Buffalo Gal

It is so hot today and so humid!   Being outside makes me feel like I need gills….I am breathing water vapor. My husband has been outside in this obscene heat and humidity putting clay tiles under our yard swing where we are slowly but surely wearing out the grass when we sit in the swing and enjoy the sunsets, the breezes, and the general landscape overlooking the muddy, mighty Buffalo.  He came inside with a can of A & W rootbeer in his hand and I knew what he was going to do to cool himself down.  I was just given  a glass of the most delicious treat on a hot day….an A & W rootbeer float!!!   And I wasn’t even outside in the heat….whatta deal!

Within the past 3 weeks a case of the most horrendous animal torture was uncovered in the small town I live close to….3 teenagers doused a female snapping turtle with gasoline and set her afire while she was laying her eggs.  These 3 budding psychopaths filmed themselves dancing around the burning animal and put it on the internet. Someone saw  it and recognized the 3 kids and sent it to the local police dept. who then sent it on to County Law Enforcement authorities.  This has led to charges being filed against the 3 amoral village idiots but wait til you here the rest of the story!!!!  I have always known that small towns can have some very quirky people hiding in the weeds but when adults start to excuse this animal torture case as "boys will be boys" and try to downplay it all, I am just dumbfounded.   Tipping outhouses, spraying grafitti, or putting sugar in a gas tank is "high jinks" and "boys will be boys" but setting a live animal on fire is NOT!! Not only have these monsters been excused like this, but the editor of the local paper has been vilified for publishing the story of the crime!!!  Can you imagine???  A journalist does what he is supposed to do, for the good of the community, and he is charged by other Village Idiots with making the town "look bad".  Sorry folks, the 3 boys who burned a live turtle made the town look bad, if that is all you are worried about.   It is a crying shame that adults in this place seem to be almost as badly immature as the boys who committed this act of animal cruelty…and thank,goodness, that is what they have been charged with.

I am a person who enjoys…no, loves….nostalgia and what could be more nostalgic than a significant class reunion?  It is coming up in July and I am eager to see my 30 living classmates.  Four have died, which is not bad for an original graduating class of 34.  We were  a small-town school and most of us knew each other from the first day of first grade. We have remained friends for all these years and the bond that was forged so early has not yet been broken.  We don’t see each other all that much even though some of us live in the same area; we are all busy with our own lives, our families, our jobs or our retirements….but when we reunite every 5 years, nothing has changed…we are still the same good friends that started out in the classroom and the playground and we love to get together and hear about our latest news, sorrows, joys, children, grandchildren, where we have been and where we are going….the fellowship goes on and on.  This year’s reunion has found us on the web together via e- mail, something that has never occurred before.  I remember the "round robin" letters of days gone by….e-mail has changed all that to instant notes and letters to each other.     Our class grew up in the era of the change-over from rural school districts to the "consolidated town school districts".  Each year of our elementary years, more rural schools would close and we would get more classmates.  Fortunately, we welcomed the newcomers and they became as much a part of the class as the original "town kids".  The last rural district closed in the early 1960′s and our ranks were complete.  So many things have changed in high schools since our day…..freshman initiation by the sophmores went by the wayside years and years ago but we remember it as one of the best days of our lives as highschoolers.  So much goofiness and so much fun for one whole day.  We spent our initiation day wearing long union suits with swimming suits over them; we had lampshades on our heads and we had been required to put laundry startch in our hair the night before.  We must have also been told to wear black pirate patches over one of our eyes because a recent review of old pictures shows us all wearing black patches. We had to bring our bag lunches and the sophmores took us downtown at noon and made us sit on the curb by Hanson’s grocery store and eat lunch.  We went on a class trip…3 days to Duluth and were trusted by the chaperones to go our own way most of the time.  That would be unheard of in today’s senior classes I suppose.  Our memories are crowded with innocence….ice skating, sledding, house parties during Christmas vacations, attending all the sports events which were limited to football, basketball and baseball;  playing "Red Rover" and "Pump-Pump-Pull-away" and "Anti- I- Over", spending Saturday nights in a downtown crowded with hundreds of people, lots of businesses, a movie theater that always showed a Western on Saturday night, two drive-ins where we consumed hamburgers and shakes and fries, small-town street carnivals every summer, swimming in a muddy lake fed by a muddy river, riding bikes or roller skating as means of transportation, hours of just talking to each other and learning to be good conversationalists.   The boys either worked on farms or delivered groceries or pumped gas for summer jobs; the girls did a lot of baby-sitting and later graduated to being car-hops where your tips (dimes and nickels) could be saved in an emtpy peanut butter jar and might buy you an extra sweater or blouse for school in the Fall.     

