Family Archives

April 4, 2016

I’m in Hot Water

No, I’m not in trouble with Wife Lila. Well, I MIGHT be, but that’s not the topic of this post.

For the past five, maybe even ten years, Mother’s water heater in the basement has been making strange banging and clanging noises. Guests have been alarmed, thinking someone is breaking into the house or maybe a gaggle of deranged raccoons is running amuck in the basement tangling with a posse of possums.

Goggle said the noise was caused by pieces of sediment stirring around in the tank.

I’ve noticed recently that the water that used to be scalding when I washed the dishes was only slightly hot, and that my showers had to be cut short if I didn’t want to have ice cubes coming out of the shower head. My theory was that there was so much sediment in the tank that there was no longer room for water.

When I took a close look at the heater, I saw a scrawled note in my handwriting that said, “6/19/87.” I’m pretty sure that pushing 30 years old indicates that we got our money’s worth.

Installation challenges

I know better than to touch plumbing. If I go to change a simple washer, I can expect to see the city start digging up the street in front of the house. I opted to have a guy who knew what he was doing hook it up.

The pro arrived with the heater, tools and a bunch of pieces / parts. He had a challenge breaking apart fittings that had lived together happily for three decades. At one point, I reached up to the tools hanging on the workbench. “Want a hammer?” A few minutes later, I asked, “Want a BIGGER hammer?”

Around 7:30, he asked, “How late is Ace Hardware open?”

“A negative 30 minutes,” I said. “What do you need.”

“One of these,” he said, holding up a goofus firmly attached to the end of a spaghetti of pipe.

“I’ll go get one.”

Well, there was a serious Noah’s Ark thunderboomer sitting right on top of the house. My Low Fuel light came on somewhere the far side of Thebes yesterday, and now the needle was sitting on E. This was NOT a good night to run out of gas, so I filled up in a driving rain and slopped through deep puddles of water to Menard’s plumbing section where, uncharacteristically, there was an employee restocking the shelves. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

“This is between me and a hot shower”

Holding up the widget, I said, “This is what is standing between me and a hot shower.”

She cast her gaze on the woofuspus, and said, “It’s a half incher.

“I don’t like to discuss size, so I’ll let you be the judge. I would have guessed at least two inches, but I’m a guy.”

She turned to the shelf and started to reach into a bin.

An empty bin.

Next, out in the rain to Lowes. Uncharacteristically, there was a guy in the plumbing section restocking shelves. I held my whangus up in the air, he looked at it sadly, shaking his head, then walked down the aisle directly to a replacement 1/2-inch whifflebobble.

I waded through puddles again, handed my guy the whosis, and he finished assembling the plumbing puzzle and put fire in the hole.

The next morning, there was no water on the floor, I couldn’t smell gas, and I wasn’t dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. You can’t beat that with a stick.

Shouldn’t this be more efficient?

I was confused by the yellow Energyguide stickers on the old and new heaters. The 1987 sticker said the estimated yearly energy cost was going to be $238. The new one, supposedly more energy efficient, was going to cost $263. What gives?

The old adage, “The big print giveth, and the small print taketh away” held the answer.

In 1987, the estimated rate was based on a natural gas average price of 62.7 cents per therm (whatever that is). The 2016 estimate is based on an average national price of $1.09 per therm.

Whatever it costs, a warm shower is worth it.

April 2, 2016

Marty Riley’s Glenn House Exhibit

Marty Perry Riley, Wife Lila’s sister, was the featured artist at the landmark Glenn House on April 1. I have long admired her work, but I didn’t realize she had done so many pieces. She is a member of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri and the Visual Arts Cooperative, and a frequent winner of contests.

Marty, a retired RN, was the person we’d call when Mother needed help with something over the years, and Wife Lila had her number on the speed dial whenever one of the kids broke or bent something. Her’s was the voice of comfort that would say, “Don’t worry. Just stick Adam’s arm back on with super glue and a couple bandages and he’ll be fine.”

She likes street painting, too

Her work isn’t confined to canvas, either. She’s been down to Lake Worth, Florida, a couple of times to participate in the annual Street Painting Festival, one of the biggest in the country.

March 27, 2016

First Tulip of Spring Surprise

I posted to Facebook last night that it was going to feel strange waking up at 1618 Kingsway Drive and not having a plastic or real Easter egg waiting for me to find.

After sleeping uncharacteristically late, even by my standards, I eventually had to get the day going.

While the bacon was frying, I slipped out the car to pick up something. When I walked back to the house, this is what was waiting in the flowerbed next to the front door.

Last fall, I did a post on finding The Last Rose of Summer. I felt better seeing The First Tulip of Spring.

What’s the pink thing?

While I was trying to figure out how to best compose the tulip picture, I saw something pink on the right-hand side of the frame. What is that?

It was a long-lost Easter egg

When I got closer to it, it turned out to be a broken piece of an ancient Easter egg. No telling how long that had been hiding waiting for me to find it one last time.

Remembering Dad and Mother

Mother was religious about decorating the graves of relatives in tiny rural cemeteries scattered all over Cape and Stoddard counties. One of her concerns was who would remember them after she was gone.

