​     In case you didn’t know it, of the houses that are 90 or 100 years or older many had a Cistern.  It’s a simple way to catch rain water off the roof and store it in a huge brick tank in the back yard for use on the lawn or garden or your hair.  It can be traced back to ancient times with the first one discovered at about 12,000 years ago.  Today you only hear about one when some one has fallen in one because the cover wasn’t attached properly.  It was a great idea that stopped being a great idea when everyone got water delivered to their house.  Afterall, water is cheap and plentiful or so we thought.
     Its like the idea of the rain barrels at the down spouts of the roof.  There is no better way to wash your hair then in water from the barrels on the down spots, or water from the cistern if you had one.  I think the idea of the rain barrels and the cistern stopped being popular when it was discovered that mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water.  With construction of the Panama Canal, and all the people that died from malaria, and it was discovered that mosquitoes carried malaria.  The return of people from world war 2 didn’t help.  My father was one of them.  He suffered from recurring malaria for a long time.  He wasn’t bitten by a mosquito repeatedly, but once was enough.  It didn’t help that people drowned in cisterns when they fell in them.  And, as I said, water began being delivered through pipes.  Eventually the cisterns were filled up by companies that specialized in that sort of thing.  I found out that river sand works best because of its ability to pack down.  There were others who filled them with tree branches and other yard waste and built something over it, like say a sun room.  They broke down the neck of the cistern and covered it with pressed wood left over from the sunroom and covered the whole thing with dirt.  That was the case with our cistern.  Except that they didn’t cover the entire cistern with the sun room.  They planted climbing, clinging rose bushes next to the pressed wood that covered the opening.  The bush worked great, I didn’t even know about the cistern for several years.
     One day I was out mowing the yard, and the rose bush decided the cling to me.  That wouldn’t have happened had I trimmed the bush, but I didn’t, I just mowed the yard and those thorns hurt.  Now in the rose bushes defense it was beautiful and the roses really stood out against the vines that covered the screen that covered the sun room which partially covered the cistern.  Ok, I didn’t do much yard work that year, but I kind of liked the privacy that that the vines created.  I even thought about how I could get them to grow on the other side of the sun room.  That was the plan until the day that I mowed the lawn and the thorns got me.  I looked at the roses in a different light.  I realized that the roses weren’t that beautiful, and vines weren’t great growing against my sun room, or against my fence (a six-foot chain-link fence.)  In fact, the vines did do harm.  I realized then that I would have to dig up the roses and rip out the vines.  In the process of taking out the rose bush I discovered the cistern.  Now I figured that the cistern was nearly full of yard trash and that if I laid back the pressed wood and covered the whole mess with dirt it wouldn’t cause a problem.  I lived with that delusion for several years until I fell through the sun room floor after I had taken out the carpet.  (Not into the Cistern or I probably wouldn’t be writing this story.  See the previous Blog for details.)  I had asked contractors the cost of demolishing my sun room, fixing the hole in the roof over the kitchen.  I did mention a room in the back that they would add but I didn’t tell then about the cistern.  Every one of the contractors said it would cost 30 to 40 thousand dollars, but they would not be able to get to it this year or next.  I did not have the aversion to contactors that I do now.  You would think after I fell through the sun room floor and discovered the of the cistern that I would question the contractors a bit more, but they really lost me when they said 30 to 40 thousand dollars.  It took until I opened up the house before I questioned contractors particularly the contractor who had owned my house.  It cost me over 30 thousand dollars to do the job, and I did it myself (me and anyone I could corner into putting in a full day, usually my wife and son or sons in law.)  Anyway, the actual cost led me to believe they were just kidding about the 30 or 40 thousand dollars and that they would have charged me much more.  But at 30 thousand dollars I did end up with more than I had given them in their original estimate but that was after I solved the problem of the cistern.
     At first, I assumed that the yard trash was enough to fill up the cistern.  Was I ever wrong.  Most cisterns were about 10 or 15 feet in diameter and about 15 feet deep.  Mine was huge and the yard waste reached to the top, but those were branches.  So, I threw in some dirt and it went down and down.  I imagined that someone falling in would probably be done in by the old and sharp branches sticking up and not make it to bottom.  I quivered at the thought and decided to fix it.  I called someone who repairs old cisterns and found out that sand worked best for filling them in.  I thought I could fix it until I heard that by sand, they meant river sand because it packs better.  Plus, I would have to clean out the yard waste from the cistern.  Regular sand would just allow a person to sink slowly into the sand.  I quivered at that thought and decided their must be another way.   Did I mention that I would have to clean out my cistern.  That thinking went on about two months as I staked and re-staked the area.  Then came August 1999 when Dad and Mom were visiting.  He said that my stakes were wrong.  How could I think that 10 feet was enough room for a room that might one day include them?  I thought about that and went out and dug up the stakes, added two feet for the room and then told Dad about the dilemma of the cistern.  He said don’t worry about it so much.  A solution would present itself if I just would get started.  Meaning, I would take any solution to keep the project going but he didn’t say that.  I started to dig and went down the required six feet and then went a few feet farther for the foundation of the new room.  That meant I was down beyond where the neck of the cistern was broken, and I would have to put a wall right across where the opening of the cistern was, and that gave me pause.  I couldn’t figure it out and that hole in my back yard stayed there for at least two weeks as I talked to everyone, and I mean everyone.  Had I really listened to Dad, I would have gone around the cistern, causing the room in the back to be an addition to the Wally’s room and an addition to the kitchen, something I have thought about since.  But the plan was that I go over the cistern and that was all I could think about.
     Some one finally suggested that I get a piece of iron (called something) that was long enough to go over the opening of the cistern and go about one foot on either side of it and be about 6 to 8 inches wide.  Not wide enough to cover the cistern but that was okay they said.  Well, I did worry about that, and I worried, and worried some more.  Finally, I decided to try their approach.  I bought the metal and struggled to carry the thing because it was so darned heavy.  I laid it in place and shoved dirt next to it in hopes that the cement wouldn’t just spill into the hole on either side of it.  I don’t know how I did it, maybe I took that piece of pressed wood and covered the hole and covered the wood in dirt.  At any rate somehow, I made the dirt stay on either side of the iron and poured the cement foundation over the iron.  It worked and I wasn’t about to complain.  I let the foundation dry, (probably too long.)  I put in the wooden forms or shell that I would pour the cement into to make the walls to the main floor.    I had my wife climb down to the now dry foundation to sweep up the dirt that fell on the cement (I couldn’t imagine pouring a wall on top of dirt and wondered how in the heck the contractors had someone as thin as my wife sweep up the dirt.  I found out later that they didn’t sweep, and that a foundation is just that, a foundation, never mind a little dirt.  I did not tell my wife about that until later, -- much later.)
     I was going to be gone for two weeks on a trip for Gateway, and I thought what a perfect time to pour in the cement walls, while I was gone.  They would cure and be all ready for me when I got back.  My wife could supervise and as I said it would be all ready for me when I got back.  I still get darts of anger in her eyes when she tells about the day that everything went wrong or what happens to fresh cement walls when the forms blow out.  But that’s another story and I’ll pick it up there in the next story which I lovingly call Addition Part Three—The Cement Wall.

