The Bulletin
July 20, 2003
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Desperately
Seeking
Stuckey's
2
The Pudding Pack
Chronicles

A Short Story
By Doug and Dorothy
Anderson

Editor's Note: The following is a story with two narrators. When the writing is in normal prose style, it is the Mother speaking. When it is written in journal entry form, it is the Son who is speaking.


The author tries desperately to concentrate!

Chapter Nine

Northward, Ho!

The 4th of July is here and we are getting ready for the big fireworks this evening. We had thought about going to Disneyland, as they are famous for their marvelous display -- but Junior and Doris both warned us of the terrible snarl of traffic and huge crowds that make it almost impossible to get close enough to have much fun.

They tell us there is a park near here where we can go and the kids can play ball or whatever -- and though it will be crowded, it is manageable, so that is what we have opted to do..

Dad and I just called Donny again to see what he was up to. It is a good thing we called early. He and Terry Haglin are planning to drive over to Annandale for the fireworks -- they are usually very well done!

He was telling me that Becky decided to come over and visit (didn't ask her mom -- just came). Then Lori came to tell her to come home and they both stayed and helped him finish up his hamburger-bean specialty! He says he has the house in good order, and the food is holding out fine.

Dad talked to him awhile and says Donny really seems to find his job interesting. The company he works for had bid a job, which they got, and they are now tooling up to produce modern systems of caged hens and an automated egg gathering system. It is for Israel.

I hear the kids fussing that we should get going to find a good place to get in some frisbee and munching before it gets dark, so I guess I had better get my sweater and get out to the car, before they leave without me!


It is pretty late -- but the rest decided to make use of the perfectly good pool. We got started really early this morning -- didn't wake anyone, as we got home from the fireworks quite late.

Dad and I had some toast with Junior, as he had to get up early, as it is back to work for him. The kids helped their Dad load.

Some of the other sleepyheads came out and waved us on our way. What a wonderful vacation we have had! What hospitality we have enjoyed, what good California cooking! GREAT PEOPLE, OUR CALIFORNIA RELATIVES!!

We headed out and caught Highway 101, headed north. We had several short stops and got a close view of the untamed areas of the Pacific coastline. We saw some of the oldest living things in the world in the Redwood Forest Park. And we crossed that famous bridge I have read about: The Golden Gate Bridge.

We switched to Highway 5 and at Medford, where we are staying. Don put in a call to Bob and Eloise Morgan (Tom's brother) at Astoria, Oregon. We have been invited to make an overnight stay with them tomorrow and plan to do so! Guess it is time to "hit the hay" now.


7/5/76: And now... it is over. I can't believe how fast it went. I am sitting in the back seat of the Great Landshark II and trying to hit the highlights in my mind. Maybe if I jumped off into one of the cities we saw in The Pirates of The Caribbean and hid, I could live the remainders of my days there posing as one of the robots, or whatever they are ... I could sleep on the beach and surf in the morning and pose as a pirate at night. I could make a boomerang and hunt wild animals. It sure is hard to capture the magic and splendor of this great state in words.

Lisa and I argue about whose state is better, but in my mind I know Minnesota can't stand up to Disneyland and the ocean and Sea W... I mean, Marineland. We still have FRAN TARKINGTON, though!

2nd Entry: Junior never did play, but I got to see his cool guitar, though. I wish I could remember what kind it was... Oh, well. I can't wait to get home and play mine now.

3rd Entry: We watched spectacular Bicentennial fireworks from Disneyland at a nearby park. California sure has cool parks. They are HUGE, like skateboarding cities on the Moon, or something. Those fireworks sure put Annandale to shame.

4th Entry: They are loading up now. Only two vanilla pudding packs left. After that it's strictly beef jerky and orange pop. Signing off transmission, on this, the last leg of our historical voyage... More later.


Updates -

FAMILY UPDATE
by Carol Printz
(Lois and Bill Dake's daughter)

We have had lots of not-so-usual things going on the past couple of months. Can't remember if I told you that the co-op here had to do a major downsizing and restructuring the last year. It is a much smaller company now, and Harold decided six months ago to give notice he would resign and move on to something else. The six months' time is up now ... so his last day was Monday. He has done interviews in South Dakota and Nebraska and has one in Colorado later this month. So it looks like a move is in the future!

