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For a long time, it was difficult for Ken and me to get away for a vacation because we needed to engage a caregiver for Linda, our developmentally-different daughter, who lived at home. To celebrate our anniversary every April, we made the effort.

A few years ago, I was intrigued when I read about a spring, senior-citizen, bus trip to Savannah, Georgia. I phoned the number listed in the newspaper and learned it was already filled, but they could put me at the head of a waiting list they were compiling. It wasn’t long before I received a call informing me that they had a cancellation–we could go. I was elated.

As I thought about what I would need to pack, I realized some other couple probably had an illness that forced them to rescind their reservations. Their problem created our blessing.

Whether we call it fortune, chance or luck, it’s an external, arbitrary force affecting human affairs and comes in two varieties–good and bad.

After a baseball game, one group of fans cheers the winning team while the other bemoans losing. Skill is important in every contest but luck always plays a part.

Many professions rely on peoples’ misfortunes. Doctors of various specialties make a good living treating illness and injury. Police officers and firefighters are called when a constituent has a problem. If a car or an appliance won’t run, we fume a bit and engage a repairman. The same thing occurs when our electronic gadgets fail to respond.

Friends and relatives mourn the death of a loved one; but sons and daughters may gain property or a business. Bequests might help grandchildren attend college. Many non-profit organizations are benefactors from a prominent person’s will.

When has your good luck been at the expense of another’s bad?

For as long as I can remember, the Ferris wheel has played a part in my life. During the summers while I was growing up, my family attended the festivals in the surrounding small towns and the Green County Fair held in Monroe, Wisconsin. The events included a travelling carnival that set up a midway with snacks, games of chance and thrill rides. Dad always took me for a spin.

When 16-year-old Kenny asked this 14-year-old to ride the Ferris wheel at Davis Days, I didn’t realize it was our beginning as a couple. Sixty years later, we commemorated that momentous occasion by taking another whirl at the Old-Fashioned Days hosted by the State Bank of Davis.

The Ferris wheel was designed and created by Illinois native and civil engineer, George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago from May 1 to October 30 and attended by 25.8 million people. The original structure was 264-feet high with 36 cars each carrying 60 passengers for a total of 2,160 people. Through the years, the popular ride has been duplicated in many different sizes.

A Precious Moments replica of a Ferris wheel was part of the decorations for our Golden Anniversary open house. It has a father and daughter sitting in one bench seat, a teenage boy and girl in the next and an old couple in the third. It remains in our curio cabinet as a reminder of days gone by.

After our celebration, I used our reminiscing to begin a memoir about our seven-year courtship during the 1950s. I had my mother’s diaries to jog my memories. It took ten years of research, writing and rewriting before I submitted it to Adelaide Books, an independent New York firm. They offered me a contract and published my story titled, “The View from a Midwest Ferris Wheel.” It’s available for sale on line from Amazon in Kindle and paperback form. To publicize my work, I’ve joined a new group, Authors Supporting Authors, and attended several book fairs.

What has been a continuing part of your life?

I read a lot of murder mysteries. Often, one of the characters doesn’t want to be recognized and uses a disguise. It may be as small a change as wearing sunglasses. Sometimes, women dye their hair a different color or men add a false beard. A thin figure may be obscured with a little padding.

In real life, we do the same thing, but it isn’t intentional. As time passes, people change in looks. Many of us gain a little weight; the ladies who colored their first gray hairs have gone white or the gentlemen have copied the latest fashion and grown some type of facial hair. Outdoors, sunglasses may be worn.

One day I was enjoying a cup of coffee and a roll in a small Rockford shop. I glanced up as two, middle-aged men dressed in suits and ties entered. One of them told the fellow behind the counter, “I’m Detective Oswald. I understand you had a break-in last night.”

I recognized the name as one of our son’s high school classmates. I took a second look at the speaker who had thinning hair and the beginning of a pot-belly.