Two weeks from tonight we will be together eating and chattering away at  the lakehome of the only class sweethearts that got married.   Another class reunion….it doesn’t get any better than that.  I can scarcely wait to see them all again.

It doesn’t happen very often but everyone is at home this weekend….all 3 children, all 3 spouses, almost all the grandchildren, plus 3 "grand-doggers".  We go from a placid quiet household to one filled with action and noisiness….all of it good.  It is a good thing when adult children want to come home;  it is even better when the grandchildren want to come to see Grandma and Grandpa.  It is not so nice to have an eager beagle trying to steal food off the kitchen counters; I have never seen a dog who can elongate herself like our Bailey-Bopper.  Our cat is hiding in the "catacombs" scared out of her wits by 3 dogs who have great interest in seeing her and chasing her.  She has secret hiding places from which she will not emerge until she darn well pleases.  Some wag said that dogs are little men and cats are little women and their temperaments make it seem that the saying is true. I really hope the rain clears away by tomorrow so it doesn’t interfere with the game called "autos" which is an invention by 3 boys who played it very seriously in their youthful days.  It involves hitting tennis balls with a baseball bat but that is about all I know about it.  It was played in the "stadium" west of our house and it was a constant game in the 1970′s and early 1980′s.  Now they have to have an "autos" reunion every now and then in the summertime and tomorrow is the day.  Rain, rain, go away…come again another day.

Another thing about a Homecoming is that adult children can revert to type and become youngsters again, pleased to have a mother wait on them as she did when they were little guys.  It only takes a moment of transition; they just have  to walk thru the door to the old home place and it happens, just like that.  One of them once mused that he wondered if all the green beans he stuck under the table were still there….sure enough….he found petrified green beans stuck under the table so many years ago.  They even survived a move to a new house.  And I always thought he had eaten them.  There are lots of things a parent should never hear about, like the days they stuck firecrackers in dead frogs and dead fish and blew them to kingdom come.  I never had a brother so it is hard to understand the male psyche and my boys have told me a few things that I am really glad I didn’t know about at the time they happened.  The beagle is still patrolling the kitchen…I am antsy just hearing the click of the claws.  Two more dogs will arrive tonight or tomorrow and then the fun begans….all three of them compete for attention and constantly "dog" each other and engage in sniffing rituals I would rather not talk about.   It is going to be another great Homecoming weekend.

There is a kids’ song titled the "Ants Are Marching, One By One,Hurrah! Hurrah!" that kindergarteners and first graders love to sing, probably because it is a counting song, as well as having kid-pleasing lyrics.  However lately, I am thinking that it is the Goslings who are marching. Each spring, here at Buffalo River bottoms which my home overlooks, we see and hear the adult Canadian geese arrive in early spring, we hear them fighting (loudly) over nesting territory, we see the adults walk out into  a grassy field below our house to feast on the new green grass, and finally we don’t see them at all for awhile.  This means that the eggs are hatching and both parents are either sitting on or guarding the nest.  Now it is the time of marching goslings, led by one parent at the front, and herded from behind by the other parent.  It is total devotion (or maybe it is pure instinct) to the little ones they have hatched into this world of foxes, weasels, crows, and other nasty predators of baby geese. It is a great pleasure to see these baby geese, now gray and fuzzy, but soon to be looking more like the adults, only in miniature.  How much they have to learn before they fly off in the Autumn to warmer climes.  In the meantime their parents are watching over them every minute of their existence (they don’t hire any babysitters) and teaching them all the things that wild geese need to know and survive.  It never ceases to fascinate me—this spring and early summer rite of geese and their goslings.  How fortunate I am to live where I can see it happening day by day.  I am grateful.

