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

Eleanor Roosevelt

 

"They gave her the job nobody wanted because they thought she'd just smile for cameras — then she changed history forever."

December 1945.

President Harry Truman had a question for Eleanor Roosevelt: Would she join America's first delegation to the brand-new United Nations?

She almost said no.

At sixty-one, the former First Lady didn't feel qualified. Yes, she'd spent twelve years as Franklin Roosevelt's eyes and ears across Depression-era America — walking into coal mines, visiting packed hospitals, sitting in soup kitchens, touring battlefields — but international diplomacy? That was something entirely different.

Truman convinced her it mattered. What neither of them could have known was that this single decision would reshape the entire world.

When Eleanor Roosevelt walked into the United Nations, the men on her delegation couldn't hide their relief at where to place her. They assigned her to Committee Three — Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Affairs.

In their minds, it was perfect: the least important committee, the one that handled soft issues while the men tackled the real work of building the Security Council and controlling atomic weapons. She could smile for photographs. She could represent American values without getting in the way.

They had catastrophically underestimated her.

Within months, Eleanor Roosevelt was unanimously elected to chair the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The Commission faced one impossible assignment: create the first universal declaration of rights that every nation on Earth could agree to.

It had never been done. Many believed it couldn't be done at all.

The world in 1946 was still bleeding from wounds almost too horrific to speak about. The concentration camps. The atomic bombs. Millions of displaced people wandering across shattered Europe with nowhere left to go. Every world leader kept asking the same desperate question: How do we make absolutely certain this never happens again?

Eleanor Roosevelt believed the answer had to begin with the right words — written down, made permanent, and honored by every nation on Earth.

She prepared with ferocious, almost obsessive discipline. While other diplomats went home for dinner and drinks, she stayed behind reading legal drafts, constitutional documents, and historical texts from nations across the globe. She understood something profound: to write about human dignity, she first had to understand what dignity meant to people everywhere — not just Americans.

The debates that followed were absolutely brutal.

Eighteen nations sat around that table, each carrying different histories, different political systems, different fundamental beliefs about what human rights even meant. Cold War tensions threatened to destroy everything before it started. American conservatives warned that any UN document would smuggle socialism onto their shores. Soviet delegates accused Western nations of breathtaking hypocrisy — talking endlessly about freedom while practicing segregation and colonialism.

Eleanor Roosevelt never once raised her voice.

Instead, she reminded delegates of what they had all just survived — the camps, the bombings, the millions of innocent lives destroyed. She appealed to their memories. She asked them to think about the dead, and to imagine explaining to them why the survivors couldn't agree on basic human dignity.

For more than two years, she chaired over three thousand hours of contentious, exhausting deliberation. She fought for the strongest possible language — absolute guarantees for freedom of speech, fair trials, and the equal dignity of every single human being, regardless of nationality, race, religion, or power.

She knew exactly what injustice looked like. She had witnessed it everywhere — including at home.

During World War II, Eleanor had traveled to the Pacific front, covering nearly 26,000 miles and visiting an estimated 400,000 American troops. She walked endless miles of hospital wards, stopping at every single bed, holding the hands of wounded young men who couldn't believe the former First Lady knew their names.

Admiral William Halsey, the notoriously crusty commander of the South Pacific fleet, had initially considered her visit a complete waste of his precious time. By the end, he openly marveled at her endurance and the profound impact she had on troop morale.

She had also witnessed the shameful reality of a segregated American military — separate and unequal facilities for Black soldiers fighting the same war for the same country. She confronted her husband about it repeatedly. Change came painfully slowly, but she never stopped pushing.

Now, at the United Nations, she was pushing the entire world.

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly gathered in Paris for the final vote.

Forty-eight nations voted in favor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Not a single nation voted against it.

The room erupted in thunderous, sustained applause. A standing ovation that seemed like it would never end.

Newspapers around the world credited Eleanor Roosevelt as the driving force, the chief architect, the guiding spirit who made the impossible real.

She didn't celebrate.

She understood something the cheering delegates hadn't yet grasped: words on paper mean absolutely nothing without the courage to defend them every single day. The Declaration was a beginning, not an ending. The real work was just starting.

In her final speech to the Assembly, she said: "We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This Declaration may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere."

When Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962, Adlai Stevenson delivered her eulogy at the United Nations.

He said: "She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world."

Those words captured something essential about who she was.

Eleanor Roosevelt spent her entire life refusing to look away from injustice — whether in the coal mines of Appalachia, the hospital wards of Guadalcanal, or the drafting rooms of the United Nations. She believed that dignity belonged to everyone without exception, and she insisted that belief be written into international law.

Today, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been translated into more than 500 languages — more than any other document in human history. It has inspired constitutions on every continent. It remains the foundation of all international human rights law.

