Mark got home on Saturday. He's doing great with his two new casts that are below his elbows. We're sending a picture of him with his "buddy" Snort. He's wishing he could have gotten back on him and ridden him.

He informed me that he was going to get back on him when he noticed that his arm was broken. (He didn't know about the other one until he was at the hospital.)

Somebody told him that a real cowboy would only have broken one arm because he would have been holding his hat on with the other one. Guess he should have been wearing a hat. Mark's hoping he can find a job on a ranch next summer. Those broken arms of his haven't discouraged him at all.

Harold reminded me of Elvis.

Judy Riesenberg
Great Falls, MT

Actually, it was back in January of 1959. (I am hardly that old.) My brother, Harold Weiland, was dating a young lady from out near Litchfield, Minnesota -- Grove City, to be exact. She was the daughter of Henry and Lenore (Miller) Pfingsten. Things kind of escalated over time and wouldn't you know it, they decided to tie the knot. So, being young kids, they didn't have a lot of funds, but they would make do with what was there. Harold had completed welding school at Vocational High School in Minneapolis and Anita was a Licensed Practical Nurse, so there were jobs available.

They were ready for the big step and couldn't wait any longer. Once you got a marriage license in Minnesota, there was a five-day waiting period before you could get married. There were no waiting periods in Iowa or South Dakota, so one of those would be the place they would get married. You needed two witnesses, so Harold asked me if I would stand up for him. Our mother was not so keen on the idea, but Harold was of age, so he didn't need her signature. She wasn't too sure that I should go along because I was just 16. Anita selected her cousin Diane Tiemans to be her witness. This marriage decision was made and no sense waiting around any longer.

Friday, January 9, 1959, was the day that was to be the wedding day. Thursday, around midnight, Harold, Anita, Diane and I jumped in Harold's 1953 blue Oldsmobile and headed for the Iowa border.

Well, driving at night in the winter is interesting. The temperature was rather balmy for January, but still cold. As we got closer to the Iowa border on Highway 60, the fog started to appear and got thicker and thicker so we could only see a few yards ahead of us. We finally stopped at the border and got out to get a better look at the car. The frost had accumulated on all the chrome. It was really beautiful, as I think of it now, but was a nuisance then. The antenna had about three-fourths of an inch of ice on the leading edge. The car looked like an old man with a beard. Well we still had 60 miles to go to get to Lemars, Iowa.

Harold decided on Lemars because our aunt Lafern lived there and was familiar with some of the judges because she had taken their pictures. She would be able to help us get a Justice of the Peace for the marriage.

We pulled into Lemars around 4 in the morning and decided it was not the time to awaken Lafern, so we found a hotel. I am not sure, but it might have been condemned. Anyway, there was a room available with two double beds and a bath down the hallway. Being low on funds, we decided it was at least a bed for a few hours. The plaster was falling off the walls.

Harold and I took one bed and Anita and Diane took the other. In the morning, the girls took their turn using the bathroom and getting ready for the big day. Then we had our turn. Then it was time to head to Lafern's and see if she could secure us a Justice of the Peace.

We piled back into the car and noticed the orchid Anita was to wear was in the back window, frozen. We had to go to Sioux City to get a blood test and replace the frozen orchid that we brought down. Then back to Lemars to get a judge to get this thing over with. Well, we called and called but none were available.

Finally, in the early afternoon, we decided that there would not be a wedding in Lemars. We had a much better chance of finding a Justice of the Peace in Sioux City. What was there to do but head back to Sioux City? They closed at 5 o'clock, so we'd better hurry. I don't think there was a speed limit; if there was, it surely was not heeded. Part way down, an old mama pig decided to stroll across the highway. Luckily, it was dry roads and we did manage to miss it.

We found a courthouse with a judge that would marry them. So the license was purchased and the judge was waiting. We went into his chambers and said the "I do's" at about five minutes to 5 o'clock. Just under the wire. As we left the judge's chambers, we had to walk through a vacant, echo-y courtroom. Just as we got part way through, I heard my brother exclaim, "I want my mommy!" He was always a card.

We headed back to Lemars where Lafern had a "wedding supper" made for us. I can't tell you what it consisted of, but she always would do it up good. After supper, we all went to her photo studio and had our pictures taken. One of them being the Guess picture in the September 2nd Bulletin. Diane and I stayed at Lafern's overnight while Harold and Anita went to a motel. I think it was better than the one we stayed in early Friday morning. Then, Saturday, we headed back to Minneapolis, to return to work and school on Monday.

