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Ken was getting low on Bryl Creem. He has used it on his hair since the ’50s when its tag line was, “A little dab’ll do ya.” The next time I went shopping, I looked in Walgreens and Target but neither had it. When I returned home, I checked the internet to see if it was still manufactured. It was available at the Walmart Supercenter on Riverside in Rockford. I’m not a regular Walmart shopped so I hadn’t stopped there.

Ken prefers to shop in Monroe, so he went to the Walmart there. They didn’t stock Bryl Creem and the young clerk he asked had never heard of it. He bought a substitute. After a few days, he told me he didn’t like what he’d purchased.

The next morning, I used the internet to contact the store on Riverside and learned the styling cream was available for pick-up. I ordered it on line, paid with a credit card and was given an order number for pick-up after 1:30 p.m. They advised me to email before I left home. After lunch, I checked with the store and was assured it was waiting for me. I printed out the order and headed for Rockford.

In less than a half-hour, I arrived at the the store closest to us, parked in their designated area and phoned the number posted. Soon a young man was at my car window. I showed him my name and order number. He went into the store and soon returned with my bag. I was ready to go home.

It was so easy. I didn’t have to hunt for a place to park in their busy lot, walk to the store from a distant spot or wander around inside looking for one item. I didn’t have to wait in a checkout line or check my self out.

Since COVID-19, a lot of stores offer the service–I recommend it.

Have you used a store’s pick-up?

I’m one of the millions of people who rely on data centers every day for business and pleasure. I ask Google for any fact I need to include in an article I’m writing. If I have something I want our whole family to know, I use an email address that includes everyone. On a recent Saturday, the GPS in my smart phone directed me to a friend’s new home in an Elgin subdivision. When I can’t find an item I want in area stores, I order it on line. I didn’t realize each of these actions uses water until I read an article in the Rockford Register Star.

I was amazed to learn that a single data center can churn through millions of gallons of water per day to keep hot-running equipment cool. Google is planning to add two more to their three cavernous facilities located in The Dalles, a city on the Columbia River in north-central Oregon. The placement of these water-guzzlers in drought-prone areas is an increasing concern around the globe.

I can’t imagine a million gallons of water. When I was growing up, our farm home didn’t have indoor plumbing. Dad carried in five-gallon pailfuls of fresh water pumped from the well in our backyard. Later, he carried out five-gallon pailfuls of used water.

The three of us used water sparingly. On Mondays, wash day, he filled a copper boiler, set it on the cook stove to heat and dumped it into Mom’s wringer washer. She cleaned all of our dirty clothes in the same soapy water beginning with a load of underwear and ending with Dad’s overalls. Saturday evenings, bath night, the water heated on the stove made about four inches in our portable, rubber tub. I stepped in first, Mom was second and Dad was last.

With hot and cold water coming out of our faucets, Ken and I don’t think about how much we’re using. Last month, the village billed us for a little over three thousand gallons. That figures out to about one hundred gallons per day flowing in through the meter and out through the sewer.

We each inhabit our own little world. We turn to the media to learn what’s happening in other spheres. In this day and age of 24-hour news, we are inundated with reports and must sift through what we see, hear and read to find the facts provided by journalists.

What are your sources for news?

When I entered adulthood, my social calendar was filled with friends’ weddings. Baby showers soon followed. As I waited for my sailor to finish his four-year hitch in the navy, I felt like everyone’s ‘old maid aunt’. Ken and I were the last of our group to marry and start our family. We are now octogenarians who finished 2021 with a month of mourning the passing of loved ones.

It’s fitting that the gatherings to honor these people are called celebrations of life. Our generation raised kids, watched grandchildren grow up and held great-grandbabies. We enhanced communities, accomplished career goals and retired. Our influence continues.

I am thankful for the friends who have been there for us during the good and the bad of our lives. Some I have known for a brief span; others have been around since high school days. It’s surprising what brings a thought to mind and I take a few moments to relive an event we shared. I am sad that our times have ended, but I appreciate what we had.

I’m reminded of the poem, “The Dash,” penned by Linda Ellis in 1996. She noted that a tombstone contains the date of birth and the date of death with a dash in between. The dash represents the individual’s time on earth. The final verse sums it up: “For it matters not how much we own: The cars, the house, the cash, What matters is how we live and love And how we spend our dash.”

What will your dash symbolize?

This is the week between the holidays. As a kid, I didn’t have school and could play with my Christmas presents. I think of the year I was seven and Santa made his last visit.

We celebrated on Christmas Eve with Uncle Hookie, Aunt Frannie, Doris and Sis coming for supper and gifts. Mom was busy preparing the festive meal so I took her place helping Dad do the evening milking. While I was in the barn, our house was one of St. Nick’s first stops.

The ‘big kids’ at school had been telling me Santa Claus was my folks. I didn’t want to believe them, but late that afternoon, I had no choice. While I was crawling around my parents’ bedroom floor hunting for my left shoe so I could go with Dad, I glimpsed a sled under their bed. I found my shoe, kept quiet about what I saw and hurried outside.