And it exists because one woman — given the assignment nobody wanted — decided it mattered too much to fail.

Eleanor Roosevelt proved that a single person, armed with enough determination and compassion, can change what the entire world believes is possible.

Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is refuse to accept that something can't be done.

#EleanorRoosevelt #HumanRights

Ben Johnson

 

He had three dollars in his pocket, a worn-out car, and a wife who was furious with him.

Ben Johnson sat behind the wheel doing the math. A year of chasing rodeo glory had left him broke. The dream had cost more than he expected, and now there was almost nothing left.

At 6’2”, with the sun-creased face of a man who trusted horses more than crowds, he made a quiet decision.

He was going back to the movies.

Not as a star. Not even close.

As a wrangler. A stuntman. The anonymous rider in the background taking the falls so the leading men could look fearless.

Years earlier, in 1939, Ben had just been a 21-year-old ranch hand from Oklahoma who understood horses the way most people understood family. Someone hired him to deliver sixteen horses to a film set in Arizona.

The job paid $300, which seemed enormous at the time.

On that set was Howard Hughes, the powerful and eccentric producer. Hughes watched the young cowboy handle those horses with effortless calm and made him an offer right there.

Come work in the movies.

Ben accepted. During that same trip he met Carol, the woman who would become his wife. She married a man whose job often involved falling off horses in front of cameras.

For years, Ben worked in the shadows of Hollywood.

He doubled for Gary Cooper, Joel McCrea, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers. He was the one taking the punches, riding the dangerous scenes, crashing into dirt so the heroes could ride away clean.

Then came April 1947.

They were filming “Fort Apache” in Monument Valley, with Ben doubling for Henry Fonda. During a wagon scene, the horses suddenly panicked. The wagon bolted, charging toward three stuntmen trapped against the rocks.

There was no time to think.

Ben ran straight into the path of the runaway team, grabbed the reins, and somehow brought the horses under control before the wagon crushed the men ahead.

Three lives were saved in a moment that could have ended differently.

Director John Ford had seen the whole thing.

Ford was famous for being tough and sparing with praise, but after the dust settled he walked up to Ben and said quietly:

“You just earned yourself a contract.”

Seven years. $5,000 a week.

But the real change was something else entirely.

Ford started putting Ben in front of the camera.

Suddenly the stuntman had speaking roles. Real credits. The authenticity Hollywood had been searching for in its Westerns was standing right there.

Ben Johnson appeared in films that defined the genre:

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

Rio Grande.

Shane, where he played Chris Calloway beside Alan Ladd.

Later came The Wild Bunch, Chisum, and many others.

In 1971, he appeared in “The Last Picture Show.”

That performance won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

The Oklahoma cowboy who once counted his last three dollars stood on stage holding an Oscar.

Yet Ben never forgot where he started.

Between films he invested wisely, buying land and property that grew into a fortune. He purchased ranches and stayed deeply connected to the rodeo world, eventually entering the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1973.

He remained married to Carol for 55 years, until the end of his life.

In 1994, two years before his death, Ben Johnson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Standing there in his cowboy hat, he looked far more comfortable on horseback than on a red carpet.

Maybe he thought back to that day when he sat in his car with only three dollars left and wondered if he had chased the wrong dream.

He hadn’t.

Because Ben Johnson’s story isn’t only about Hollywood.

It’s about the moment when everything feels finished — when the money is gone, the pressure is heavy, and quitting seems reasonable.

And choosing to show up anyway.

It’s about what can happen when courage meets opportunity on a runaway wagon in Monument Valley.

Ben Johnson never became the polished Hollywood star many expected.

He remained a cowboy who happened to work in movies.

And that authenticity made him unforgettable.

From three dollars to millions.

From anonymous stuntman to Oscar winner.

From saving lives on a dusty film set to becoming a legend.

All because he refused to quit when he was down to his last three dollars.

'Nuther day in the Valley

 72º at 11:15 am here in La Feria, TX - had a low of 51º this morning.  To be high today of 87º and in the 90's the next couple of days.

At Church Choir practice Wednesday night.

Working on neighbor Tommy's ramp.

When picking up carpet for ramp and metal trim to hold it down at Lowe's, cutting the trim from 12 feet to size can use, and would fit in pickup.

Cutting down a board to fit

in cut-off leg of ramp to cushion

carpet.

Yesterday was final day for Phyllis' Quilting group.  We transferred some stuff to our house for storage over the summer, and moved some from the little storage building to the hall.

Yesterday was "Appreciation Day" by the park here.

My oldest brother, Roger, celebrated his 89th birthday yesterday at his home in Lincoln, NE.  Talked with him on the phone, hope to see them this summer.

Not a lot planned for today and tomorrow.  I will be working on laying the carpet on Tommy's ramp and getting it finished while he is visiting his brother in Austin over the weekend.