Shrimp Boat Tour day

54 degrees- high for the day - been raining off and

on most of the day here in La Feria, TX as I start this on Wednesday afternoon.

Last week Phyllis went out with the Red Hat Ladies from the park.  Here are some photos she took.

This is not an official "Red Hat"

group, but they do the red and purple

thing and get together once

a month during the winter

here in the Rio Grande

Valley.

Played the card game Manipulation one
evening at Ardel & Marion
Finken's - along with Bill and
Darlene Winslow.

Though I seldom mention it,

we go down to the Rec Hall about

every week-day morning at 8 am to

exercises.  These are "Chair" or

"Stretching" exercise that

Don Unger leads each

day.  He is 83 and many of the people

who show up (up to 27) are in their 80's.  One

is 90 years old and one is 99 years old.

Rest probably split about half and half between

people in their 70's and their 80's.

At the right, above and below, is

the board that Don follows as

he counts out the different

stretching exercises.

We are usually done by

about 8:25 am each morning.

Earlier this week, I took
pictures of the various
cacti I planted several
years ago.  These
were all just tiny then.

This is a Tangelo

tree in a neighbor's yard.

He doesn't pick them because

they are tart.  I picked several

and ate some--they are tart!

This is a grapefruit

tree right beside the Tangelo

tree.  For some reason the birds

aren't bothering it.  They don't eat many

grapefruit and said to help ourselves.

Got a couple mesh-bags for us

and a large mesh-bag for

Harold and LaRhoda.

At Tuesday's Bluegrass Jam in the park this 3-wheeler (kind of similar to mine--except for the motor, the size of the tires, and the seat, windshield, etc., etc.) was parked near the Rec Hall.  I took this photo to show what my trike could be if it grew up!

Had Jim and Lavin Boozer,

and Bob and Bobi Raab

over to our house for

Pegs & Jokers one evening.

This is Thursday morning as I finish writing this blog.  Was 34 degrees this morning, but bright sunshine.  To be 67 by 3 or 4 this afternoon.  We are going to move the quilter's stuff from thei

 storage shed over to the Rec Hall and then, by 9am, leave for the Port of Brownsville to attend a tour of shrimp boat and their processing plant--and eat some boiled shrimp.  We are dressing in layers and with winds predicted to be only in the 5 to 7 mph should not be a bad day.  Were scheduled for this tour yesterday, but was moved one day due to fact that it rained most of yesterday and was in the 50's.  Rain didn't amount to much, but was just drizzly all day.

Later, Lynn

January 25, 1950

72 degrees in La Feria, TX at 5:11 pm with 20mph winds- gusts above that and 55% humidity.

Happy Birthday tomorrow to my only sister Louise.  I grew up on a farm/ranch between the towns of Callaway and Oconto, Nebraska in Custer County -- nearly the center of the state and just on the east side of the Sand-hills of Nebraska. I have looked up some temperature records for Broken Bow on January 25, 1950 (which is the County Seat of Custer County) and found that on that date the low actual temperature was 31 degrees below zero. The high for that day was 2 below zero. We were located some 7 miles from Callaway where our doctor was and there was a lot of snow on the ground, and I think it snowed on the 24th. My little sister (the youngest of us five kids) was due and with the bad roads and cold my mother was taken to a place in Callaway on either the 23rd or 24th as it was felt that the doctor, who did make house calls in that era, would have trouble getting to our place when "the call" came. I am not sure now whether Mom was at a relative's place or just a good friend's place.  

I do recall standing by Mom's "Bureau" on the evening of January 24th and we had two kerosene lamps on the top ledge of that bureau.  (We didn't get electricity to our farm until the summer of 1950)  I was 6.5 years old and I recall my oldest brother Roger (6 years older than me) and next oldest brother Don (4 years older than me) talking about what might be happening.  I do not recall my younger brother Darrell (2.5 years younger than me) being there at that bureau in the living room in near darkness with the two kerosene lamps and the sound of the wind howling outside.  Perhaps he was with Dad uptown, or maybe he was in bed - just being 4 years old he probably wasn't up with us as I recall it being really late at night.

My next recollection was sometime during the day of January 26 and their was snow terribly deep and there were icicles on the side of the house where we went to in Callaway that reached from the rain gutter clear to the ground - or the snow and ice on the ground.  We went into this house and they said I could see my little sister by looking in this cardboard box that was sitting on a folded-up pedal sewing machine.  Dad yelled to "be careful and don't tip it over" when I stood on my tip toes and pulled on the brown cardboard box to look in at the baby.  She was sure small.

Our little 20' x 24' house only had 5 rooms - 3 bedrooms, the kitchen and the living-room and with two of my brothers in one bedroom, I and little brother Darrell in another bedroom and Mom & Dad in the third bedroom, Louise did not have a room.  When she got old enough to be out of the crib she slept on the davenport (or Du-fold as Mom called it)  The heat for the house was from a stove we fired with wood and coal in the living room; and also the wood cook-stove in the kitchen.

Louise got her own room after both Roger and Donald left home.  We finally got a bathroom installed in the house in the spring of 1961.

Louise went to Methodist Nursing School in Omaha, graduated as a Registered Nurse and lived in Omaha from College time until in the late 1990's when she became disabled with health problems, mostly diabetes.  Phyllis & I were becoming her caregivers and when she became disabled, and was wheel chair bound, she had us look at several independent living places in Omaha, but finally agreed to move to an Independent Living place in our town of Clarinda, Iowa, some 80 miles from Omaha.  We were able to have her out to our place where I built a wheelchair ramp so she could get into the house, and she also spent a lot of time in our sign office, attached to the house. We made many, many trips with her in her wheel chair to see doctors about the many infections in her feet and when she had a leg removed at the knee and also had open-heart surgery she moved to a nursing home in Clarinda. 
Louise passed away at the Westridge Nursing Home on May 13, 2008 -- 58 years, 3 months, 19 days old.

Louise during one of her hospitalizations in 2002

Louise during one of her hospitalizations in 2003  Note she still had both legs

Phyllis and Louise in June of 2001

Windy, Windy

61 degrees and 17 mph wind out of the north at 11:15 am Friday January 22, 2016.  Feels colder than 61 degrees.

As I rode around the 5 streets

here in Kenwood RV Park yesterday,

I took photos of most of the nameplates

that people have by their units.

 Wednesday evening we went to Bob & Bobi Raab's place to play Pegs & Jokers.
Bob's daughter and her husband from near Minneapolis, MN were down for a week and played also.  They just purchased a permanent unit here in the park that they will take possession of this fall.

Tuesday Dick and Deane

Messer, from Minnesota,

rode with us to the Convention

Center in McAllen to the Winter

Texan Expo.

 They had over a hundred vendors selling tours of the valley, restaurants, hospitals, etc, etc.

They had a stage at one end of the building
and we watched three different performers

This is

the Gold Wing group -

3 brothers and their

dad.  They have performed

at Kenwood several times.

After exercises Thursday morning, I
helped Phyllis move the stuff
over to the Rec Hall from the
little storage shed so the women
could work making quilts
from 9 am to 3 pm.

Some of the bags of items wouldn

fit in the back so

the second seat of

the cab was full, too.

One of the units on the south

street in the park.  A small Class C 

motor home with a trailer

and they have a scooter for

local transport so don't have to move

the motorhome.

More later, Lynn