Traded for a Hog

I never know what I'll learn when Google alerts me to another Orphan Train story.

In this latest report, from Illinois, I wondered how the two brothers, placed in different homes, felt when they found each other—after 85 years apart.

And I paused when I learned that five percent of the U.S. population—that's about 16 million people—are tied to orphan train history.

But the story that stopped me short was about one small, not very strong boy, who didn't didn't become the worker that the farmer wanted. But all was not lost: the farmer traded the boy to a neighbor for a hog.

To read what Lynnette Forth wrote for the Prairie Advocate about Carol Chandler, the orphan train researcher who, when she dies, wants her research to be buried with her, click:

http://www.prairieadvocate.com/2016/04/17/orphan-trains-an-important-part-of-nw-illinois-history/atcb8hu/

Joy Hayden

The catastrophic Republican River flood of 1935 has long fascinated me. 

Two years before I was born in Alma, Nebraska, a Republican River town, walls of water, eight-to-ten feet high, bolted down the 500-mile-long river. The torrent moved from Colorado through Nebraska and into Kansas, swelling from several hundred feet to three to four miles wide, sweeping houses, people, barns, horses, cattle, innumerable chickens  and wildlife to their deaths, upturning railroad tracks, smashing bridges, and carving new beds for the river. 

As a teenager, I watched the federal government built a huge dam across the river, a dam to control the river and end all its floods.

In 1989, my Great Plains Patchwork came out. Two chapters deal with the flood. One chapter described it, but the other chapter, "My Flood Story," told Arlene Dake Mintzmyer's experiences in her words. Her story had never been published. She refused to speak to reporters, no matter how they coaxed, although she did agree to let Willa Cather interview her, a planned discussion that never materialized.

So why did Arlene let me tape her story? Blood. We're distantly related, but close enough that she trusted me.

Since then, I planned to write a book about the flood. I collected bits and pieces, newspaper stories, typed memories. Then I found High Water Mark, a 250-page collection of news stories and photographs by Raymond Borchers. And in 1995, a 462-page photocopied account, Bluff-to-Bluff by Marlene (Harvey) Wilmot.

Every word I found strengthened my resolve to write my own flood book. But I was always too busy writing something else: first Mail-Order Kid, then Thieves, Rascals & Sore Losers and now my work in progress, I Watched My Dad Beat Jimmy Hoffa.

Then, ta-da! Joy Hayden's book, The 1935 Republican River Flood, fell into my hands. I've read 108 of its 160 pages, but I knew long before that I was reading the book I would have written.  It's all there: the data, the history, the stories, the pictures, the clean professional writing, wiping out the need for me to write a book. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. 

Here are some of Hayden's quotes:

"Local historians agree that it is the deadliest weather event of any kind to occur in the Republican River Valley in modern history." (That would include dust storms and tornadoes.)

"…many residents believed they were witnessing the end of the world. The suffocating downpour made the simple act of breathing extremely difficult." The thunder roared so loudly "that the family had to shout to hear one another as they sat side by side watching floodwater creep under the door of their house."

Afterwards, searching for a dead woman, "the buzzards called attention to her location" but they'd left her body in such "poor condition…that she remains unidentified."

Books rarely make me weep, but this story brought tears:  Bill Rogers, sixty-five, and a shepherd dog were doing chores at the barn when the water hit. Rogers freed the livestock as a swell swept him away, dashed him against a big elm tree. He fought the water, managed to reach the lower limb and pulled the dog up with him. One of the barn cats joined them. They watched the barn crash and disappear. Half the farm, annihilated, swept by.

That night rain soaked Rogers, the dog and the cat. He shivered so much he could barely maintain a grip. "In response to Roger's distress, the dog settled himself around Roger's shoulder like a shawl. The cat curled into his lap. Together they waited and watched." 

Joy Hayden, who wrote this fine book, heard about the flood as a child. Her curiosity evolved into spending years compiling the history of the flood, meeting with survivors, and traveling along the river. Her book is available through The History Press www.historypress.net or, of course, through amazon.com.

