Summer time - Get out Your Hoes!

How the memories last of significant times in our lives. The character building aspect of thinning (finger thinning with short-handled hoes), and hoeing impossibly long rows of sugar beets and beans remains in my memory forever. In retrospect, there is a fondness for those times when Dwight and I forged long-lasting relationship as brother and sister, and all animosity and differences were forgotten in our common labors. as we drank out of the common jug of water at the end of the row. They really are good memories, if one can forget the heat, the sweat, the mosquitoes, the gnats, the horseflies and deerflies.

Father's Day -

This was taken sometime in the early 1940's. The original picture includes the old car, and Judy - I think.
This was taken during the summer of 1980, when Dad found solace from Mother's cancer diagnosis and surgery by making two big marquetry pictures that summer.
Russell Marion Blood, photo taken when he was one year old. The other picture is the classic on his mother's lap.

If I had Dwight's eloquence, I would write a wonderful essay on our father, but I will try to express a few thoughts. Dad was a complex man. He was talented in many ways, and didn't think so. Mother worked all their lives together to buoy him up to be confident of his ability to do so many things. Even though times were often tough, I remember laughter around the supper table. Memories include: waiting on the top of the cellar for a sight of the little Ford that would bring Daddy home from wherever he had found work during the depression; him and Mother taking me to the hospital in Lovell when I was 4, and his encouraging me to be "good"; on a summer morning, waking up to his coming into the house very early after he had been out irrigating, and wanting breakfast; chasing the cows on Mother's Day when they got into the strawberries; having first dibs on "The Saturday Evening Post" and the serial Westerns; sitting on the couch, reading, and swinging his foot like a metronome, keeping me on time at the piano; whistling and sniffing on the way home from movies; his love of Western movies; his love for all of his children, and his frustrations when we didn't do as he hoped for; his skill with wood, and the time we spent together in Washington making marquetry pictures;

his hopes, dreams, and love for his children and Mother. Memories go on and on. We were fortunate to have a father who loved us very much. I still want to call him to tell him something funny or interesting. Maybe some day?

Good Things to Come

Knowing our past, does this not seem familiar?  And knowing what we must yet do, doesn't the message still fit?

Good Things to Come

Memorial Day Memories

Dear Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa, We're all sorry we can't be there on this Memorial Day with armloads of purple iris and lilacs to pay tribute to your resting place in person, but we all live too far away and we each are getting closer to the end of our own earthly existence.  But we can each tell you that not a day goes by that we don't think about you, and miss you, and have questions to ask you, because, especially you, Mom, were so darn stingy with information that we wanted to know and still want to know.  We are all continually amazed as we gain new insights each year about the magnitude of the sacrifices you made and the perseverance you unwaveringly pursued to bless each of us and make our lives possible and to endow us with the qualities that we each possess.  We owe you more than we can ever repay.  Though we can't be there today, we are all sentimental cry babies and cherish all of the sights and sounds and voices and winter snows and summer flowers and hayfields and admonishments to go to bed at 8:30 even when we were 30 years old.  We thank Burchell and Ruby for bringing flowers to your graves each Memorial Day, as close as we can get to being there ourselves.  But we can tell you that we six Blood kids that you left behind have stuck together and loved and supported one another through all of these years, united in our devotion to each other and to our parents and grandparents.  See you next year.  Love, Louise, Dwight, Elizabeth, Judy, Ann, and Steve