       We lived in many places over the years but the first place I remember is Arthur.  It was and is a sleepy little village on high way 61 about 40 miles North of Ogallala, Nebraska.  Not much has changed over the years.  When we moved there in the early 1950’s it was and is the county seat of Arthur, county and was formed in 1913.  175 people lived in town then and about 700 people lived in the county.  The number of residents in the city has gone down but the population of the county remains about the same.  It was named after President Chester A. Arthur.  Not much is known about him, which is appropriate for the county I guess.  We moved there about 40 years after the town was born.
               My Mom has lots of pictures of little me from my Arthur days but I remember only a few things.  I do remember the events behind one picture of me and my sister.  It was taken at the Arthur County Fair and was during my pre-school years.  I was dressed up as a rabbit.  I led our cocker spaniel Honey on a leash.  Julie was dressed up as Alice or a princess or something.  In the picture I was making Honey stand up.  We both won first prize (which tells you how small the fair really was.)  For first place, the prize was a five dollar check and we each got one.  That seems like a lot of money now and it was huge back then.  My family made a trip to Ogallala and bought some roller skates for each of us which was about like buying a bike.  They were useless in most of Arthur because there weren’t any sidewalks, much less paved streets.  The street that ran in front of our house was more of a sand trail with round rocks in it.  Many of the rocks that paved the streets were just the right size for throwing.  In other words, it was next to impossible to learn to ride a bike much less skate in Arthur.  The only paved street was the highway which ran through the town’s business district, if you can call it that, and there was some sort of a sidewalk there.
          I remember the irrigation system used to water the football field which was just across the street from our home.  It wasn’t a big system but there were pipes about the size of a water hose connected to large metal wheels.  The wheels were about as tall as I was and I assume that you connected all of the wheels, ran the water through the pipe for irrigation and then turned the water off and moved the whole apparatus with the wheels.  I don’t remember how it was done because I never actually saw the watering system moved.  I do remember it disassembled in two wheel sections which were connected by a length of pipe.  Two wheels and a pipe between them was just the right size for a small boy to cart off which is exactly what happened.  We had an Indian boy who lived several blocks from us and we must have been on again-off again friends.  We were definitely off when he picked up a rock from the street and hurled it at me.  He had quite an arm on him and was pretty accurate.  From a distance of 20 feet he hit me right in the side of my head, towards the forehead but still in the hair.  It bled like a son of a gun and Mom bundled me up and took me to Ogallala.  She assumed for all the blood it would require stiches.  The doctor didn’t think it was that bad.  He cleaned me up and sent me home (about 40 miles.)
          The rock throwing incident must have stuck with me because when the Indian boy took the wheeled contraption to his house I ran home and told my Dad.  He was the superintendent of schools (as well as a teacher and one of the football coaches) and, in addition to being my Dad, he must have had some input in the care of the watering system.  So he strode beside me as we went to confront the little boy and take back the wheels.  His Mom met us at the door and listened as Dad explained the problem.  She was kind of a rolly poly person and yelled for her son to come to the front door.  Instead, he headed out the back door and took off running down the street.  Dad and I watched as the Mom began to run after him.  There was no way she could catch him so she stopped, bent over and picked up some rocks from the street and threw them at him.  He stopped, turned around and picked up some rocks and threw them back at her.  They were both out of range of each other so the Mom stopped throwing rocks and began to run towards him.  He turned and ran away.   She stopped and picked up some more rocks and heaved them at him and he turned and did the same at her.
          I was mesmerized by the whole rock throwing thing and didn’t see the little grin creep across my Dad’s face.  He must have remembered a similar scene from his youth, minus the rock throwing, when his Mom chased him.  The only difference was that she was fast and probably caught him.  He slowly turned and said to me to grab the wheels and we rolled it home.
          Arthur was served by two church communities.  One was a very spiritual group that met in a building made from hay bales; one stacked on top of the other.  I suppose that it was like any Soddy except instead of sod it was made of hay.  My Dad used to tell that when the group got revved up on Saturday nights they would start kicking hay bales out of the side of the church but I never saw it.  The building is now a land mark. 
          Our church was the community Church which was a bit more dogmatic then I am today but everyone went there who didn’t go to the hay bale church.  In fact my best friend’s Dad was the minister of the community church.  They lived on the other side of town which I remember as being a long ways-- it was four or five blocks.  My earliest memories are of Vacation Bible School.  I remember lots of red Kool Aid and cookies.  I don’t remember the service, Sunday School, or even Vacation Bible School, but I do remember those treats.
          Some nights, after school, my sister Julie, her friends and little brother Doug went across the street to football field and across it to run down the sand hill on the other side.  It was glorious to run with abandon.  It was probably there I learned it was next to impossible to stop when running down a hill and that falling was about the only way to stop which wasn’t a problem on that particular night.  It was dusk out and hard to see.  In fact I didn’t see the barbed wire fence that some smart rancher had put up to keep his cattle off the Football field.  I remember I was running and suddenly was stopped by the fence.  My sister must have called my name in a frantic effort to get me to stop so I turned toward her just as a barb hit my head next to my eye and another ripped through my favorite shirt and tore at my belly.  Julie took me back to the house bleeding and probably crying.  My Mom, remembering the rock throwing incident, didn’t take me to the Doctor in Ogallala.  She just cleaned me up and sent me to bed.  In retrospect, she has said she probably should have taken me there for stiches on those cuts.  I still have a scar on my belly and head from the barbed wire fence.  I also have a scar on my head from the rock, however I healed just fine.
          One of my favorite stories from my Arthur years was the birth of my baby brother Mark.  I don’t remember the occurrence much except that when he came home we all held him.  His birth, however, has been the subject of a favorite Johnson family story.  My Mom and her friend had taken off for Ogallala on a routine doctor’s appointment when suddenly birth pains set in.  My Mom had always thought her Dad, my Docpop, would deliver her baby just as he had done with her first two.  So, she and her friend turned the car around and headed back to Arthur.  Her contractions were getting pretty close and her friend said they should go back to Ogallala but Mom was insistent and they drove home.  Mom and Dad headed the 100 miles over sandy prairie roads towards Gordon and Docpop.  About half way there Mom had a contraction as Dad took stock of the supplies they had in case he had to stop the car and deliver Mark.  He had shoe laces and a jack knife.
A car was in front of them and was driving very slowly and was kicking up dust behind it making it impossible to pass.  This continued over several hills as Mom’s labor intensified.  Finally, Dad said a prayer, “Lord, if you have ever made it rain, make it rain now.”  Just then a small cloud rolled over them and sprinkled small droplets of rain.  It wasn’t much, but was just the amount he needed to settle the dust and he sped around the car in front of them.  They made it to Gordon just in time for Mark to be delivered and Julie and I had a baby brother.
          I decided that I didn’t know what all the fuss was about because Mark couldn’t do anything.  Arthur, on the other hand was everything and it was a sad day when we picked up and moved to Lincoln for Dad to continue his education at the University of Nebraska.