When I returned to the house, Santa had stashed the sled under the Christmas tree. The wooden surface atop the shiny, metal runners was painted bright red with DODGER in black letters down the middle and a tow rope fastened to the front. I loved sliding down the hill behind the barn, but not the trek pulling my sled back to the top.

One morning, I was in the barn with Dad while he did chores. He shoveled the manure from the gutter into the spreader that was hooked behind the tractor and parked beside the doorway to the cow yard. When he finished, he pulled away and stopped in front of the barn’s walk-in door. He hollered, “Hook your sled rope to the back of the spreader and you can ride along behind.” As we went down a small hill, I dragged my feet so I didn’t slide too close to the smelly spreader. He stopped in the corner of last year’s oat field. I disconnected my sled and waited by the fence line. He unloaded the spreader to fertilize next year’s alfalfa crop. He then stopped so I could reattach and ride back to the house. It was a treat because I could ride and not have to climb the hill.

While I was growing up, I never thought I was in peril and I don’t think my parents did either. In 1966, when Ken climbed down off a tractor and into a
Winnebago County squad car, we were surprised to learn statistics show that farming is more dangerous than policing. Looking back, many of the things we routinely did on the farm were probably unsafe.

What did you do while growing up that would now be considered dangerous?

Christmas brings its own special music–a time to enjoy the sacred and the silly. We’ll hear “Jingle Bells” although people traveling in a horse-drawn sleigh happened many years ago. Children’s songs including “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” and “Grandma Got Runover By a Reindeer” will be broadcast on the radio. In stores, they’ll play the ‘late, great’ popular singers from the forties and fifties such as Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” and Gene Autry’s “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer.” I’ll take advantage of the internet to find Yogi Yorgesson’s “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas.” I laugh at the way he describes how he gives up trying to buy a personal gift for his wife and his family’s gathering.

Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” brings back memories of how lonely I was when the tune came out in 1957. My sailor boyfriend was aboard the aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Bennington, on the other side side of the world. Although the song is about lost love and I expected him to return to me, it captured my feelings. I was working at the Winnebago County ASC Office in Rockford. During our morning and afternoon breaks at the nearby coffee shop, I took advantage of the ‘3 plays for a quarter’ on the juke box. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll lamenting over and over probably drove my co-workers crazy, but I didn’t care. I wallowed in my misery.

Singing the traditional carols during the Christmas Eve service at church is inspiring. The organ accompaniment brings the words to mind of my favorites, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Closing the evening with “Silent Night,” lighting individual candles and silently leaving the building makes it Christmas.

What’s your favorite Christmas music?

The first decoration I get out for the Christmas season is the Nativity Set that Aunt Frannie painted and gave to me before I was married. The plaster of Paris figures include Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus in a manger, an angel, a man and his camel, a shepherd with his sheep, plus the three magi. Later, I constructed a stable using some of our kids’ Lincoln Logs with straw from my parents’ farm glued to its cardboard roof. Three children and the years have left the scene slightly battered, but it holds too many memories to be replaced.

A pine wreath sold each year by the local Boy Scouts has hung on our front door since our son was a Cub Scout.

In the seventies, doing ceramics was the rage among housewives. The hobby didn’t appeal to me but my friend and neighbor, Alyce, made several, small, lighted trees and gave one to me. In remembrance of her, it sits on a wooden stand in a corner of the living room.

About two weeks before the holiday, Ken puts up the tree and decorates it. When our three were toddlers, we cut our own at a nearby tree farm. Grandma and Grandpa went along for the big event. We decided that was too much work. For several years on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas, we joined two other families choosing our pre-cut trees at the farm. Then, we all ate a chili supper together. When jobs took the others to faraway cities, we continued visiting the farm to choose our tree.

A few years ago, Ken got tired of sweeping up the needles that fell off as he carried the dry tree through the house and out the back door after Christmas. We purchased an artificial tree. It’s a good imitation but I still miss the real thing.

How do you decorate for Christmas?

For more than fifty years, I’ve lived in Durand, Illinois. I try to buy what I can in my hometown. The merchants are an asset and the sales taxes go toward keeping the water and sewer running, the streets paved and the police on duty. From time to time, I have to go elsewhere for things such as Christmas shopping.

Our village is centrally located. Half-an-hour of driving in various directions takes me to four different cities and several small towns in between. Whether I’m looking for clothes, hardware or something else that isn’t available here, I have a long list of establishments in Rockford or Freeport, Illinois, and across the state line in Beloit or Monroe, Wisconsin. Sometimes, I see this as a good thing–others a curse.

Often, I can’t group my errands. I can find a chain store such as Walgreen’s on a corner in most towns and it doesn’t matter which one I patronize, but smaller businesses that I’ve developed a personal relationship with through the years are in different locations. Yesterday, I needed to visit two places in opposite directions–the Winnebago County Clerk’s office in Rockford to obtain a copy of a legal document and Pinnow’s Home Town Pharmacy in Brodhead to pick up a prescription renewal.

