L & P Miles : January 25, 1950

Sunday, January 24, 2016

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.