           We had a bird back during the time my father-in-law, Wally, lived with us.  I had always wanted a bird.  Then I got one.  It turns out it was the second one but I didn’t remember that when Sherry brought the chick down stairs one Christmas.  He was a Quaker Parrot.  I had to close my eyes while she came into the room.  When I opened them up I saw a little bundle of feathers and fluff.  There were probably a few tears shed as I looked down at him--or her, you never knew for sure unless you had an expensive procedure done which we didn’t do.  My father in law named him, Herbie, after the car in the Disney movies.  He became “a him” because we just assumed he was a boy.  He was green and the car was green, anyway Herbie became his name.
          He spent a lot of time in his cage hanging upside down and babbling.  I assumed that he was going to talk but he didn’t early on.  He just babbled.  As I look back on it now, he was probably behaving the way a baby does who doesn’t speak yet.  He was making a noise that sounded like words but didn’t mean anything to us.
          I used to take him out of his cage and cuddle and talk to him and he became my buddy.  They tell you to exercise your bird so I let him perch on my fingers and then put another finger in front of him encouraging him to step to the next finger.  When he did that I moved my other finger back for him to step on.  Each time I did this I said step up and that was his first word, or words, “step up.”  I was excited the first time he said step up and said so.  Shortly thereafter part of our routine after the step up exercise was for me to say give me a kiss and I would put his beak under my lower lip.  Herbie really got into that and said “Give me a kiss.”  Then, he said his name, “Herbie.  We were thrilled that he knew three words, or phrases. 
          We were adding on to the house at that time and I used an air hammer a lot.  While I was renovating the house Herbie was in his cage make renovations of his own.  I would press the hammer and put three nails in place.  Herbie would make the same sound of the air hammer and put three nails in place.
          Sherry’s dad had a very distinctive way of yelling for her when she was upstairs.  It was kind of a sheRRY.  With the first part a bit softer and lower than the last.  It wasn’t long before Herbie was saying that too.  He probably got a real kick out of her running past his cage to see what her father wanted when Herbie was the one who had summoned her.
Of course he also said “Hi” when we waked past his cage and then “Ok” after we said “Hi Herbie” to him.  Then he began to put few of his words together.  He would stand there very calmly in his cage and say “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”  Our cat would come over to his cage and stand on her hind feet and stick her nose in between the bottom bars of the cage.  Herbie would then swiftly bite her nose.  As she jumped back, he would laugh at her with a throaty “Ha Ha Ha.”
          As I said, this was the time of the great renovation project where I was adding a room in the back for Wally, and also adding an extra seven feet to the second story which was to become additions to the rooms upstairs but will probably forever be the side attic.  During this project it was our custom to ask everyone at the front door where they were going in case they could pick up something for the project, which had taken on a life of its own.  The front door was also next to Herbies cage and it wasn’t long before he was asking everyone as they left the front door “Where you goin.” 
          But it was with Sherry that a real routine started.  When she went into the front room Herbie would say, “Hi.” And she would say “Hi, Herbie.”  He would then say “sheRRY.”  She would say “What Herbie.” And he would say “Where you goin.”  She would say “I’m going to the store.” He would say “Ok.”
          Herbie thought of himself as part of a flock, his flock, and when he was on top of his cage he was nearly at tall at Sherry and me.  His flock had two birds that sat in the “tree” higher then Herbie and they were Sherry and myself.  He was third in line and the animals were at the bottom of the tree and, since he was third in line, were beneath him.  They could and should be pecked.  The grand kids were also pretty small at that time and lower in the family tree.  Although he thought they deserved a good pecking we didn’t let them handle him much.  He was a bird living with his flock in a human house.
          Herbie was my second bird.  My first bird was a crow.  I was about 4 years old and we lived in Arthur, Nebraska.  When I went outside to play, I pretty much had the whole outdoors available to me.  We lived on the edge of town where it was Arthur one minute and ranches the next.  Of course calling Arthur a town was a bit of a stretch.  It was a village really of about 200 people in a county of about 700.  My mom tells me that you could hear the vroom, vroom, vroom of the diesel engine that powered the town but I don’t remember that.  I just remember that it was a great place for a kid to grow up.  My Dad used to sit on the porch.  When I thought I was walking over the range by myself he had me in his binoculars.  I remember one time hearing a hum coming from a telephone pole and thought it was Roy Rogers talking to the other cowboys out on the prairie.
          The telephone was a pretty new device in Arthur.  It had been around for years, just not in Arthur and so my Dad and the other people in town and out in the country used to prank each other when the phone came.  That fun continues to this day but it was a novelty then.
          I had a bird back in Arthur, or at least we were friends.  I named him Jimmy Crow.  When my dad taught classes at the high school across the street made of sand and round stones all of the kids would run to the window and say “Dougies’ playing with Jimmy Crow again.”  I never really did like that name but as I got older but at four I didn’t really care.  Jimmy would flutter down to my window when I was taking a nap in the afternoon.  He’d see me through the window and tap at the window with his beak until I woke up.  When I did, I got up and went out to play with Jimmy Crow.  I always wore a Santa Hat because he rode around on my head and poked at the spot where my ears would be.  One of my favorite places to play with him was the old water pump in the back yard.  Our duplex had inside plumbing but there was still a pump in the back yard.  I used to pump the water by the handle and Jimmy would bath in the water and take a drink.  We must have been friends for a long time but I don’t remember much else except one day I came out to play with Jimmy Crow and forgot my Santa Hat.  Jimmy flew to my head and began to pick at my ears which were exposed without the hat.  It really hurt, and knowing now how Herbie could get with his beak it probably did.  I threw my hands up on my head to protect myself.  I must have hit at him too.  Anyway, Jimmy promptly dissolved the friendship.  My last memory of him was Jimmy flying away from me, high in the air over the little two room school house where the next year I would start kindergarten.  I never saw Jimmy Crow again.

