and I went back in 1997, a tornado came in from the east, demolished Mom's used-to-be farm house and tore up a lot of the town of Moberly. This was on the 4th of July.

When the wind is green

We had a very strong wind one time. I haven't seen anything like it since. I looked at the horizon out front and there was a pale green color all along just above it. I pointed it out to Mom and asked why the sky was that color. Mom said it was wind.

Then she said "Help me open the doors and windows." We propped the doors open and raised the windows.

We weren't quite through when the wind started blowing through the house. Mom said to stay out of it and against the wall. It was over in a short time.

At this time, I was probably close to high school age.

Dream - The bird-boy, the Christmas pageant, mall shopping, stolen presents, and the award

On October 4, 2008, I had either one very, very long dream that was in two parts, or two dreams that seemed later to be connected. Either way, they were both interesting. Even though the part I remember is very long, the actual beginning is forgotten.


In the dream, I went into a small shop, a gift shop of some kind I think. It seemed to be part of a mall or plaza. I think I was just going to look at things quickly and then leave, but they had some kind of strange new bird that somebody had brought in, a type of bird that had been discovered a little earlier and was just now being reported to the world. The reporting itself was a news story and not part of this shop and maybe not even about this particular bird, though it seemed to be one of the first ones that were brought in.

There was also a second bird of some type in the store, on the other side of the room next to the wall, on some shelves or some piece of furniture or display. It was smaller and different from the first and much more like a bird in appearance, and I didn't pay much attention to it.

The first bird, on the counter, had a head very much like a human toddler, a little boy. Its body was also vaguely like that but its legs, which I never really saw clearly, were bird's legs. Sometimes it seemed to have hands and sometimes little white wings. Its neck was a little long for a boy and it had wrinkles like an old man. Sometimes when it moved its head down and smiled, the wrinkles moved into its face, otherwise its face seemed smooth. It was a little smaller than a human, perhaps only fourteen inches tall, not counting its legs, which were in any case very short and I think dark colored. It was brought in by a man in late middle age and I think with a woman with him, probably his wife. The bird/baby boy was being propped up by the woman behind the counter. I had looked briefly at things in the store and then gone back to it. The man and one or two other people were there at the counter, women I think, talking about and oohing over the bird. I talked some to the bird, too, like one might talk to a baby or even a little dog. The bird looked back at me and sometimes made little sounds, not much and not anything meaningful.

The bird's body was originally wrapped in a pale blanket. This was taken off and I was confused that the bird apparently had two pouches across its lower stomach, one above the other, tight against its body. This was like a marsupial, but it was supposed to be a bird. Then they lifted it out and it turned out to be just a leather pouch it was in. Out of the pouch, it was revealed that the bird was wearing a white diaper.

I kept talking and making sounds to the bird. Eventually we went to the back of the store, where a few tables were set out for people to eat at, though we didn't use them. I was standing talking to the bird, which was flying and hovering in the air, moving its tiny wings. Sometimes I was on my knees partly looking up at it. It was getting better at making sounds and seemed almost like it was making words. I said "Goo-goo" one time to it and it said the same thing back to me. The man at that point came over and tried to discourage me from doing it, saying that they were going to be putting it in some kind of school shortly, maybe in a few months, I'm not sure. The impression is that he didn't want the bird learning nonsense sounds, he wanted it to learn real words.

The man sat down at a table while I continued to look mostly at the bird and sometimes talk to it, while I also talked to the man, usually continuing to look at the bird and only giving the man occasional glances. I wondered how long the bird could live and how old it was and how long its childhood was. I asked the man how old he thought I was. He was saying something about how he didn't know and I could be blah, blah, or could be blah, blah, etc. I said I was 55. He said he would never have guessed.


I was in a big mall, then. Thousands of people were in a huge room sitting in built-in seats watching a performance, apparently a Christmas pageant, though I'm not sure how much of it actually directly related to Christmas. My mother and one or two people with her were in the seats, also watching it. She sent me out to shop, holding a list of things to get, mostly gifts for my brother. I visited various small shops, getting almost all the presents. They were almost all in clear plastic bags, separately, though one or two bags may have had more than one thing in them, and an item or two did not have a bag. All of the items were very small, including a camera.