June 3, 2006               There is a most interesting commentary in todays’ FORUM opinion page.  It is a reprint from the WASHINGTON POST.   The most recent test scores of American children show that since the national standards have been in place, reading and math scores have improved among elementary school children.  Science scores have also gotten a boost.  Sadly, the overall scores show that American school children are still doing poorly in science, there is still a lack of science teachers, and there is a generally poor science curriculum in the majority of American schools.

I found this W.P. commentary most interesting in light of the general "downing" by many people (among them, many educators) of the "No Child Left Behind" educational act.  These most recent scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress appear to be telling us that standards DO matter.  Too often, in any area of professions or businesses, there will always be those who pooh-pooh attempts to come up to certain standards by assessing the progress of students or workers.  It is the human condition to want to let things be, and often certain people are very threatened by having any assessments done of their work….probably out of fear that they will be shown to be not quite as "up to snuff" as they think they are!!!

Educational standards are nothing new.  Such standards were ignored for years but several decades back high school students in Minnesota were required to pass the "State Boards".

My mother recalled the intense preparation for such standards assessments and the pride when a student did well.  She always pointed out that one of my aunts achieved one of the highest scores in the state geometry test.   They were not easy tests either; students in those days took them very seriously and worked hard to pass them.

I think it is a remarkable achievement to see some movement upward in American school children in reading, math, and science.  As a retired elementary teacher, I remember the first years of state and national standards and the pride of the teachers whose children showed improvement in their test scores.  Steady improvement in the years following proves that having educational standards is a GOOD thing and not something to be put down by anyone.  American children have been so far behind their peers in other nations that it is about time we see a turn-around.  The last part of the WP commentary said this (and I think it is so true)    "When so much attention is focused on the competitiveness of the America’s workforce, it’s surprising that this news {standards scores} has received relatively little notice."   That might be because the National Education Association has been concentrating for too many years on social engineering in educational curriculum rather than focusing on improving the learning of basic educational courses such as reading, math, science , history and geography and language arts.   Maybe the educators at the national organization are the ones who need to wake up and smell the coffee first.

I have found it extremely interesting for years that those of us who were educated in the era before all the technological gee-gaws, are generally pretty good at basic skills such as reading, math, spelling, writing, geography and history.  Isn’t it amazing that long before education was demanding that money be thrown at the schools and more and more educational gimmicks be employed, that we have had many  generations of  adults functioning very well in today’s society???? Of course we weren’t as distracted by some of the truly ugly distractions now….endless and inane computer games, endless TV viewing, videos, DVDs, cell phones, havng your own car when you turn 16 and all that stuff. (I think it is also called being spoiled rotten)      I am curious as to how the present generations will score" when they are living as mature adults in the future.  I hope sincerely that they will be doing even better than their parents and grandparents.

"Oh what is so rare as a day in June?" is a quote whose author I do not know and have not looked up but it so familiar and yesterday fulfilled it perfectly.  The sunshine, the blue sky dotted with scudding white clouds, the vivid summer green of trees all speak of the rarity of an ideal June day.  It is also special because it is the birthday of a dear friend and a dear sister in law.   The friend’s birthday was duly celebrated with an outing to a favorite "haunt" of the two of us, lunch in a small-town cafe and the traditional, annual peanut buster parfait at a Dairy Queen!   It is nice to know that celebrations can still be simple and relatively in-expensive in a world where costly cruises,airline tripsto large metropolises, ticketsto plays, pop concerts and other amusements are often the order of the day, week, or month. I will gladly spend a day with a friend or a family member and call it a truly good day! My garden is lush with new spinach, a variety of lettuce and tangy small radishes.  I am glad I planted such crops in mid-April; they truly thrive in the early spring and it is the first time we have eaten fresh produce from the garden in May.  I hope I remember to do the same thing next April….weather permitting.    Weather permitting…..always a necessary attachment in the Red River Valley region.  A friend used to say, "If you don’t like the weather in the Valley, just wait five minutes." and it proves to be true over and over. But a day like yesterday makes you forget about those ugly windy, chilly, hot, humid, mosquito-ridden days that we can have.  I figure that after our long winters and often chilly springs, we are "owed" such a rare day in June as June 1 was this year.  And I am grateful.