     At Cedar Falls High School in Cedar Falls, Iowa our main rivals were the hoods.  I’m not sure what they called us.  In tenth grade someone was always saying that there was going to be a rumble in Mandalay Park this Friday night.  Of course Friday night came and went and there was no rumble.  That’s probably because we all had other things to do but I can imagine the scene at the park if all the hoods showed up with all of us there also.  There would be a lot of shouting and nothing would happen until Orv showed up and then we would scatter like ants.  You spoke his name with reverence.  Orv, or Orville Morris, you said his name in hushed tones.
     I remember one time in 8th grade, shortly after I had moved to Cedar Falls from Mankato, Minnesota.  I was in Peete Junior High and was sitting next to Orv.  He looked at me a few times and scared me to death.  When he spoke to me it was always with a sneer and threat.  I remember one time he and a bunch of his friends had cornered a friend of mine in the lockers.  Now the lockers were set up in rows that that extended out into the hall.  There were small lockers set on top of each other.  Coats were to be hung in the large space under the lockers.  I’m sure the mastermind who designed the lockers thought the teachers could see under lockers and that would be good enough to stop any of the monkey business that might happen in the secluded part, way in the back.  It was certainly an interesting design, and a huge failure.  A group of persons could go back into the lockers and do who knows what.  With so many legs and feet to see, no one would be the wiser.  Well, as I said Orv and a group of his friends had cornered my friend in the back of the lockers.  I heard the loud sound of someone fist connecting with someone else and the next thing I saw was my friend flying out of the lockers completely horizontal to the tiled floor.  I was concerned about my friend but at the same time was pretty impressed.  I figured my friend did have a wise mouth and probably deserved what he got.
     Each day the stories about Orv grew bigger and bigger.  It was said that he could lift a car off the ground standing in the front of it.  The person who told that story had his listener’s rapt attention as he told of Orv walking to the front of a car, grabbing onto the bumper and lifting the front half of the car into the air.  Cars have gotten smaller and lighter since then but in 1964 they were heavy and everyone left believing the story to be true.
     Orv had a way of walking.  You could see with each step he made, he commanded attention.  There wasn’t a wasted pound on him, and as he walked, you knew it.  He had a swarthy dark complexion and long wavy black hair that reminded you of Danny in the movie Grease.  I remember one time in 11th grade he came out for football.  He played fullback and was given the ball.  He wasn’t fast but everyone got out of his way except our big linebacker.  This linebacker was easily 6 feet tall and weighed close to 200 pounds.  Orv didn’t put a move on him, he just ran at him.  When they collided Orv was still running and the Linebacker was headed backward, in the air.  It was simply amazing but Orv quit the team.  The rumor was that it interfered with his 8 hour night shift at the John Deere Tractor plant in Waterloo. 
     It was about then that our class’s attention turned from the local Hoods to the very real problem of guys from Waterloo schools dating our girls.  From then on the Rumble in the park was always going to be with the guys from West High School in Waterloo and it was always at Mandalay Park and it never happened.  It was about that time that everyone started carrying sticks for self-protection.  Now I don’t know if this is true or not but I may influenced that.   My family had relatives who were missionaries in Africa.  They probably hadn’t been there for 30 years but I remember that they brought back some gifts for my dad when he was a boy.  There was a strange tooth brush that was made out of a curved branch with a frayed end.  They brought a war hatchet that looked every bit like you would imagine a tomahawk to look and they brought with them a walking stick.  This walking stick was about 18 inches long, a couple inches round and had a face carved into it.  I was told by my dad the purpose of the club was to be carried by the elders as they walked around the village at the end of the day.  It looked peaceful enough but it was carved out of Iron wood and it certainly could be used as a club.  I have no doubt it would lay a person’s head open if that was the need at the time.  I kept these things on display in my room and told everyone who would listen of their purpose.  It was about that time that people started carrying sticks or clubs in their car in case they happened to run into the boys from West.
     Each stick was different.  One of my friends carried a sanded down 2 by 2 with wire wrapped around the end.  He told of the time he was jumped by four guys from West.  He reached under his car seat for his stick.  He did some damage and drove them off.  Or so he said, some of his stories were more entertainment then real fact.  Unlike the stories about Orv, which we believed to be true, my friends stories were very entertaining but probably didn’t happen. 
     My stick was in fact a boomerang cut out of ¾’s inch ply wood.  It was big and cut at a 90 degree angle.  Actually it was cut and sanded down during my ninth grade boomerang phase.  A  ¼ inch boomerang always came back but broke in the first day or so.  We tried to cut a big one out of thicker plywood to solve that problem.  The ¾ inch ply wood didn’t break, but didn’t come back either.  When you threw the boomerang it flew about five feet above the ground and then at about 25 feet out it went straight up in the air. I took it to the park and threw it different ways to try to make it come back but it always went about 25 feet straight out and then up in the air.  I never figured I would actually throw it at anyone but it was sure scary looking and I think that was the idea.  One time I did throw it.  I was driving my 1949 fire engine red Plymouth convertible.   The top was down, it was a sunny day and school was just out.  I was following a bunch of my friends who were in a car about 25 feet in front of me.  They were slamming on the breaks, making faces and generally being a pain.  So I slammed on my breaks and quickly grabbed my big boomerang from under the seat, stood up and threw it at them.  I can still see their faces turn from goofy grins to looks of abject horror as the boomerang flew toward their back window.  It came very close to them and then, just as I knew it would, it went straight up in the air as their car peeled off.  I ran and got the boomerang and got in my car and headed home.  If I saw kids behaving like that today, one or all of them would be in jail, but it was a different time or maybe I was just younger. 
     We didn’t hear about any more episodes with the sticks as that phase ran its course.  However, I did see Orville Morris every day in school.  I always believed that he probably did work at John Deere because Orv could easily pass for 25.  From then on I only heard occasionally about him and how he slept through class.  I saw him most days in the halls carrying the books of a girl he had gone with throughout Senior High School.  Then I graduated, and I never thought I would hear about Orv again, but I did.  We had a 30 year class reunion and into the room walked Orville Morris and his wife, the girl he had walked the halls with every day in high school.  My wife said to me, “Who’s that.”  I turned, looked and a shudder went up my spine.  I said, “That’s Orville Morris.”  Sherry said, “He doesn’t look so big and bad.”  She went over to talk to the couple.  I gulped and went over too.  It turns out his wife was an RN.  Orv had retired from John Deere and they raised foster kids for many years.  It was a good life.
     Later my wife said to me, “What a nice man, he’s just a pussy cat.  I can’t believe that man is the same person you told me about, that you were all so scared of.  He’s just a nice person.”  I said, “But that’s Orville Morris.”  She just laughed, as I thought, if she only knew.