There might have been other details that were overlooked, but after 48 years it is hard to recall them. We did have a lot of laughs over that weekend, and many since.

If their hides stayed pinched after I'd lifted them to their feet, they were dehydrated. If they were laying flat out on their sides, they were in need of immediate help. If their mouths felt cold to the touch, they needed to spend some time in "intensive care." That meant I would "tube" them and put them into the incubator.

To tube them, I'd slide a reddish brown rubber tube (a catheter) down their throats and into their stomachs.

Before pouring in a couple ounces of warm ewe's colostrum, I'd listen for breathing sounds in the tube to be sure it wasn't in the lamb's lungs. (Pouring milk into a lamb's lungs is curtains for the lamb.) After a starving, hypothermic lamb was successfully tubed, it would go into a large plywood box, heated with a lamp.

With some luck, some of them would revive.

After another tubing, or two, they could be returned to the ewe, at which time they'd usually need to be suckled. Suckling a lamb meant teaching it how to nurse.

Because of the Vibrio infection in the flock, there were many weak and starving lambs that needed suckling. A number of the lambs simply didn't have a will to live.

The foot-rot was also a problem. Some ewes with painful feet were reluctant to stand long enough, or often enough, for the lambs to nurse adequately.

I spent my morning, as I had spent many mornings (and afternoons), on my knees. I wasn't praying. I'd pin a ewe to the side of the jug with my shoulder and attempt to stand the lamb in the right attitude to the udder. Invariably, as I'd take the lamb's head and guide it toward a nipple, it would brace all fours and pull back into a sitting position. I'd hoist the lamb forward again, attempting to stick its nose to the end of the nipple.

The old proverb, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, often came to mind.

Typically, the lamb's mouth would clench tightly shut. Prying the jaws apart with the thumb of one hand, while squirting a stream of milk into its mouth with the other, required finesse and patience. I'd let the taste and smell of the colostrum float around in the little lamb's prehistoric brain for a minute, hoping it might think -- ahh! Milk! -- and begin sucking.

Not usually!

I'd pry the jaws apart again. It's nearly impossible to push a soft nipple into a lamb's mouth from the front. The trick was to slide the full length of the nipple into the lamb's mouth from the side, all the while maintaining traction against the backward struggling of the lamb.

At this juncture, as often as not, the ewe would bolt in circles around me in the tiny pen -- until I was able to regain control and start the delicate procedure all over again. Some ewes would kick violently to knock my hand away. Instead, often as not, they'd knock their lamb in the head. After getting kicked repeatedly, the lambs were not enthused about learning to nurse.

With the nipple reinserted into the side of the lamb's mouth, the hope was that the lamb's sucking reflex would kick in, and it would begin to nurse. This rarely happened. If no sucking action ensued, I'd squeeze the lamb's jaws repeatedly, to give it the hint. This usually only produced two steps back, in this battle for nutrition.

Next, I'd try tickling above the lamb's little rope of a tail, to simulate his mother licking off her new baby. This was the most effective technique. With luck, and perhaps another squirt or two of milk, the little lamb's tail might start wagging and its mouth sucking. The whole process was a little like priming a pump and starting the pump engine. When the lamb's tail started whirling around, there was a feeling of great accomplishment. It was getting colostrum -- the gift of life!

Trouble was, the lamb's "transmission" was still stuck in reverse; its "wheels" were still spinning backwards. One of my hands had to stay firmly behind its head to hold it on the nipple. My other hand continued tickling its tail, if the action slowed. This rather difficult position, in the cramped pen, left me with my head pressed against the ewe's pillowy side. A symphony of gurgles, bubbles, and other curious sounds played in my ear. A ewe has four stomachs, and they all seem to make music.

If the ewe relaxed a bit, and the lamb got right down to business, this was a magic, blissful time. Sometimes I'd even doze off into ba-ba-land, while the lamb tanked up on its mother's milk.

The Winchester House was our first stop. I'm not sure how to begin describing the Winchester House. It is the product of a marriage between unbounded creativity and limitless wealth. And by "unbounded" creativity, I mean creativity that is not restricted by sanity. Perhaps all great artists are a little crazy, but the designer of the Winchester House took that notion to the extreme.