On Railings

Ah, so I'm not the only kid who slid down the banister. 

So did John Jacobus, Orphan Train rider from Brooklyn.

Now his daughter is heading to visit Ottawa, Kansas, where her father grew up—and slid down the banister.

"I had the great good fortune to have the dad I did," Judie Jacobus said.

She's planning quite a trip, not only to Ottawa but also to the National Orphan Train Complex in Concordia where she'll cut the ribbon on a new train car exhibit named after her dad.

For an engaging story full of pertinent details, go to:

 http://www.ottawaherald.com/news/local/orphan-train-descendant-set-for-return-visit-to-ottawa/article_e57657bd-cd16-5c56-b721-df1c5af60432.html

The Tech Whiz

The Tech Whiz

I decided to upgrade, so I traded in my flip phone for a smart one. 

It was neat. It had a calendar I could use, and did. I liked its calculator and its stopwatch. 

Its camera never shot what I wanted it to shoot, and what it shot instead came in sideways, but that didn't surprise me. Cameras and I never got along.

However, I couldn't figure out how to use the phone.

I knew how to answer a call and how to hang up. But I couldn't figure out how to hear what the caller said.

That didn't matter much. The only person who ever called me on my cell was my chum Paco, and I usually knew why he was calling so I could answer what I thought he might have said. We carried on precariously like that.

Then one spring day striding into Caffeine Dreams, I passed a gal talking on her cell phone, and guess what. She held it to her ear.

To hold my phone to my ear had never occurred to me, it seemed so old fashioned. Besides which, I use my landline's speaker phone 100%, so I never put that phone to my ear. 

I could hardly wait to call Paco. I whipped my phone out, punched his face, and heard the ring.

"Paco," he said. I barely heard his familiar voice, so I plopped the phone on my ear.

"Say something!" I cried.

"What?" 

I heard his loud question just fine, so I replied, "Oh never mind." And hung up.

My phone's working just fine now. And I have only myself to thank, me, the Tech Whiz.

Warm wishes,

Marilyn 

from: a JoLt of CoFFeY 

 An Intermittent Newsletter

by Marilyn June Coffey

Web: www.marilyncoffey.net

Blog: http://marilynjcoffey.blogspot.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/marilyn.j.coffey

Author of:

JackJack & JuneBug, A love song in steamy poems and poignant posts

Thieves, Rascals & Sore Losers, A cheeky account of Nebraska's power grabbers

Mail-Order Kid, An orphan train rider's story

Great Plains Patchwork, A memoir featured on Atlantic Monthly's cover

The Battle of Orleans, An illustrated documentary about the Marcella Marathon

Marcella, An internationally published novel

Pricksongs, Tart poems from the sixties

A Cretan Cycle, A feminist poem retells the Greek myth of the Minotaur

Mas - tur - ba - tion, A rollicking tract

Buy Coffey's books 

from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Coffey/e/B001KCI1IU

and other dealers

In memory of Jack Loscutoff

co-author of JackJack & JuneBug

http://www.jackloscutoff.com/

Want me to take you off this mailing list? 

Reply and write REMOVE in the subject line.

Belly Up, Part II

On the subject of pelicans, Greg Kosmicki send me what he called his "Goose and Pelican" poem. It's a neat poem. The part that particularly struck me was this pelican description:

when I saw the pelicans with their gangly necks

pursuing their strange preoccupation with being birds

when they obviously have not been designed for it

with rain slicker beaks and driftwood-chunk shaped bodies.

See below to read the whole poem, "Migration." It's from Greg Kosmicki's book "We have always been coming to this morning." Enjoy it!

Migration

 

"See Dad there they are!  There's some more of those birds!"

"Ah, yes! The geese!  I thought  it was the geese

you saw last night!"

It must have been like a vision to her--

 

have you ever seen them, flying at night over a city

their bellies lit from the glare of lamps

a surreal procession of distracted birds

looking for a place to land

where community memory must tell them

here is our place to land

here is where the fathers and mothers slept and fed?