Since becoming a writer, I’ve taken advantage of a couple larger cities within easy driving distance. An hour of travelling mostly backroads takes me to Madison where I’ve attended workshops at the Continuing Education Department of the University of Wisconsin. For more than thirty years, I’ve belonged to the Illinois Woman’s Press Association that meets in Chicago. The toll road makes the two-hour drive to the Windy City fly by.

Where do you do business?

Next Tuesday is December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. In 1941, Japan bombed Hawaii forcing the United States into World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s War Address termed it “a date which will live in infamy.” Every family had men who enlisted or were drafted into the armed forces.

Women also played a large part in the war effort. At least 150,000 served in the Women’s Army Corp (WAC); 84,000 became WAVES, the U.S. Navy’s Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; and at least 20,000 Women Marines helped “free a man to fight.” More than 59,000 American nurses served in the Army Nurse Corps.

Similar to World War I, the females on the home front took the places of the males who went to war. ‘Rosie, the Riveters’ worked in the factories building war materials. Completed airplanes were ferried from the manufacturers to military bases by the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS). They were considered civilians although they flew almost every type of military aircraft including B-26 and B-29 bombers.

Bright red lipstick roared into fashion for a surprising reason. Germany’s dictator, Hitler, reportedly hated the cosmetic, so American women painted their lips. The color represented the U.S. Flag and symbolized strength.

Fans of the ‘great American pastime’ were entertained by girls. Our area Rockford Peaches was one of the six teams that made up the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), which existed from 1943 – 1954.

When Allied victory seemed assured in 1944, government-sponsored propaganda began urging women to “return to normalcy” and work at home. It didn’t matter that some of the ladies enjoyed the autonomy their employment provided; the returning men would need the jobs.

In 1945, the war ended, our nation celebrated in the streets and then everyone headed home. The young people settled down. The grooms became breadwinners and their brides were housewives. Together, they produced about 77 million ‘baby boomers’, the largest generation ever created.

The veterans of the Big War are dying. Will the American people still “remember Pearl Harbor” when the Greatest Generation is gone?

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I am thankful for our family, our health and my memoir. Earlier this year, Adelaide Books, an independent New York firm, published “The View from a Midwest Ferris Wheel.” It’s available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback. If anyone wants to buy a signed copy, stop by my house or email me at DitzlerLTD@aol.com.

I spent ten years composing the story of our seven-year courtship in the fifties. I attended workshops to learn to write creative nonfiction, a style similar to a novel. I’d been a freelance journalist submitting newspaper and magazine articles since 1969, but never written a book. I had my mother’s diaries to remind me what happened during those years and stir my memories. I also visited area libraries to read old newspaper accounts of events. I joined writers’ groups that gave me camaraderie and constructive criticism.

When I finished the manuscript, I attended workshops to learn to write a book proposal for publishers. I expected to send multiple submissions, but I started with the one a couple writer friends recommended. The editor, Stevan V. Nikolic, asked to see the entire book and then offered a contract. I was amazed and delighted.

I didn’t realize Ken and I are a part of history until five years ago when we attended the Fireside Dinner Theater at Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. We walked into the building with a busload of high school students from La Crosse. After a delicious meal, we enjoyed a portrayal of The Million Dollar Quartet including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. The four rocked and rolled like they did in the ’50s. For the students, it was a music lesson from the ‘old days’; for us, reliving yesterday.

What are you thankful for?

With dinners to make for the holidays coming up, I dug out the old recipes. I use a notebook where I record the instructions that I get from friends or relatives, a card file and several tomes. My Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, a shower gift from Ken’s Aunt Irma, is 62 years old and raggedy but it still helps me make meals.

Some families number in the twenties or thirties for gatherings with everyone bringing a dish to pass. We’re a small group–less than ten. It doesn’t take more food than I can prepare. Some years, I haven’t been up to par and needed help, which is always available because everyone lives close.

Current magazines feature new twists, but I look forward to the old favorites. Years ago, when my husband was a farmer and we had three little kids, I mashed potatoes every day for dinner. Now mashed potatoes are a treat I only make once in a while. The same with dressing and gravy.

Thanksgiving calls for two kinds of pie–a Country Apple and a pumpkin topped with whipped cream.

Christmas requires bratzelies, a thin Swiss cookie, my folks baked on a special iron similar to a waffle maker and rosettes that Ken’s mother made by dipping irons into batter and hot grease. I’ll also sir up the red, white, and green Jell-O salad that’s traditional. A few guests will say, “No thank you.” I learned a long time ago, it’s nearly impossible to make meals that everyone eats everything. I’m the cook and my menus are what I like.

The highlight of both festive meals will be the fresh turkeys Ken fixes on our charcoal grill. The direction booklet that came with the Weber guides him through it.

What are your plans for the holidays?