The deranged brain behind the Winchester House belonged to Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester fortune, which was amassed primarily through the sale of the rifles bearing the family's name. After the death of her daughter in 1866 and her husband in 1881, Mrs. Winchester understandably fell into a period of depression. As a means of breaking free from her misery, she consulted a medium to help her communicate with the spirits.

The medium informed Mrs. Winchester that her troubles were caused by the spirits of the thousands of people who had been killed by the products of her family's business. The only way to right this wrong, she explained, was to build a home capable of housing all of those disgruntled spirits.

At this point, I think it's safe to say that your average person would have hung up the phone and rue the $1.99 per minute they had wasted on Miss Cleo's fine advice. But not Sarah Winchester. "Building such a house would be crazy," she must have thought. "Just crazy enough to work!"

So, in 1884, the construction of the Winchester House began, and would continue 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the remaining 38 years of Sarah's life. The end result was a sprawling, 160-room Victorian mansion. But this is not your garden variety, 160-room Victorian mansion like the one on the corner in your neighborhood. The Winchester House is full of bizarre quirks, including a stairway that leads directly to the ceiling and several doors that lead nowhere. No one seems to know quite why Mrs. Winchester incorporated these unique features into her house. Perhaps to confuse all of those spirits roaming around the place.

While some of the house's strange features seem completely useless, some were actually designed with a specific purpose. In several locations throughout the house, a staircase that would normally consist of five or six steps up to a landing, instead consists of 20 or 30 tiny steps with two-inch risers. These tiny staircases form a hairpin curve as they slowly ascend to the next floor. As our tour guide explained, these steps made it easier for Sarah navigate through her house, as she was arthritic and stood short of five feet tall.

Another design feature that was probably quite useful was windows that allowed Sarah to peer from the upper floors down into the kitchens on the ground level. She used these windows to spy on the hired help to ensure they were doing their jobs properly. And apparently she had no problem firing these poor workers on the spot for the smallest of transgressions.

While the Winchester House is known primarily for its strangeness, it also includes many of the fineries one would expect to see in the home of a millionaire heiress. Intricate wood work adorns many of the stairways, while fine, imported wallpapers line several rooms. Beautiful stained glass windows allowed colorful light to stream through much of the house.

The most striking room is the grand ballroom, whose floor and walls consist of what appears to be thousands of inlaid wood pieces. The ballroom also features an elaborate pipe organ that would have been used to entertain guests. Mrs. Winchester spent the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of present day dollars on this single room, but because she was an extreme recluse, she rarely if ever actually hosted guests, leaving this beautiful room abandoned most of the time.

Near the end of our tour, the guide asked the group whether any of us would like to lead the group back to the main entrance of the house. She had no takers. Then, she asked if any of us even knew which general direction we'd have to walk to get there. This time, the only responses she garnered were a few guesses that did not carry much confidence on the part of those offering them. After an hour spent winding through the various winding halls and staircases of the house, we were all thoroughly disoriented. Thankfully, our guide took pity on us and led us back out into the California sun.

This Week's Birthdays
September 12---Lindsay Dawn Hellevang
September 14---Lou Miller
September 15---Carolyn Miller Dake
September 15---Shari Miller Larson
Happy Birthday!

More September Birthdays
' 
September 2---Patty Anderson
September 2---Vicki Anderson
September 2---Stanley Wm. Dake
September 3---Jacob Mendoza Dake
September 3---Eric Printz
September 3---Charles Quick
September 4---Wiley Nelson
September 4---Harvey Stucker
September 5---Lori Chap Ostendorf
September 5---Genelle Mogck
September 7---Brendan Aydelotte (8 years)

September 19---Nathanial Kurtis Seaman
September 21---Jessica Aydelotte
September 24---Wyatt Johnson
September 25---Keith Mason
September 26---Jaxon Dwight Hill (1 year)
September 28---Donald L. Anderson
September 30---Sheldon Swenson

September Anniversaries
Z
September 2---Michael and Sarah Dake Steinhauer (5 years)
September 4---Ernie and Carolyn Miller Dake (36 years)
September 7---Tim and Colette Anderson Huseby (11 years)

September 18---Jay and Sandy Miller Smith (8 years)

September Special Days
O
September 3---Labor Day
September 23---First day of Autumn

Click here to review last week's Bulletin

Good morning, Dorothy and staff!

I sure look forward to The Bulletin every week; some very good events are being written about, and they are wonderful. I can just picture what happened.