I went to the far end of the mall where a movie theater was, visiting a restroom. It was getting late, and I was getting concerned about dinner. I started heading back finally to the huge section where thousands of people were seated watching a performance. Middle-aged women in makeup and jewels and fancy clothes crowded around the entrance with me, pushing against me, smiling, talking to themselves and sometimes to me. Inside, people were singing, and some of them were going down the aisles and through the rows singing and doing various minor performances and interacting with the crowd.

I finally managed to get away and make my way back along the shops, stopping every few shops and sitting down at little tables just outside the shops, and going through the collection of bags and looking at things. I thought that I should combine some of what I had, and put the items without a bag, there were perhaps only a couple that way, into the bags, combining them with whatever was in there.

The last shop I stopped at, some kind of eating place, there was someone at the back, a relatively young, short, thin person. It seemed like it might be a man and then it seemed more like a woman. The uncertainty went back and forth for a while, even later after we had talked some, though finally near the end it seemed that she was definitely a woman. She was a little like Rachel Maddow at MSNBC, short hair and all.

Now, at the beginning, she was at the back, behind the counter, saying something sardonically about someone saying something about Stephen, and that her name was Stephenson. I perked up and became interested at that point, because my own name was Stephen, though I hadn't said anything and it didn't seem possible that I was the one she was talking about. I called out that my name was Stephen. She seemed interested and said, smiling, something about it being a coincidence and went to her right and exited the counter and the room. She came back into the store, then, or maybe appeared just outside it. A woman in the store and I think another employee were singing and going to this place and that, sometimes popping out of some different place unexpectedly, at least once appearing outside the store. The first woman was part of this performance and also singing and popping out of different places. This didn't go on for very long before fading back in intensity and then mostly stopping. I wondered if this was something they did there frequently.

I had gone forward into the place at first to get a little closer after I said something to the woman and she started talking to me, and then I went back out as they were performing. I went back now to where I had been sitting to get the bags and try to sort through them and find good places to put the items without bags, and found almost all of them gone. Someone had stolen them. I started searching an accordion-like briefcase I found on or by a picnic table-like seat by a small rectangular table just inside the business. A man sitting there and talking to a person on the other side of the table partially turned towards me and was upset that I was looking through his briefcase. I continued looking but didn't find anything but some papers and other normal stuff. I finally stopped looking in it. I had to leave, I had to search elsewhere for them now. I went back out.

I sat at a very small, round table just outside the place and looked through what I had left again. I came across two knives I had picked up along the way at different places. One of them had maybe an inch and a half broken off the blade, and I had earlier used the square corner at the break to carve something in the face of a soft brick-like thing, kind of a message, though I think the carving looked almost like runes. It was way back where the thousands of people were watching the performance, in the seating area. The other knife had a wavy blade, like it had been bent and then straightened out, and it had some big raised smooth dark areas like old rust or old food.

I considered just leaving them on the table. They would be picked up when the tables were cleared, but I worried if someone should find them, maybe even some kids, and get into trouble with them. I finally decided to take the broken one. It seemed for some reason to be more dangerous, the other one seemed old and worn and weak. I left it there and went out into the mall.

I looked briefly at some places nearby, and then started flying sitting up, partially cross-legged. Some people were beside me to the right, following on the ground, mostly women. As I went on they came closer, touching me with their shoulders or heads, oohing and aahing and making little appreciative comments about my flying. The mall seemed much larger now, and had aisles go off at angles to the one I was on. I was flying back toward the movie house at the far end. I had to go to the bathroom and thought I could use the restroom there and look for the missing stuff on the way. It was getting late and I would have to go back to the others afterwards and we would have to decide what to do about the missing items, to try to get them again or get something else instead or maybe just do without them.

The aisle was much bigger and longer and fancier than it had been. It was paved in different areas with different kinds of paving stones or tiles. Some areas had large tan shiny brick-like tiles, some had smaller brighter squarer ones, etc. A largish shiny brick-like one of one kind or another was predominant, though. The mall aisle had a gentle downhill trend with a series of a few downward steps every few hundred feet.