I probably learned about stocks and bonds in High School.  The one point that didn’t sink in was that stocks were created and based on real value.  All I heard was that a person could create a company and finance whatever they wanted by the sale of stocks.  That’s how T.R.E.L. was born.  T.R.E.L. was short for Technological Research and Engineering Laboratories INC. 
                I had a conversation at the time with a friend of mine about making wine and it seemed pretty simple--it was easy to make wine, all we needed was money for supplies.  Never mind that I didn’t drink.  If we could get money we could make wine for parties for kids our age in high school.  Never mind the fact that we never intended to make any wine.  What we really needed was money to make a canon--a real canon that shot off something.  You couldn’t sell stocks to fund a canon, but you could sell stock for a wine making business particularly to high school kids.
                I had a group of friends who signed off on the idea right away.  We had a guy who was a second in state wrestler, a pretty good offensive tackle and was perfect for our Sargent at Arms.   We had a guy who was so darned good looking the girls literally swooned as he walked by.  He would be a good President.  There was another guy who could talk you into anything if he set his mind to it.  He would be our head of sales.  There was another guy who knew how to make wine and the canon.  For lack of a more appropriate place for him he was named vice president.  Then there was me.  I came up with the idea but more importantly I could make the stock since my Dad had a stencil machine and my Mom could type up the stencil for the stock.  So logically I became the Secretary.  I told my parents of the plan leaving out a few of the details.  They must have known something was up, but also must have thought this would be such a wonderful learning experience for me.  Oh Parents.  How wonderfully naïve they are.  I only learned how naïve they could be when I became a parent myself.  So one Saturday my stencils for the stock in T.R.E.L. were made and I (literally) cranked out 100 copies.
                I took the stock to school on Monday and everyone in TREL was impressed.  We set our basic price at 25 cents per stock and our head of sales began to formulate his sales pitch.  He rightly figured the girls would be easy.  He gave the President of our organization some stock to move and it wasn’t long he sold about 50 shares.  The guys would be harder and here’s where his sales pitch came in.  He told prospects of our plan to make wine for parties.  He said all we needed was the financing which we could get with the sale stock in our company.  The idea sounded good but most guys were suspicious and immediately said no.  Our head of sales said to our prospect that’s fine, he would move on, but he sure hated the fact that this person would miss the stock holder’s parties.  Of course the prospect then perked up and asked who had bought shares so far.  After a few names of some very popular girls were reeled off the prospect caved and bought a share or two.
                We knew that there never would be any stock holders parties, much less money spent on wine production.  We should have gone to jail but we didn’t and the sales machine continued on.  When we needed more shares I simply ran off some more copies.
                Eventually, when we didn’t come through on our promises, a few people demanded their money back.  It wasn’t the girls really.  They had their time in the sun and so what if it never amounted to anything, they had their stock certificate signed by our president and were happy.  They probably would have spent $10.00 instead of $1.00 for the same thrill.  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately we didn’t know that at the time.  But the guys were different, they spend their 25 cents and they wanted their party.  So at first, we asked them if they had received word yet on the bonus.  When they said no, one of us would pull out a few pennies from our pocket and say with pride, here you go.
                The penny trick only worked so long and eventually they would corner our head of sales and ask for their money back.  He said, he was only in charge of sales, not refunds and they would have to talk to our president.  He very aloofly said he was the president all right but didn’t handle refunds they would have to talk to the vice president.  When they talked to the vice president he said he only did vice president things which certainly didn’t involve refunds.  He sent them to me and I said as secretary I am responsible for a lot of things but not refunds.  They would have to talk our sergeant of arms who was in charge of refunds.  Then then approached him and asked for their money back.  Not only was he a fun guy to be around he was also one of the biggest guy in school.  So when they asked him for their money he slowly turned to them and said, “Well, you ain’t a gona to get it.”  And that was the end of that.
                I already mentioned that my Dad taught at the University in Cedar Falls and he had, among others, Norm Jespersen, our Vice Principal, in class.  Dad told how he had made the stock on his Stencil machine and they all laughed.  Norm told the class a few adventures of TREL and if it wasn’t so darn funny he could shut the whole darn thing down.  I wonder how many stock adventures start out like ours did and the main people end up in jail.  We of course were oblivious to that and continued to sell our stock. 
I’m sure we ended up with 30 dollars which we spend on the canon.  Our vice president made the thing out of a pipe in shop class and then made a stand for it.  We spent the rest of the money we made on a week end retreat in the woods and thought this would be the perfect time to try out our canon.  Our sergeant at arms poured a bunch of nails down the front of it and was ready to light the fuse.  Before that happened, someone decided that we needed a picture for posterity of the canon going off.  I was the only one with a camera so I was designated the picture taker.  I hid behind a log about five feet from the barrel.  I took solace in the fact that it wasn’t pointed at me.  The fuse was lit and everyone ran back about 20 feet from the canon and hid behind trees.  I suddenly thought, “Oh my God, what if it blows up.”
                At that precise moment the canon fired with a terrible loud boom.  After the smoke had settled everyone came out laughing, shouting and jumping.  Mostly they were laughing at me and how I could be so stupid as to lay that close to the canon.  On the upside, the canon worked beautifully.  We saw nails in trees several hundred feet away.  Now I don’t know if the canon was ever fired again, in fact I don’t even know where it is to this day.  But thanks to T.R.E.L., Technological Research and Engineering Laboratories Inc. we built a canon, it worked and I have a picture of it.
                                                                          