I have been working for the past month on a rental house we are putting up for sale. It needed a lot of repair work, painting, etc. Cody has been working on it with me, as Harold was busy with things he was finishing up at work. We finally finished yesterday. What a relief!!! I definitely don't want to go into the remodeling business!! :-)

Harold's mom is here with us for a month now. She has Alzheimer's, so her short term memory is very poor. But we manage pretty well, if you just keep reminding her what she is supposed to be doing!

Mother called the other day. Kathleen and Earl's daughter Angela and her husband had a new baby boy on the 8th. Unfortunately, she had some trouble bleeding, and the baby had a blood reaction (Rh problem, I assume) and had to be transferred to a pediatric specialty hospital. But hopefully they will both be okay, eventually.

Guess everyone else is doing okay. James was in Waco for a visit a while back ... first time he had been home for a visit in a number of years, so everyone was glad to see him. Sorry I didn't get to be there!

Hope things are going well in your part of the world. Talk to you later.

Love, Carol

ANNOUNCEMENT:
by Scotty, Angela, Tracer, and Trevor Roberson

Our family now includes another little cowboy -- Trenton Laredo
Born July 8, 2003 at 3:47 p.m.
He weighed 8 lbs. and 14 oz. (Ten days later he weighed 9 lbs. and 4 oz.)

Dake family connection:
grandparents: Kathleen and Earl Stahlecker
great grandparent: Lois Dake (Bill)
(great grand aunt: Dorothy Anderson)


UPDATE -- on Trenton (& his mom)
by Grandpa Earl

Angela and Trenton are doing fine. Had some problems early. Trenton spent his first five days in Cooks Children's Hospital in Ft. Worth. He had ABO incompatibility. Angela's anti-bodies attacked the little guy's system. A hemoglobin treatment /injection made his blood cells strong enough to kill the attacking anti-bodies. It was serious, but that is the short of it and he is OK now, although Angela said today's check-up (July 17th) showed him to be some anemic, but thinks that will get better.


A letter from our "other daughter"

Several of you know Kellie Thayer and her boys, Michael, Bryan, and Jason. She has been a daughter to us -- and we parents to her (whose parents live in Florida). Do you call that surrogate relationships? I thought you might enjoy the letter we got from her on the E-Mail today --- Monday, July 14. --DMA

Hi! Just an email from Alaska! Today we are in Ketchikan -- and having a great time! We've seen killer whales, eagles, sea lions, sea otters, seals, salmon, and owls. When we get home we'll tell you about our close encounter with a humpback whale. Wish you were here -- we may stay (just kidding!). See you soon, love, Kellie and The Guys.


From "Virginia McCorkell"
To: "Donna Johnson"
Vonnie and LeRoy Dake's daughter

....We went to Paducah, Kentucky, to a mega quilt shop and saw the Quilt Museum ... you would be impressed!!! It really is outstanding ... not a bunch of dusty old quilts like I thought it world be ... they are exquisite works of art.

Then we went to see Ernie and Carolyn in Atlanta. It's been 15 years since we had been there ... shame on us.

Then we drove the Blue Ridge Trail through the Great Smokey mountains up to Asheville. Next we cut over to Spencer to a Railroad Museum. Following that we spent several days with Suzanne. Also went up to Cass, West Virginia, to ride a shay steam train up the mountain ... was beautiful. Stopped at a top-of-the line craft place ... very high class ... I bought a key chain. :))) And on home. We enjoyed it enough that it wouldn't be hard to get in the car and go again. :)

Uncle Jim spent the night at Mom and Dad's last night on his way back to Florida ... guess he has to go back sooner than expected because his house sold.

Was great to see ya'll at Patty's --

Ginny


The Family Cookbook
Culinary Heirlooms
volume fifteen
by Doug Anderson

      Greetings, food fans, I've got a hot one for you today. Today's recipe should probably be preceded by the warning "enjoy in moderation," but I think anyone reading this will probably be adult enough to make that decision for themselves. Probably.
      This week's recipe comes from the great sweeping plains of North Dakota and reflects the heartiness and gusto of the people who live there. Okay, so I'm full of beans today, but it really is a good recipe. Jessica Myron, who is Char and Timothy Myron's daughter, is the proud author of today's entry, a little something we like to call:

Jessica's German "Uber-Chocolate" Bars

Melt 50 Caramels
Add 1/3 cup evaporated milk as the caramels melt
Combine the following while waiting for caramels melt:

3/4 cup melted butter
1 package German Chocolate cake mix
1/3 cup evaporated milk

put half of above mixture into 9" x 13" pan.
Bake 6 minutes at 350 degrees.