But it is night, they are tired

there are no marshes, no bogs

no fields full of grain leavings, no water

but only flat concrete parking lots

house tops, rows of lights,

some flicking on and off,

car tops, flat roofs, sloped roofs, angled roofs

no place to land, so they stay

they stay where they can stay no longer

like tired moths beating their wings

against the memory of a flame at a dead light bulb,

they cannot land, they can't come to rest

and my daughter has seen them

as an apparition, a sighting, a seeing.

 

We saw the geese again this early fall morning

and she says

"See they're flying in that shape!

See that dad!"

I read somewhere once about the mechanics of the vee,

how the lead goose takes the brunt of the wind

works hardest in cutting a hole into the air

the others magically pass through,

flies in this position for a while

maybe 15 or 20 minutes

then drops back and another

takes over so the other geese work less

but still get to come along,

that eventually perhaps several others will take the lead.

 

I tell her all this stuff

and she listens politely as she always does

she knows I tend to ramble

and then I start to tell her about the bison

in the snow storms but she changes the subject

gently guiding me like the lead goose.                     

 

Just before we turned off the hiway

towards the school building where I took her

so that some other members of our species might lead her

I remembered a moment some years ago

as I drove across the sand hills of Western Nebraska

but I didn't tell her.

She was already talking about something else

some little girl topic, her curiosity about the geese

fulfilled miles ago by my earnest bombast

but I was stuck on migration

 

and I thought of that rain swept afternoon

in my UPS package car

as I whipped across the ageful Sand hills--

these dunes of sand

stopped in mid-storm, mid-sentence almost,

 

when I saw the pelicans with their gangly necks

pursuing their strange preoccupation with being birds

when they obviously have not been designed for it

with rain slicker beaks and driftwood-chunk shaped bodies.

 

I slowed down my brown van

almost to a stop and somewhere the dust

I had disarranged in my haste in passing fell behind me

into a neat pattern onto the blacktop.

I watched as the pelicans flew.

 

Their flight as a flock one continuous integrated movement--

the lead pelican pumps its wings three times,

rises to a peak,

the tip of a swell,

then does not pump,

slowly drops down. 

The one behind the leader pumps

three times,

rises up to the peak,

then slowly drifts down.

 

This motion repeated  

the length of the flock

so that you will witness pelicans' flight

as a stunning wave-like motion,

each bird so ungainly

that when you think exactly

there is no hope,

the bird must  crash down

it can't possibly pull itself out of this one,

 

it pumps its wings again to follow up the wave

made by the one in front of it,

each bird                                             

rolling up to the crest

and down through the trough

of this sacred living together on earth.

Belly Up

It's true what they say about pelicans, their mouths can hold more than their bellies can. 

It must be true; it's on the Internet. So I know that a pelican's stomach can hold no more than a gallon, but its bill can hold up to three gallons.

For other curious pelican matter, some symbolic and others dating to the 1600s, see https://mercuriuspoliticus.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/the-pelicans-beak-holds-more-than-its-belly-can/

Why am I writing about pelicans?

Because it's spring (or almost) and cranes aren't the only birds skimming through the air.

So are pelicans. Migrating. Big ones. Up to 20 pounds with wings spreading up to 10 feet.

Where? Oh, I wish I were there. At the Harlan County Reservoir, south central Nebraska, right next to where I grew up in Alma.

The Harlan County Lake Association is offering free birding boat tours to see the pelicans during the last week of March.

Maybe I'll just up and go.

Details from one of my favorite World-Herald staff writers, David Hendee, click http://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/white-pelicans-flock-to-harlan-reservoir/article_e60f9f94-2488-56f2-a3cd-5157eaa42474.html

Titanic Riders

When the unsinkable British ship THE TITANIC hit that iceberg and sank, she ejected children destined to become Orphan Train riders when their parents drowned.

Read all about it in

 http://www.crookstontimes.com/article/20160311/NEWS/160319932

The writing is uneven, but the subject is fascinating, especially if you read clear to the final sentence.