                  If you heard the name now, you would probably think it was a real name.  The first name Harley has become a popular name in the movies and you see it pop up now and then as a real name.  It’s become a girl’s name and, I suppose in some instances, a boy name.  Well, it’s always been a boy’s name but mostly a name you heard from older people in the southern part United States.  The last name Grew is plausible and it probably always sounded like a person’s real name.  So the name Harley Grew could be a real person now, but in the 1960’s nobody thought it was real, well, almost nobody.
                We had an assistant coach who was quite a catch at Cedar Falls High School.  His exploits on the mat were legendary.  In addition to being a national Champion, he was nearly undefeated in his college career.  He was a short man but his shoulders were so broad no one ever noticed his height.  But he was short.  His nickname was Beets which did not come from his wrestling career in that he was difficult to beat.  It came from the fact that he was little and when he stood up in the beet fields that grew near where he grew up you couldn’t see him.
                He was like a lot of coaches then who were wonderful in their sport but were hired only for that sport.  Their other job at school involved a lot of study hall supervision, drivers training, and so on.  Now he may have moved beyond study hall, I simply don’t know, but at Cedar Falls High School his main job was assistant wrestling coach, which was followed by assistant track coach, and Study Hall.
                I loved having him for study hall.  He let me go to the gym to work out which was important for wrestling.  A lot of people signed out for the library and Harley Grew was one of them.  Now Harley Grew was a fictitious person.  He was cut from whole cloth.  Some of the smarter kids in my class signed him up as a new student in high school with all of the necessary paper work.  Harley had a list of classes every year and he had homework which was completed by someone.  His classes included study hall and it was someone’s responsibility to sign him out for the library.  All of the teachers knew he was made up but graded his papers anyway.  The principal, C.C. Standard and Assistant Principal Norm Jespersen knew he was fiction but dealt with his attendance or lack there off in stride.  Almost all of them, students and staff, knew Harley Grew was made up. 
               My dad was an instructor at the University in Cedar Falls.  He was a Professor of Education.  I used to say, when the topic came up, he taught teachers to be teachers.  Many of my instructors in High School had a class with him.  Dad’s specialty was school administration so Norm took several classes from him and during their break Norm told dad of the exploits of Harley Grew.  I suppose he told him because I was in the class who had made up Harley though, in truth, I only signed him out a time or two for the Library from study hall.  Everyone knew Harley Grew was made up except one person who thought he was real and supervised him in study hall, Beets Dotson. 
               Mr. Dotson’s main job was making sure everyone sat in their seats and the hour didn’t dissolve into spit wads and paper air planes.  It was also his job to make sure everyone was where they were signed out to be and it was the inquisitive mind of Beets Dotson who discovered Harley Grew was never where he was supposed to be.  He often said one day he would catch Harley Grew somewhere other than the library and was slowly putting together a case on the truancy of Harley Grew.  Naturally the person he spoke with the most was Norm because it was Norms responsibility to punish those cutting classes.  One day Beets marched into Norm Jespersen’s office.  He slammed down a bunch of paper work on Jespersen’s desk and said “I finally have the goods on this Grew kid and he isn’t in the library.  He’s never gone to the library and I can prove it.”
Norm held his laughter through many of these discussions. 
                Beets clenched a fist full of sign out sheets from study hall and turned red with anger as he told Norm about how he had looked everywhere for Harley and the kid wasn’t where he was supposed to be.  Norm finally told him, “Beets there is no Harley Grew.  He doesn’t exist.  The kids in the 11th Grade just made him up.”  I can imagine how Beets anger and the flushed red in his cheeks slowly subsided as the truth sank in.  His shoulders slowly slumped as he turned and walked away to the sound of Norm Jespersen’s laughter.
                I probably heard story at the supper table one night because Jespersen had shared it with my dad who then told everyone in our family the story of Beets and Harley Grew.  As you can imagine my Dad got a big laugh out of the whole adventure as did I.   But it was with pride when I heard Harley’s name again spoken by our class Valedictorian as she talked his adventures in Cedar Falls High.  His name was announced as part of our graduating class.  C.C. Standard said his name with all of the others as we walked across the stage to accept our diplomas.  Harley Grew had graduated from High School and could now go off to college, or get a job or go off to fight in the Viet Nam War or could do all three provided a member of our class was there too.

