Saturday, March 25, 1978 - 48 years ago today

 72º here in La Feria, TX at 9:00 am Wednesday - predicted high of 90º; still dry as a bone!  Click on any photo to enlarge.

Dad, November 1963 at our mobile home in Omaha

My dad, Kermit Lester Miles, was born near Pana, Illinois, on September 6, 1904.  He passed away on Saturday, March 25,1978, in his farm house between Callaway and Oconto, Nebraska.  Dad grew up near Huron, South Dakota, and had come down to Custer County, NE in 1932 or 1933 to pick corn by hand - at one cent per bushel, plus room & board..  He met mom when he went into the Callaway Telephone office to call home and she was the "operator" at the time.

Dad in 1933

By March of 1978 Dad had been on the farm/ranch with an Oconto, NE address, about half-way between Oconto and Callaway, NE 31 years.  In 1947 he had helped move our house and barn some 7 miles from the ranchland out to a road only about a mile off Highway 40 that runs from near Kearney, NE, through Oconto and Callaway northwest to Arnold, NE.  Highway 40 was gravel at the time and the road that ran by our place was dirt, with a smattering of river gravel, I think.

At the start of that move, the landlord, James Cornish, had bought a small wooden chicken house, locating it up the hill a bit from where the house and barn eventually was moved to, and Dad spent many a night staying in the little building.

With four boys in the family and four boys in Jim Cornish's family, we all helped with the work on the farm, especially remember the haying crews and working cattle at "the ranch", the oriignal site of our house and barn.

By 1978 it was determined that PCA (Production Credit Association) was not willing to loan the partnership of Dad and my oldest brother Roger operating money to proceed with their row crop and cattle operation.  I believe the interest rates in the late 1970's were very high and much of agriculture was having trouble, moneywise.   A farm sale date was set for March 27, 1978, to sell the fair-sized cattle herd and farm equipment.  They were still on rented land where Dad lived.

Arial photo of our place in the 1970's

We lived near Clarinda, IA (about 45 miles east of Nebraska City, NE, and I planned on going out for the weekend to help Dad and Roger line up equipment for the sale the following Wednesday.  My younger brother, Darrell, flew in to Omaha from either Ohio or Florida where he was working for Cargill in their Accounting Department and I picked him up at the airport and we drove on out to the home place, surprising Mom & Dad as we had not told them Darrell would be coming.  I can't remember if this was on Friday afternoon or on Saturday morning.  

I recall on Saturday that Dad spent time haying the cattle with the John Deere tractor that had the FarmHand Loader on it.  This was to the west side of the buildings in the photo above.  There had been snow that hadn't melted where the machinery was to be displayed at the sale the next Wednesday and it was pretty muddy and we didn't do much with that.

At photographer's December 1950

1976 - Mom, Dad, Darrell, Louise, Lynn

1974 Dad with grandkids Michelle & Cameron

In the 1960's - back, Roger, Donald, Louise, Darrell,
Lynn.  in front, Dad Kermit & Mom Pearl

Dad & Mom on their front steps in 1978

After supper that evening Dad sat at the living room table and was writing in his diary as he had done for years.  It was after 10:30 pm and Johnny Carson was on TV.  I heard him yell "Mom" or "Pearl" and looked over and he was slumped on the table.  Darrell came out of one of the bedrooms and we got Dad on the floor and the two of us did CPR on Dad as Mom called 911.  We did not get Dad to respond and when the ambulance had driven the 7 miles from Callaway they took him to the Callaway Hospital.  We followed in the car.  The doctor and nurses worked on him for some time, but finally came out and told us that they were unsussful in reviving him.

This was late Saturday night and the farm sale was scheduled for the following Tuesday.  With advertising done over many states, the cattle were beginning their calving, and the necessity to hold it as  scheduled on Tuesday.  Funeral was scheduled for Wednesday, the 28th of March, which is Phyllis' birthday.  She had stayed in Clarinda with our son and daughter, and she got her parent's car and drove out to the home place on Sunday and stayed until after the sale.  There was quite a crowd for the sale, and I recall being out within that crowd when I heard a couple men exclaiming "He just died on Saturday and they are already having his sale!"  I explained to them that the sale hd been scheduled, but Dad's heart attack had not been plannee.  Our son, Cameron was just 12 years old and daughter Michelle was 10 years old at the time.  I think it was Reverand Koelling (sp) came out to the house and visited with Mom & us, and held the funeral.

Dad was 73 years old.

Lynn

The Pelican

 “A wonderful bird is the Pelican. His beak can hold more than his belly can. He can hold in his beak Enough food for a week! But I’ll be darned if I know how the hellican?” —Dixon Lanier Merritt

Short time left in the Valley

 79º here in La Feria, TX at 11 am Monday, predicted high of 89º

Saturday, March 21st we went to Progreso, MX to their annual Tourist Appreciation Day.  Big crowd.

Some got their photo taken with this frame

Lots of vendors along the first 5 blocks or so.