At a place where an aisle crossed this one, I saw outside through a large window area a giant Wizard of Oz-like head pushing its way through the dirt with hands sticking up by its jaw, palms out, coming toward the mall at an angle. Like the Wizard in the movie, it had a scowl on its face. It went to the mall near the intersection of aisles and got inside. I thought it was probably a hologram and part of the show. Inside it met another head coming the other way and they stopped, facing each other a few feet apart. I flew over and around them, and as I did they faded to a grainy semitransparent blueness, confirming they were indeed holograms. I felt satisfied by this, and as I flew I saw a large dark bronze lion head on the outside wall of the other aisle, filling a doorway. I felt that it was also capable of movement, particularly facial movement. I got the impression that it was somewhat amused, but it didn't seem to move much, if at all, while I was watching it.

I went back to flying down the aisle and soon came to two tall, short buses, one immediately behind the other, and heading away from me, apparently used for tours of the mall. A very tall, very hairy man was laying on top of the bus closest to me. He was probably seven or eight feet tall and dressed like a street thug from an old movie, even having I think a soft cap. I wondered if he took the things I had bought and I think asked him about it and pulled or pushed him by the shoulder, turning him partly over. I saw part of a large clear plastic bag or two under him. He said, "Hey, what is this, I can get a gun!"

I pulled him off the top of the bus and he fell flat against the ground with his hands and arms partly under the end of the bus and his head against or at the end of it. The bus had stopped. I fought an accomplice then, a much smaller man but much larger than me, who also said that he could get a gun. They were both dead now, or apparently so.

The police came and a detective questioned me. I told them what had happened, that I had done it, that they had said they could get a gun. The detective immediately accepted it then, happily, and said something like, "Well, that's it, then!" and the small bus was found to have a lot of stolen loot in it. Most of it was other people's, but they happily gave it all to me, happy that the case was solved and they had gotten all the loot back before it could be gotten rid of. In fact, most of the stuff that was mine was still missing, so presumably they had gotten rid of part of it. They were happily giving everything to me, though. I wondered if I should say anything and worried about what would happen if they found out later. They kept going on about it and it was getting more and more awkward to bring it up.

I was being congratulated and about to be given an award, including prize money. It was going to be given, they said, by Bill Maher, but I had Regis pictured in my mind and associated with that name. I was pointed toward an ornate box the size of a small room, in the street that was the mall aisle. The room/box had heavy raised simple designs on it, and was apparently made of dark brass with a door of the same material and its own heavy raised simple designs. A person stood guard there, acting as a doorman, dressed in court finery from around Shakespeare's time. A crowd had gathered, everyone was happy. It looked like I wasn't going to be able to get to a bathroom right away, though I glanced somewhat wistfully around the area as I flew toward and around the box/room, waiting for the door to open and the person to come out with the award and the prize money.

Dream - And fly away

I had a dream, probably in early 2005, in which I could fly, and I taught other people how to fly, too.

I'm not sure how the dream began. I remember, though, that at some point it was daytime, perhaps late in the day, and two men, members of some organization, enemies of the group I was with, came to the door. I fought against them.

One of them I threw in the air, partly through physical throwing and partly through mentally causing him to fly, and I then turned him into a bird and he flew away.

The other man was struggling with someone in the yard. They were on the ground, with the bad man on top. I threw him into the air and turned him into a bird, also.

There was a sense of danger and of others coming, and we had to leave and fly away. It's possible that this first part came later in the dream, but I'm not sure where it would fit.

At some point then, in the dream, I was out in the backyard with several other people, quite a few, actually. It was night. It seems that we then started some kind of competition to see who could fly best. I started to rise up in the air, and found that I could do it easily. The others seemed to be having some difficulty, though many or most could manage it to some degree.

After flying around in the yard a bit I flew around to the side of the house. There was a long, wide area there (not like in real life). I saw a woman I knew (knew in the dream, not in real life) and I picked her up and carried her in the air. I flew back and picked up my mother as well.

It was much harder to get in the air while carrying two people, but I eventually managed it. I couldn't seem to get very high; the top of the fence and the edge of the roof were about all I could manage. I think I was trying to show them how easy it was, at least partly in an effort to get them to fly on their own.