My grandson and I drove at first and then walked for his first three and one half years of school.  This year, his fourth grade year, his grandmother walks him down the block to meet friends and off they go.  He sees me at the corner as a crossing guard before he goes down to school and never is out of eye shot of his grandmother or me.  That is certainly different from my early years.  In kindergarten, I walked across a field to the little school house.  In first through fourth grade, I walked to school.  It was about eight or nine blocks and I covered the distance with a friend.  He lived just down the block and I had met him over the summer.  He became my best friend during my Lincoln, Nebraska years.  Mom or Dad followed us a few times for practice before school started.  Mom had my younger brother, who was still in diapers, to care for, and I can’t imagine how she could drive us after school started. 

We had only one car which Dad took to work at the University so I only remember being driven a few times when it rained pretty hard.  I wore a yellow rain coat with a separate hat with a brim.  The brim kept the rain out of my face and the hat hung down to my shoulders to keep the rain off my neck.  We were met at the school grounds by the big kids who patrolled the corners as crossing guards.  You don’t see too many kids today as crossing guards.  It’s mostly teachers and mothers, dads, and grandparents who are the crossing guards.  We carry signs and walk into the street to stop the traffic.  When you see kids on patrol at the corners they never walk into the streets but signal when it’s safe to cross.  In my day the patrol kids carried a large bamboo pole.  I seem to remember a yellow flag attached to the pole which they held out to stop traffic so the kids could cross.  They wore a reflective belt around their waist that was sewn onto a strap that ran over their shoulder.  On the strap they pinned a badge that identified them as safety patrol.  Their whole aura bespoke authority and I longed for the day when I would be old enough to be on the safety patrol.

As I said, I only saw the safety patrol on rainy mornings because most days, when I walked with my friend, we cut across the playground behind school and came to the school from the back.  The playground was huge, at least to my young eyes.  It covered a large area behind the school.  There were swings, merry go rounds, teeter totters, a Jungle gym and behind them, was a large field.  We played on the equipment some but mostly chased each other, the girls or the girls chased us.   A loud bell sounded the time to line up and go into school.

One time my best friend and I went to see the principal.  We were summoned from our class to her office.  She was an older lady, short, and chubby with white hair.  She was probably in her forties but she looked really old to us as a person in their sixties or seventies would look.  A boy had accused us of bringing a dart to school.  He was the neighborhood bully.  He put some sugar in the gas tank of a caterpillar digging out a basement in a new house across the street from his house.  He was sent to the reformatory.  Before that, he bullied us all the time.  Once, to get back at him and probably scare him away, my friend and I put a dart behind us.  We changed it back and forth between our hands behind our backs to give the impression that there were several darts and we wouldn’t hesitate to use them if he didn’t go home.  He left. 

The dart was made of wood and had a long metal point on one end.  The other end would have had feathers but they had worn off during the days it had been used by people, older than we were, to throw at a target.  The episode played out just as we had hoped when he went home.  However it backfired because he accused us of bringing the dart to school.  According to him we threatened him with it on the playground.  Of course we hadn’t brought it to school and with a tearful retelling of the story the principal believed us.  It helped that he probably had been brought to the principal’s office many times for things no amount of tearful explaining could justify.  She sent us back to our room with a stern warning which apparently worked because that was the only time I ever went to her office.

One time my friend and I were walking back from school.  We walked down the tree lined boulevard and turned toward home.  We walked past a girl’s house we both liked and suddenly a car appeared.  His mom was driving it and my mom was sitting on the passenger’s side.  They both looked worried and told us to get in the car.  We did and we went to our respective homes.  That’s all I knew at the time but my dad answered the phone that night and told a joke.  He was apparently talking to my Doc Pop, Mom’s Dad.  He said we were having some pretty stark weather in Lincoln that day in response to a question on the other end.  Later I learned that Charles Starkweather had begun his murderous rampage that morning in Lincoln.  He had killed his 14 year old girlfriend’s parents and left with her in the family car.  My Mom could not have known where he was when we got out of school but feared he might be still in Lincoln.   Her kids walking home from school were in danger.  Her fear wasn’t unfounded because Starkweather had been our garbage man, also something I found out later.  The days passed and he was stopped in a gun battle out west. 

His girlfriend was sentenced to prison and that’s the last I heard of them until many years later.  I had moved from Lincoln to Mankato, Minnesota and then to Cedar Falls, Iowa.  I went to college at Morningside in Sioux City, Iowa where I met my wife.  I graduated in 1970.  We were married and after a time we lived in Denver, Colorado.  My wife volunteered at Denver General Hospital as a rape counselor.  That’s something she trained there for.  I was never comfortable with the hours on weekends that she worked but that’s when the rapes occurred.  One time she came home from work at the hospital and told me in hushed tones that she may be working with Charles Starkweather’s girlfriend.  She had overheard a few nurses at the hospital talking about a woman who was training there to be a nurse.  They said she was Carol Fugate but she used a different name and had recently gotten out of prison.  Changing her name didn’t stop gossip and apparently her training at Denver General became common knowledge.  Although my wife talked to the women several times she never asked her who she really was and the women never offered any information about the past but she would have been the right age.  She probably was who they all thought she was.  My wife said she was distant and had a stare that you find in prison.