We picked up some meds at our usual pharmacy, they usually have orchids and this was no exception

At left is photo of my new wedding band.  I must tell the story...I got a simple band when we married 63 years ago.  I wore it up until late 1974 when I caught it on a nail while coming down a wooden ladder at the grain elevator we worked in.  It about took off my finger and I put it away.  When we sold the elevaator in 1994 Phyllis suggested I put it back on.  Well, up to that time I was a little heavy -- weighing in the 230+ lbs area.  By the time we retired in 2009 I was weighing around 210-215 lbs.  Starting about a year ago when I went on Mounjaro for my diabetis -- was around the 210 lbs mark.  Since then I have come down to the mid 175 lb. area and the ring had gotten rather loose.  Several times when washing in a public restroom it would slip off and I would grab it and put it back on.  When we got off our cruise in early December I had it on, but when we got back to our place here in La Feria I didn't have it.  I called the two places we had stopped to use the restroom on our drve back and left my name if it showed up.  Never got any callback, assumed it was gone. Now come forward to when the handle to the driver's inside door brook off--I had to remove the panel of the door to work on it.  I had a lot of stuff, including tire pressure guage, small tools and bug spray in the "drawer" at the bottom of the door, and there was the ring.  Guess it slipped off when we were driving and I had my arm down.  But, it was still so large it would slip off at anytime so I just quit wearing it.  Phyllis insisted on getting one in Mexico (a little less expensive, I presume, than here on the US side of the River) which does fit snug----so here it is.

Lot of colorful clothing

Near the stage area

Watching for a bit, the stage entertainment.

Stage with entertainment

Phyllis & Lisa

Lisa and Tom

Last evening we had Tom & Lisa Urban over for supper and a good visit.  Tom is Betty Schneider's son.  They bought Darlene Winslow's place and do a lot of cooking for the park when they are here.  Tom has relatives in Pizen, Czechia and will spend nearly three months over there August, Sept & Oct this year visiting relatives and hellping with some expansion in a bakery.  Tom does a lot of baking.  Lisa will visit him over there for a week or so.  The both of them have travelled quite extensively in Europe.

Six days until we pull out with the trailer heading north.  Right after we help perform the Cantata with orchestra at the 9:00 am service at First Methodist Church in Harlingen next Sunday.

Later, Lynn

Schoolhouse Blizzard in Nebraska January 12, 1888

The temperature dropped 80 degrees in three hours. The roof blew off her classroom. And she had 13 children who would freeze to death in minutes.

January 12, 1888. Nebraska.

That morning, farmers across the Great Plains worked their fields in shirtsleeves. Children skipped to school without heavy coats. It was an unseasonably warm day, almost springlike, the kind that makes you forget winter entirely.

By noon, the sky had other plans.

A wall of black clouds appeared on the horizon. What happened next defied comprehension. The temperature didn't just drop. It collapsed. Within hours, thermometers plunged from the 40s to 40 degrees below zero. Winds screamed across the prairie at 60 miles per hour, carrying snow so thick it turned day into night.

This was the Schoolhouse Blizzard, and it would become one of the deadliest storms in American history.

In a tiny sod schoolhouse on the Nebraska prairie, nineteen-year-old Minnie Freeman stood in front of her students when the storm arrived. She was barely older than some of the teenagers in her classroom. She'd been teaching for less than a year.

The building shuddered. Windows exploded inward, spraying glass across the wooden floor. The wind didn't just enter the room. It attacked. Then came the sound no one who survived ever forgot: the groaning, tearing shriek of the roof being ripped away from the walls.

In seconds, Minnie's classroom became an open pit in a frozen hell.

She looked at the faces around her. Thirteen students. The youngest was six years old. Some were already crying. Their thin school clothes offered no protection against cold that could kill in twenty minutes.

Minnie had three choices, and she had seconds to decide.

She could keep them inside. They would huddle together and pray the storm passed quickly. But the building was destroyed, exposed completely to winds that felt like knives. They would freeze where they sat.

She could send them home. Maybe some would make it. Maybe families were already coming. But in whiteout conditions where you couldn't see three feet ahead, children would wander in circles until they collapsed. Across Nebraska at that very moment, children were dying within yards of their own front doors, lost in the blinding white.

Or she could take them all with her and try to reach help.

Across the state, other teachers faced the same impossible decision. Most made the wrong call. Some kept students inside and froze with them. Others sent children toward home, watching them vanish into the white, never to return. The death toll among schoolchildren would be staggering.

Minnie Freeman made a different choice.

She spotted a ball of heavy twine on the shelf. Her mind worked fast. She couldn't let them scatter. She couldn't lose anyone in the white. They needed to stay connected.

She called the children to her, keeping her voice steady even as her heart hammered. "We're going to walk together," she told them. "We're going to play a game where everyone holds on."

She began tying the twine around each child's waist, knotting it carefully, creating a human chain. The smallest children went in the middle. The older ones on the ends. She tied the final length around her own body.

They were now one organism. If one fell, all would stop. If one got lost, they all would be lost. She'd made herself the anchor point. Where she went, they would follow. If she failed, they would all fail together.

She picked up the smallest child, a six-year-old who weighed almost nothing. She told the others to grab the twine tight. To keep their heads down against the wind. To not let go no matter what happened.