Remove and sprinkle with 6 ounce package of chocolate chips
and 1 cup nuts.

Pour caramel mixture over the layer of nuts.

Sprinkle on rest of dough.
Bake 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Ach Du Lieber! Sounds delicious! I think I smell melting caramel already... Thanks, Jessica, for the wonderful dessert recipe. It's definitely a keeper. (I would like to add that Char is Tom and Mavis Morgan's daughter and that makes her our grand niece.)

Now I have to do a callback to last week's recipe, you remember, Cousin Diana's wonderful mini souffle recipe.

Cousin Diana writes:
"As a postscript to the egg bake recipe I sent: I made it over this last weekend, and I added a partial bag of frozen hashbrowns to the bottom of the dish, layered with the sausage and a bit of cheese on top of that, before filling with the egg mixture. I really enjoyed that."

Sounds like a great way to top it off! Thanks again, Diana.

See you next week, and don't hit those "Uber-Chocolate" bars too hard!


Memory Lane

By Jim O'Leary
An e-mail newsletter for and about Waverly people

Don came upon this by-line while reading the Howard Lake memory section. He did some search and found a wealth of material about Waverly, in the days when Grandpa was living there. I have enjoyed reading these so very much, and think you will, too. --DMA Who better to tell us about our Irish ancestors than another Irishman? Thanks, Mr. O'Leary.

One Column

Back to 1933

Marks McDonnell noted Halloween only briefly in his Oct. 27 issue for 1933.

"A Halloween party was thrown on Monday for the children of St. Mary's School in the KC Hall by St. Mary's PTA."

In the same issue, Marks tried this one in his "Do You Know" column:

"... that we heard this morning that Jack Murphy beat Jimmie Fitzpatrick up? Jack got up at eight and Jimmie crawled out at a quarter to nine."

"A.S. Mellon isn't feeling as well as he could be at this time."

There is a mystery here: Did Marks have something against Mr. Mellon, the mayor? He mentioned Mr. Mellon's health in just about every issue.

Mr. Mellon lived well into his 80s, and always seemed healthy enough to me. One week Marks noted that Dr. Roholt had driven Mr. A. S. Mellon to Rochester for a checkup.

Side note: It was not unusual for Dr. Roholt to drive people to specialists. Once he drove me into the cities to get my eyes examined, and after I had the drops in my eyes, walking out into the sunlight, I got separated from Dr. Roholt, who called the police to help find me.

Before that, Dr. Roholt and I went to a Marx Brothers movie, which I didn't enjoy at all because I couldn't see the screen.

The police eventually found me enjoying a blue plate special, on the house, at the Gay Nineties on Hennepin.

A kindly waitress had reported "little boy lost." This made the Waverly Star, but I can't find the issue it was in.

Marks also put it in the time I got locked in Franske's Grocery Store for the night because I was trying on shoes in the back when they locked up.

After I finally thought to use the phone, Zip Zeller came to unlock the door since he was working for the Franskes at the time.

But not before he gathered a rowdy crowd to look through the window at me begging to be freed. Thanks a lot, Zip!

More Next Week!


LET'S GET BETTER ACQUAINTED
by Donna

I have a question, to any of you that feel like sharing... (If you receive this bulletin, you are an eligible contributor; please don't feel like you are just a wallflower or onlooker!)

What is the earliest memory you have?

Early Memories
by Dorothy
Three "I Remembers"

My mother and father lived in a little white house on a piece of lawn of my grandparents' home place. The first four of their children were born there, that is Bill, Blanche, LeRoy and I. It was a cozy, sunny little house and I can feel it rather than actually picture it.

It had upstairs divided into two bedroom areas -- I do not think it had any of the amenities considered necessary in present day homes. But we children didn't think there was anything wrong with it!

Then came the day when my other grandparents decided to move to Waverly and they talked to my parents about moving into their home and taking over the farming of their 120 acres. Agreement was made that we were to move into the large, white house across the field.

LeRoy had not started walking, so being I am two years older than he -- this would place my age as about 3. Now this is what I remember from that day.

We kids love the openness of the large house -- we run -- and I can feel the floor shake. I am terrified -- the whole thing will fall down. It is so dark in the house. Next I remember sitting on the front steps crying -- because of my fear and the horrible feeling of leaving my nice cozy place for this big scary house.

Many times over the years this feeling of a memory would come to me. Later I confided in Mom the feeling that I had such a dream or such an experience and I didn't know which.