Her boyfriend Charles Starkweather was long dead at that time but I have often wondered about her since those fateful days when our lives touched once again in Denver.

                It’s the start of school.  We lucked out because our grandson went to camp in early August so he was pretty well stocked up on new clothes.  With his clothes he got a new pair of shoes which he lost at camp.  When we went shopping for the new school year, in addition to another pair of shoes, he got all of his papers, pencils, a back pack, folders, Kleenex and so on.  His scissors and ruler from last year worked just fine.

                When I started school my new purchases also began in the summer.  I stayed for several weeks with my Grandfather and Grandmother or Grammie and Grampie as we called them.  As we got older that changed to Gram and Gramp but I could always count on new shoes, a suit and a white shirt from them.  The suite was always black or dark blue.  We looked pretty similar on Sunday mornings as Gramp preached to his congregation.

                I began my school years in tiny Arthur, Nebraska which is about fifty miles north of Ogallala.   We used to say there were about 700 people in Arthur County 100 of whom lived in Arthur.  Not much has changed.  My first school was a two room school house.  I’m not sure of the breakdown of classes but they were probably kindergarten through fourth grade on one side of the wall and fifth through eighth grade on the other side of the wall.  The high school age kids, grades nine through twelve, went to the new high school on the hill.

                There were one or two other kids sitting in my row of desks who were also in Kindergarten.  I remember having to fill out some work books and listen very closely as the teacher taught the higher grades.  I’m not sure if the teacher told us listen and learn when the other kids were learning but that’s what we did.  In fact, that was one of the advantages of the one and two room school houses.  The younger kids were exposed to what the older kids learned which led to my being a year ahead when I went to another school the following year. 

                In the school in Arthur, we had to raise our hands if we had to use the facilities and signify one finger or two depending on what we had to do.  That wasn’t unusual.  I had to do that at other schools too but I’ve thought over the years why was it the teachers business what we had to do.  Was it only to gage the time we’d be gone depending on the fingers we raised or was there a more sinister reason which escapes me now.

                We had outside plumbing at that school in Arthur which meant we went to one of two outhouses behind the school.  One was for the boys and one for the girls.  Since our duplex was not far away, I usually went home and used the inside plumbing.  We lived across a field about half way between the high school and the grade school.  Dad worked at the high school while my sister and I went to the grade school.  It was convenient.

                Recess was a big time for us and we played on the equipment next to the building.  We had swings which were hung by chains from a large pipe supported by two other pipes on either ends.  I remember the wooden seats on the swings allowed us to go pretty high and were very easy to bail out from when we jumped from the swing.  I’m sure there have been plenty of accidents to cause the replacement of the wooden seats with straps.  I notice I can’t swing as high or jump out as easily with the leather or rubber straps but it could have something to do with my age.  My grandson does just fine.

                We had a large Merry Go Round that allowed you to climb as it went around.  It was kind of a combination Jungle Gym and Merry Go Round and was exhilarating to climb to the top as it whizzed in circles.  I suppose a little kid must have fallen while the contraption was moving so those kinds of Merry Go Rounds were removed from most locations.  Several years ago I took my son to Arthur while we were videotaping scenes in communities in Western Nebraska.  There, sitting next to the same two room school house I had gone too, was the same Jungle Gym/Merry Go Round I had used as a child.  Both were still in use. 

              We moved to Lincoln for my first grade year.  Dad took classes and worked at the University.  I went to College View Elementary School.  One of my first memories was a boy stuck to a bar on the playground.  He had apparently been trying to lick the frozen sheen from a Jungle Gym or something when he got stuck.  Years later I spoke with someone who was a grade behind me at the same school and said she saw the same thing. 

                Most of all, I remember the games of chase we played with the girls.  I was so proud that I was never caught and kissed.  I now know the other boys allowed themselves to be caught.  A concept I had trouble with at the time apparently.  I’ve tried to tell me grandson how the game works but he won’t listen.  Maybe its genetics but he hasn’t been caught yet.

                I was in second grade when I sat in a long row next to the windows at College View.  There were two events that I remember from that year.  One was of a boy who sat behind me.  He tried to make it too the lavatories to throw up.  He didn’t make it and was promptly excused.  The teacher went on teaching.  Soon a janitor showed up with a bucket of saw dust and he cleaned up the mess while the teacher kept on teaching.  As an aside I remember how excited I was to learn the school had lavatories.  I had visions of test tubes and beakers.  It wasn’t long before I found out how important a “b” and “v” can be.

                The other event I remember occurred on a cloudy day in the fall.  It was 1956.  We were told that we were going to have a drill.  When a specific siren went off we were told to climb under our desks and not to peek.  Those of us next to the windows were told again we were specifically not to look outside.  I, however, did take a peek.  I heard an explosion and saw a large white cloud of smoke rising into the air.  We stayed under our desks for five or ten minutes.  When we were finally told we could come out and sit at our desks, the teacher started to teach again.  Latter, we learned that we at gone through an Atomic Bomb drill because we lived close to the Strategic Air Command headquarters or SAC as they have since been called.  I don’t see what the drill proved but at least we did something.  I’m not sure anything would have saved us but hiding under our desks gave us a sense of purpose and probably made those in charge feel a little better.  It was the threat of the Atomic Bomb or the Hydrogen bomb in the fifties, sixties and seventies that shaped my life.  I remember watching the wall come down in Germany and I realized the threat was gone.  I told my kids to watch and remember but in truth it was me who needed to watch as all of the memories came flooding back.