At some point I noticed that the woman, who had seemed to be perhaps around 50 now seemed much older, perhaps around 60 or even older. She looked vaguely like the actress Patty Duke.

Then we all had to leave, for They were coming. It was that secret group, perhaps from the government, that wanted to get us. We flew off through the night, over the houses of the neighborhood and over the streets and alleys. We went out from the backyard and turned left, went for quite a ways and then turned right. We started to separate, then, and some of the others turned left and I turned right.

I flew alone through the darkness. I was having some trouble with the telephone and electricity wires. There seemed to be quite a lot of them and I ended up flying just under them in an attempt to avoid them, though I believe that I hit a few.

I reached a main road and turned right and flew along it. It was getting lighter now, becoming early morning.

After awhile I came to another main road that crossed the first. On the corner, across the street, there was a tall building made of metal beams and triangular crosspieces, something like the Eiffel Tower, but straight. The building was tall and massive, and had another, similar, building attached behind it.

On the front corner of the building, a tall, bronze-colored figure constructed of metal beams and crosspieces faced the building, with its arms raised hugging it. The metal figure was extremely tall, perhaps 30 feet or more, perhaps a lot more. It was smiling, and as I flew up it started moving. I felt that my presence caused it in some way to be activated, but I also felt that it could move without me if it wished.

It seemed glad to see me, and I felt that it was a friend.

I flew up the building and along the top, and it climbed up the building to be with me.

Then I woke up in the dream, but I was still in the dream. I was in my bedroom, in my bed, and my brother was there sitting in his bed, like it used to be decades ago. I tried showing my brother how I could fly, and levitated myself a little ways off the bed and drifted off low over the floor. It was a much more intense feeling then in the dream (though I was actually still in the dream). It seemed to involve generating a feeling similar to a falling elevator feeling and maintaining it.

Then I was back with my followers, in a large house. They were showing me various things of mine from the old days that were on some low shelves. One of the things was like something from a model kit, though perhaps it was some piece of art that I made. It had several figures clustered around something large, holding it. I made them move for a while, with my mind, but a growing sense of urgency was intruding. I felt that They might know where we were, and might be coming.

I told my followers that we had to leave, NOW. I went to a door that led out the side. I could see through the windows to the alley and the restaurant on the other side. A few people were in the alley, but not many. The ones that seemed of most concern were a man and a woman, in dark clothing, that were approaching from the right, apparently going somewhere. They were in late middle-age, and had a vaguely Eastern-European look, thick bodies and pudgy faces.

I hurriedly opened the door and stepped into the alley. It was paved with small, rounded bricks. I had been trying to get out before the man and the woman started going past the door, but I was not fast enough. They were almost at the door and stopped abruptly when it opened.

They stared at me, and the woman held a pair of small, curved, thin scissors in her left hand, like it was a weapon. I felt that it was indeed a weapon, and that it was not what it appeared to be.

They were part of the secret group that was after us. I tried to make it through the restaurant's doors, but they held onto me and I was caught in the doorway. A huge crowd then came down the alley from the other side. More of Them.

I turned and looked at the couple and said, "You're too late. I already taught them everything." I didn't really know that, though. It was more of a wishful thinking than reality, but I wanted them to think they had failed.

I stood there in the doorway of the restaurant, facing the house. The couple was holding me on the left and the crowd came and held me on the right. I tried to levitate the whole mass of people into the air, along with me, and perhaps turn them into birds, but I couldn't do it. I didn't have enough power to lift that many. I was trapped.

I woke up, then, but I continued the dream in my mind. I had the giant metal figure, sensing that I was in trouble, walk down the road toward us. He came, always smiling, and swept the vast crowd of people away with his right hand. With his left, he picked up me and the couple. He then separated me from them.

At that point I went through several possible futures in my mind. I tried having the giant figure drop the couple from a great height onto the alley, but I didn't like that. I then had him drop them on the crowd, but I didn't like that, either. Finally, I had him lift them high in the air, where he mentally made them rise up off his hand and turn into birds and fly away.