I decided that the tulip, some cuttings from the flowering trees and bushes from the yard and the old Easter egg would show I hadn’t forgotten. I can scratch flower arranger off my list of possible vocations, but I hope the thought counts.

Lila’s Mother

The next stop was St. Mary’s Cemetery to mark Wife Lila’s Mother’s grave.

Ray and Rose Mary Seyer

Just around the corner from Lucille Perry is the stone for Lila’s Uncle and Aunt, Ray and Rose Mary Seyer. They died so recently their stone hasn’t been engraved with their death dates, and the Missouri clay hasn’t settled and been covered with grass yet.

The couple were like father and mother to Lila, I could have listened to Ray spin yarns about growing up in Swampeast Missouri. They were good folks.

Rose Mary died October 31 of last year, and Ray followed March 17, 2016. Maybe Mother’s yard will have enough flowers that I can leave more than a single tulip the next time I visit.

March 14, 2016February 20, 2021

Merit Badge Counselors

Yesterday I ran a list of Boy Scout merit badges available in 1965, along with a gallery of merit badge books my brothers and I collected over the years. Today’s post will have a list of every counselor registered with the Shawnee district in 1971, and a little about the counselor’s role.

It’s interesting to read through the list of counselors. The men who volunteered for the job included some of the top in their field: names like Hal Lehman (Architecture), Jake Wells (Art), Weldon Hager (Athletics), Lawrence Bahn (Atomic Energy), John Seesing (Aviation), Bill Ewing (Music and Bugling), Fred Wilferth (Citizenship in the Nation and Scholarship), Ed Blummenberg (farming badges), Earl Siemers (Dairying), Dr. L.W. Hathaway (Dog Care and Pets), Tom Holshouser (Drafting), Milton Ueleke (Electricity and Electronics), Sheriff Ivan McClain (Fingerprinting), Henry Ochs (Fruit and Nut Growing and Gardening), John Blue (Journalism), Dr. W.O. Seabaugh (Horsemanship), Claude Foeste (Landscape Architecture), Richard Flentge (Swimming and Lifesaving), Harry Siemer (Personal Finances), Dr. J.A. Kinder (Personal Fitness, Wildlife Management and Public Health), B.W. Birk (Plumbing), Bill Nowell (Photography), Clarence Suedekum (Salesmanship), James L. Garner (Sculpture), Larry Grisvard (Theater), and Calvin Brennan (Wood Carving).

What was a merit badge counselor?

The counselor was an adult who had a specialized field of knowledge who could determine if a Scout had met all the requirements for a particular badge. The official rules make it clear.

You are expected to meet the requirements as they are stated—no more and no less. You must do exactly what is stated in the requirements. If it says “show or demonstrate,” that is what you must do. Just telling about it isn’t enough. The same thing holds true for such words as “make,” “list,” “in the field,” and “collect,” “identify,” and “label.”

Contacting a counselor could be scary

The scariest – and, to me, most valuable part of the process – was when you had to screw up your courage to set up an appointment with someone who might be a prominent citizen in the community. When you got there, you were generally pleasantly surprised to meet someone who had a real interest in the topic you had picked, and was more than willing to share that knowledge.

That’s not to say that some counselors weren’t tougher than others. Dad wasn’t afraid to tell a boy that he needed to schedule another appointment because he didn’t meet the requirements. That, too, was an important lesson.

Mass production Eagles

Troop 8, sponsored by the Trinity Lutheran Men’s Club, didn’t have many Eagle Scouts when I was in it. We looked up at those who had attained the rank with awe. Part of that was that we felt that it was a rank that was best achieved by an individual who was motivated to make those “scary” calls on his own.

There were some troops in the area that we perceived to be “mass-production Eagle factories” that brought in counselors and ran boys through the merit badge process in groups. Even as young boys, we could see the difference. Our perception might have been wrong, but our Eagles were numbered in the ones, and other troops had them by the tens.

Obligatory confession since a Scout Is Trustworthy: I never felt I deserved my Horsemanship merit badge that I earned at Camp Lewallen. I think everybody who signed up for the course and paid for the riding time passed it. I was about as good at riding a horse as I was at dancing. I read everything in the Horsemanship merit badge book, but the horse and I were never on the same page at the same time.

Times have changed

I met with all my counselors on my own. Generally, my folks would drop me off, and I’d call them for a pickup when we were done. That’s not how it’s done today. The official policy:

“You must have another person with you at each meeting with the merit badge counselor. This person can be another Scout, your parents or guardian, a brother or sister, a relative, or a friend.”

The list of counselors

Here’s the complete list. Finding a counselor for Citizenship topics, Cooking, Electricity or Photography was pretty easy. I don’t know what you’d do if you wanted to earn Textiles, Skiing, Small Boat Sailing or Pottery. Click on any photo to make it big enough to read, then use your arrow keys to move around.

What’s particularly neat is that the address and phone number of the counselor is listed. That might be fun for some of you who are looking for neighbors.