Attending a funeral or a school reunion, I have a mental list of the people who might be there. This gives me an edge in figuring out who a person is. For some strange reason, when I meet those I haven’t seen for a while, I expect them to look the same as the last time I saw them.

One thing that doesn’t change much is the way we talk. While watching an old movie on TV, the voice of a performer catches my attention and I recognize a young Jimmy Stewart or Katherine Hepburn who I’ve only known as an older actor or actress.

One of my pet peeve’s is someone who comes up to me and says, “I bet you don’t remember me.” I’m tempted to agree, “No, I don’t,” and go on my way but my social upbringing steps in and I don’t. It embarrasses me to admit that the person doesn’t ring a bell with me.

How do you feel when you don’t recognize a person you knew in the past?

Eons ago, our ancestors were hunter/gathers. They spent most of their day fishing, hunting animals and seeking vegetation such as berries and honey for something to eat. Sometimes I feel I have a lot in common with them because of the time I spend providing food. I like to cook but I also enjoy doing other things. If we didn’t have to eat three times a day, I would have a lot more free-time.

During the sixty-four years Ken and I have been married, I’ve made at least 44,000 meals. Since we have been empty-nesters, most of the casseroles and soups I prepare last for more than one meal, which gives me several days of reheating instead of starting from scratch.

It isn’t just the cooking; I have to decide what we’re going to have. The other morning, I checked the refrigerator to take inventory of what was left over from making other dishes and needed to be used up. I saw celery, green pepper, sweet onion, sour cream, mayonnaise, grated cheddar cheese and bacon. I can’t recite recipes, so I have to find them. I do remember which cookbook, notebook or recipe box to look in. I realized I had the makings of a Seven Layer Salad, which goes with anything else. All I would need to buy was a head of lettuce and a package of frozen peas.

Add in trips to the grocery store. When we lived in the country, that was a once-a-week excursion. Living in town with a market a few blocks away, I go whenever my list gets long or I need something right now.

Of course, cooking and eating makes dirty dishes, which have to be cleaned. I’ve never felt the need for a dishwasher. Our pullman-style kitchen, which was tucked into an alcove when our house, one of the oldest in the village, was remodeled, has no room for one either.

How much of your time do you spend providing meals?

This weekend, we’ll begin celebrating the 4th of July, which is Tuesday. There’ll be community activities including parades and fireworks to commemorate the beginning of our country in 1776 and our freedom.

The opposite of freedom is control. I’ve raised three children and along the way I’ve heard, “No! I won’t and you can’t make me.” I have to silently admit that is true, but parents still try.

I remember chocking down green beans when I was eight. After a summer day of haying, Mom included the vegetable from the garden when she fixed supper before Uncle Hookie and his daughter left for their farm. I only liked the pork chops and potatoes, but she said, “If you want to ride on the tractor with Doris when she goes home, you have to eat your beans.” The five-mile trip on the JI Case with my older cousin was incentive enough for me to clean my plate.

Continually governments on all levels from Washington, D.C., to the family issue rules and regulations. They range from the COVID-19 federal order to wear a mask inside public places to Mom’s edict, no cell phones at the table. We live in a carrot-and-stick society using both reward and punishment to induce cooperation.

Love is one of the biggest carrots we have. People do great things for those they care about. Mothers and fathers devote much of their time to their children. First responders work 24/7 to help their fellow citizens cope with problems. Soldiers give their lives for their country.

Money can be both a carrot and a stick. A boss may offer time-and-a-half wages for employees to work longer hours.

While driving on the tollway with its speed limit signs of 70 mph, I stay in the slower lanes because the drivers using the left lane are going much faster. I hope a trooper comes along and gives them tickets requiring payment of fines. Maybe that would change their behavior.

Do you have your own version of, “No! I won’t and you can’t make me,” to exercise your freedom?