She assured me it was a memory. She said that soon after they moved into the house Dad had gone down into the basement and put posts up to keep the floors from shaking.

And she said that for the whole first year we lived there I cried often at night before bedtime -- it was from the trauma.

Stories my Grandmas Told

Now here are two stories. One my Grandma told me; also one my great-grandma told my mom -- they are of memories they felt they had of when they were babies (or toddlers at the oldest).

My grandma told me that her parents moved from Kentucky when she was less than two. She maintained that she remembered someone holding her as they walked from their home to somewhere, she wasn't quite sure where. She said that there was a gaggle of geese they had to pass and the old gander chased them and hissed and she was scared. (This was my Dad's mother.)

My Mom told me that her Dad's Mother (my Great Grandma) always told her that she remembered being held while she looked out over the side of the ship at the ocean on their trip from Ireland to Canada. As she wouldn't have been even two, mostly she was thought to have a pretty wild imagination. I do believe she had every reason to remember something so strange and different!

I think we remember many things we don't recognize as memory and they become more like a dream -- I have read that under hypnosis many people remember things of their very early days. I am persuaded that because we have a more uncluttered brain when we are very young the memory grows very quickly.


CHUCKLES

Hi there everybody -- hope you enjoy this feature -- and feel free to contribute your favorite smile maker!

How about these questions Don passed along? Do you have the answers?

"Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?"

"Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?"

"Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?"

"If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?"

"What hair color do they put on the driver's license of bald men?"

"If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?"

"If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words?"

"Why does 'fat chance' and 'slim chance' mean the same thing?"

"Why do tug boats push their barges?"

"Why do we sing 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' when we are already there?"

"Doesn't 'expecting the unexpected' make the unexpected expected?"

"Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?"

"Why is 'phonics' not spelled the way it sounds?"

"Why do we wash bath towels? Aren't we clean when we use them?"

"Christmas is weird. What other time of the year do you sit in front of a dead tree and eat candy out of your sock?"


+ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Aunt Dorothy,
I've enjoyed the bulletins you are putting out. Nice to learn some family history I didn't know, etc.
All for now. Love, Carol


Wow, loved the big 5-0 edition. I enjoyed the addition of the picture at the end too! I'm glad we're reliving the trip, cuz I'd forgotten about 90% of the happenings. I do however remember very vividly the fireworks that we saw on the 4th. Better than any I've seen before or since. Thanks for all the efforts to keep this going... very much appreciated. Thanks to Doug and Donna for keeping us all "prodded" along and interested also! Pattydee

In spite of the alleged expiration of the statute of limitations, I'm not going to confess! I really don't recall having ahold of either the nozzle or the faucet, but I do seem to recall having a major part in coming up with the idea ... and I was fully prepared to look innocent if we had been caught! At this point in my high school career, I was an avid reader of Mark Twain, and Tom Sawyer was my hero...

Beaver


Dear Dorothy:

Thanks so much for sending the Bulletin and for including our family. Your fond memories of our parents are very much appreciated.

Dan Mellon


Hi!

Thanks for including us in the bulletin. I plan to write some about Ireland when I get a chance. We've had company Monday night and then other company for Sunday evening. The beans are in full swing, so have frozen two batches. Today is baseball games and dentist appointments. But I really will try to write a few things at a slower time! Dean had surgery on Monday, so have been at the hospital every day, too. Hopefully he will be up and walking soon. All for now, Char


Thanks for the Bulletin Mom. It's a nice way to "unwind" at the end of the day.

I'm wondering if someone could video Eric's wedding and that you could somehow find a way to watch it if they sent it to you? At least you could see all that goes on and who's there etc... Then you won't have to feel like you've missed everything.

Marlene


HI. Dorothy.
I enjoyed your column again as usual. You put a lot of work and time into it. I think I didn't thank you, since my computer was down, and lost my train of thoughts ... etc. Thank you! Keep it up! Elaine.


QUOTATION FOR THE DAY: Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. --Mark Twain


EDITOR'S POLICY: If you wish to subscribe to The Bulletin, simply send me a statement of that fact. If you wish to keep receiving it I hope you will contribute to one of the columns that are running in this family epistle (at least occasionally!). My e-mail address is dma49261@juno.com


This Bulletin is copyright Dorothy M. Anderson; the contents are also copyrighted by the authors and photographers and used with their permission, and the contents are not to be used for any commercial purposes without the explicit consent of the creators.