Then she opened the door and stepped into the storm.

The cold hit like a physical blow. The wind knocked several children to their knees immediately. Snow filled their mouths when they tried to breathe. They couldn't see Minnie even though she was right in front of them. They couldn't see their own hands.

Minnie knew there was a farmhouse less than a mile away. Under normal conditions, a fifteen-minute walk. In this storm, it might as well have been on another planet.

She pulled the rope. She shouted encouragement that was torn away by the wind. She counted heads constantly, feeling the tension in the twine, making sure the line stayed intact. When children fell, she stopped and helped them up. When they couldn't walk anymore, she dragged them.

The cold burned their lungs. Frostbite claimed fingers and toes. The children cried from pain and terror. But Minnie didn't stop moving. She couldn't. Stopping meant death.

One step forward. Then another. Then another. Pulling thirteen lives behind her through a storm that was actively trying to kill them all.

She had no compass. No landmarks. Nothing but instinct and desperate hope that she was walking in the right direction.

After what felt like hours, a dark shape emerged from the white. A building. The farmhouse.

Minnie crashed through the door, pulling the rope of children behind her. They tumbled inside, sobbing, frostbitten, half-frozen. The farmer and his wife rushed to help, wrapping them in blankets, getting them near the fire.

Minnie counted. One. Two. Three. All the way to thirteen.

She had left with thirteen students. She arrived with thirteen students.

Not one lost. Not one left behind.

When the storm finally cleared days later and the bodies were counted, 235 people had died. Most were children caught between school and home, lost in the white, found frozen in snowdrifts sometimes just feet from safety.

Minnie Freeman became an instant national sensation. Newspapers across the country told her story. Songs were written celebrating her courage. Marriage proposals arrived from strangers. She was offered money, fame, opportunities.

But the real legacy wasn't the headlines.

It was the lives. Thirteen children who grew up, had families, passed down the story of the teacher who tied them together and refused to let them die. Generations exist today because a nineteen-year-old girl had the clarity of mind to grab a ball of twine and the courage to step into a hurricane of ice.

She proved something that day that still matters. Leadership has nothing to do with age, experience, or authority. It's about staying calm when the walls come down. It's about making the hard choice when there are no good options. It's about tying yourself to the vulnerable and saying: "Where you go, I go. And I am not letting you fall."

In three hours on a January afternoon, Minnie Freeman walked through hell with children tied to her waist.

And she brought every single one of them home.

 

St Patrick's Day

78º right now at 1:00 pm Wednesday with high of 81º predicted for the day.  Was in low 50's the last couple mornings, which is a bit cool for our area.  Been a while since I have caught up on what we are doing, so here goes.

Last evening we attended the St. Patrick's Day supper at the Rec Hall.  Fair sized crowd for this year and good food -- cooked cabbage, cooked carrots, corned beef, homemade rolls with honeybutter, some kind of "salad" (Wipped cream, Marshmellos) and green cake for desert

 

We had taken Lois Outcelt with us to the afternoon Barbershop Chorus practice and hurried back to make it to the supper.

At left, Director Bob sang with the ladies in a song they had brought over from the Sweet Adalines.

These two photos are off Facebook, showing difference in Great Grandaughter Jessica in nine years!

Don't know what kind of a plant this red one
in the center is, but I transplanted it from a pot
that has been on front of trailer all winter.

  The sun was making these Bougainvillea flowers looking really brilliant yesterday.  Think some of it does show in these photos.

The Livestock Show and Rodeo are on in Mercedes this week.  When coming back from Hardware store I met two groups of riders with their entourage along Business 83 going to the Livestock Show Grounds.  We haven't made it to the Rodeo this year.

I grilled a couple steaks neighbor Kenny gave us for my workiing on his steps/ramp and some homemade sausages made of deer meat that neighbor Tom Urban killed a month or so ago.  Some of the sausages will go in the trailer for eating on way home in a few weeks.

Since our neighbor Kenny was gone to Dallas from Saturday afternoon I was able to fiinish his ramp by the front door and steps at the back door.

At left is the finished ramp, new floor paint at the door, "Grass-like" carpet on the ramp and all metal painted.  I had placed new plywood at the very end of the ramp where rain had rotted some of the wood over the last 5 years or so.

This is at his back door.  I had put the wood on the side, bracing the handrail that had gotten quite loose and was evedint it would not hold him if he leaned on it.  Didn't have enough of the floor paint, so painted that wooden brace with some left-over paint I had.

This special floor paint recommends not walking on it for seven days, so I was able to paint the front a few days before Kenny left and he is using it now that he is back.  This back door should stay until this next weekend.  The wood on these steps was so dry it soaked up a lot and I think I got about 3 coats on it---which will ceertainly take a long time to dry.

We really like Jersey Mike's original Italian sandwich--got one in Harlingen this weekend when we were shopping.

The hammer and nailing continues all day every day.  Photo at left was taken a few minutes ago.

The one below taken on Monday.

Packing a little every day to get organized for leaving here on the 30th.

Later, Lynn