Today is the first day of summer–the longest day of the year. The sun will rise at 5:21 a.m. and set at 8:39 p.m. making our day 15 hours and 17 minutes long. I enjoy living where we have a change of seasons. I think having the same climate year-round would get boring.

My clothes are dictated by the weather. I use two closets–one is in our bedroom where the things I wear every day hang and the other is upstairs where I store my off-season outfits. I enjoy donning short pants with tee shirts and sandals for these hot days. When fall arrives, I’ll be just as happy tucking them away and bringing out the jeans, sweat shirts and boots.

I’ll cook differently, too. Instead of chili or sweet potatoes with ham casserole, I’ll make a shrimp salad or chicken sandwiches.

While growing up, one of my joys of summer was going barefoot in the grass. Having to walk across our gravel driveway–not so much. I didn’t have a beach to feel the sand between my toes but we had a stream running through our permanent pasture, the milk cows’ grassland that never was plowed up for crops. The creek was a great place to play–catching tadpoles or just wading and feeling the mud squishing underfoot was fun. It wasn’t deep enough for swimming, a skill I never learned.

Once in a while, I still enjoy going barefoot in our yard. I’ve read about “grounding.” The theory behind that says putting our feet on the earth allows us to absorb electrons, which have numerous physical and mental health benefits by keeping us in the moment instead of thinking about the past or future. I keep watch for the dangers such as stepping on sharp objects, pests and hot sidewalks.

How will you enjoy the summer?

Sunday will be Father’s Day. One of the things I remember about my dad was our shared love for the Old West. During evening milking while I was growing up, he and I listened to “The Lone Ranger” on the barn radio. Our family saw all of the movies made by the popular, singing cowboy stars, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

When I was 4 1/2 years old, my parents bought me a pony. On Sunday afternoons, Dad and I would ride together–he mounted his horse, Mickey, and I was astride Millie. He held a lead rope snapped to my pony’s bridle to make sure she didn’t run away. One summer day, while we were galloping along a makeshift road behind the farm buildings, I slipped out of the saddle, landed in a bed of sand and started to cry. I wasn’t hurt, just scared.

My father immediately stopped, jumped down from Mickey and checked that I was okay. “Come on, get back on and we’ll go to the barn.”

“No,” I whimpered. “I don’t want to ride Millie any more. She threw me off.”

“You didn’t get thrown off. You just fell off.” Dad lifted me into the saddle and made sure my feet were firmly in the stirrups. I left the reins lay on my pony’s neck and clung to the horn with both hands. Dad climbed back on his horse and we slowly walked the animals the rest of the way to the barn. After that day, I enjoyed many more hours riding Millie. When I out-grew my pony, we sold her to another family, and I rode Mickey to bring the cows from the pasture for evening milking.

Two things have stayed with me from that day: when things go wrong, don’t try to shift the blame when it’s my own fault and try again.

What did your father teach you as a child that you have remembered all of your life?

My friendship with Corky began when I was bused from our farm into town to join the thirty-plus seventh graders in the newly created Durand Junior High School. When I was a sophomore, I started dating the guy who has been my husband for sixty-four years. As often happens in rural communities, he is also one of Corky’s first cousins.

I never said to Corky tell me about Ken’s folks who were killed in a car crash three years after we were married. Yet, during the mental leapfrog of two recent, casual conversations, I learned a little more about the couple who raised the fellow I married.

On a warm, summer day, Corky and I were sitting on her driveway reminiscing about our school days and I mentioned, “I had to say no the first time that Kenny called and asked me to go to a movie because my parents thought fourteen was too young for me to date.”

Corky responded, “Aunt Hazel was mad at your mother because she wouldn’t let you go out with her son.”

The two women had been best friends while members of the class of 1930 attending Durand High School, but drifted apart as often happened after marriage. I knew girls’ mothers were involved in their daughters’ dating lives but I didn’t know boys’ moms were concerned, too.

At a recent lunch with Corky, I mentioned I had stabbed the end of a finger on my left hand with a paring knife while washing dishes. With a Band-Aid on the small wound to prevent bleeding, I babied that hand–Ken did the dishes for several days. I said, “When I have a little injury that makes me do things with only one hand, it reminds me of my father-in-law.” Rolland had lost his left hand in a factory accident during the 1940s and wore a hook prothesis in its place.

Corky replied, “I remember being at their house when he was learning to tie his shoes one-handed. When he finally got it done, Aunt Hazel reached down, untied it and said, ‘Do it again’.” My friend’s remark made me realize that for him to accomplish all that he did, it took a lot of practice and also, support from his family.

Those two anecdotes made me feel I knew Ken’s parents a little better.

Do you have conversations with relatives that give you insights into members of your family?

Who decides these green things are plants to be cultivated and those are weeds to be eradicated? Weed is part of the name of milkweeds, but the perennials that grow up to six feet tall with broad, egg-shaped leaves, fragrant pink flowers, green pods and milky, white sap are proven lifesavers. They are poisonous to pets and livestock but most animals won’t eat them because they have a sour taste.

During World War II, the federal government asked my dad and other farmers like him to delay mowing the interlopers growing in corners of their fields until us kids fought our way through the head-high patches and gathered the pods in September. A pound-and-a-half of the floss from the pods could be sewed inside a life preserver, which would keep a 150-pound sailor afloat for ten hours.

Today, people are encouraged to plant milkweeds to prevent the extinction of monarch butterflies. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service statistics, nearly a billion monarchs have vanished since 1990. Herbicides used by farmers and homeowners to eliminate milkweeds are blamed. The greenery are the food source, home and nursery for the king of butterflies with their familiar four-inch, black, orange and white patterned wing-spans floating in slow, sailing flights. Monarch caterpillars feed exclusively on the leaves of milkweed, the only host plant for this iconic butterfly species.

Another perennial that many homeowners curse as weeds and dig out of their lawns is the dandelion. The hearty plant never gives up–it can be found growing in such inhospitable places as cracks in sidewalks. It withstands frost and provides one of the first pollen sources in the spring for bees and other pollinating insects.

The first bouquet of flowers a mother receives from her child is often a bunch of dandelions.

Some people consider the plant a food and eat the greens as part of a salad or cooked like spinach. My dad talked about folks of his era making wine from the blossoms.

How do you see milkweeds and dandelions?

Next Monday is Memorial Day, an American holiday honoring the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Many people visit cemeteries or memorials, hold family gatherings and participate in parades.

The observance originated three years after the Civil War ended. General John Logan designated May 30, 1868, as Decoration Day because it wasn’t the anniversary of any battle. He asked people to strew flowers or otherwise decorate the graves in a nationwide remembrance of his comrades who died in defense of our country during the late rebellion and whose bodies lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. The tradition continued until an act of Congress designated the last Monday in May as Memorial Day, an official federal holiday beginning in 1971.

The Civil War was the last time Americans witnessed battles in their homeland. Our nation has been attacked twice since, but the retaliation has been carried out on foreign soil. Japanese airplanes bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, December 7, 1941, bringing the United States into World War II. Most of that combat took place in Europe, East Asia, Africa and islands in the Pacific Ocean.

On September 11, 2001, four U.S. passenger jets were highjacked by the militant Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda terrorists and coordinated suicide attacks were carried out. The first two planes hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the third smashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. The fourth airliner was intended for a federal building in Washington, D.C., but passengers caused it to crash in a field in Pennsylvania. The international conflict in Afghanistan followed.

Unofficially, Memorial weekend is also considered the beginning of summer. Many things will vie for our attention; stores will advertise bargains for shoppers, grills and patio furniture will be dusted off and picnics planned. Women who follow the conventional fashion rule will dig out white shoes that have been abandoned in the back of closets since Labor Day.

How will you observe Memorial Day?