Mary Welch Steinhoff Archives

September 14, 2014

Pursuing the Wild Pine Cone

The temps in Cape have gotten low enough for enough days that the concrete basement walls are starting to radiate cold. Mother lit the first fire of the season this morning.

I was editing photos all day, so I didn’t know that it had eventually gotten nice outside. The temperatures were mild and there was no wind. I told Mother is was a perfect time to replenish her pine cone supply. (I mentioned last winter how well pine cones work as fire starters.

When we cruised by Jackson City Park earlier in the week, we saw a couple of our regular trees were dropping cones, but they were a lot smaller than last year.

Like an Easter egg hunt

We found a tree down near the river that filled two five-gallon buckets in about 20 minutes. Then, we went looking for a park Brother Mark thought might have some trees. We pulled into a parking spot and hit the mother lode. I started filling my bucket again when I noticed Mother wasn’t in the van.

She didn’t want to be left out of the fun, so she had snatched a bag and a grabber and started working the tree on the other side of the parking spot.

The grabber she’s using is similar to this one on Amazon, but available locally for not much more.

Two 13-gallon bags full

In not more than 20 or 30 minutes of actual picking, we managed to fill two 13-gallon trash bags with fire starters. Based on the number of cones high up in the trees, it looks like there will plenty to last the winter.

I was using a new grabber. I was in Ace Hardware to pick up some odds and ends when I saw a bright yellow whatsit that looked interesting until I saw an $18.99 price tag on it. Then I looked again and it was marked down to either $3.99 or $4.99. The one Mother is using has rubber grippers that would make it better for picking up things off top shelves and doesn’t require as much force to use.

My fancy yellow one would pick up two or three cones at a time and has magnets in the end (which didn’t help with pine cones). It also had an annoying squeak that silicone spray should fix.

September 8, 2014

Growing Things Fear Him

When I travel across the country, my van is loaded with cameras, tripods, computers, electronic gizmos and navigational aides. When Brother David hits the road, he carries such implements of destruction that trees and bushes shrink back in horror as he goes by.

Mother passed on certain traits to each of us. I got her desire to explore new roads and to marvel at the power of storms. David, on the other hand, inherited her desire to attack green, growing things and shorten them to within an inch of their lives (or more).

The sun had scarcely started to think about waking up roosters when he brought out a hedge trimmer that could chop down walnut trees and a blower so powerful that he has to put rocks in his pockets to keep from being blown backward. The only thing that makes more noise than the blower is his snoring in the middle of the night. He was sleeping on the porch (“cause it’s nice and cool”) with the door closed and I was in the basement trying to finish a blog post when I started having problems with my monitors vibrating. I traced the disturbance to my brother creating low-frequency, but powerful sounds.

Like a space shuttle launch

I covered a space shuttle launch one time where I set up a recorder to capture the roar of the thing blasting off. After the last speck of it disappeared into the blue, I played the recording back and found out that the launch caused the earth to shake and created a massive sound wave that washed over you like the surf, but I didn’t capture it. My theory was that the sound was too low a frequency for my recorder to pick up.

If I don’t get the sonic sound track tonight, I’m going to assume he hits those same frequencies. Maybe I can get video of the dining room windows vibrating.

Why don’t we just use a chainsaw?

I watched him tackle a bush in the front yard that was almost as high as the house. He used the massive hedge trimmer to bite out huge hunks of it, then he would walk around snipping a leaf here, a branch there, must like a barber might do to a head of hair. Every trip around the bush would cause it to get smaller and smaller. (I can only imagine how short the coffee table would become if he thought one leg was a little off and he needed to even it up.)

Finally, I said, “Dave, why don’t we make the process shorter? I’ll get the chainsaw and we can just take it off level with the ground.”

“It’ll grow back fast,” was his response.

Does she REALLY like those flowers?

After we finished Mother’s splendid dinner of liver and onions, mashed potatoes, with gravy, corn and some pink stuff with cherries in it, I felt a nap was in order, but he decided the grass needed mowing. Now, I’ve offered to do that before, but Mother always says she likes to mow, so don’t touch her mower. She must have seen the crazed look in David’s eyes, so she didn’t even try to stop HIM.

It took him a little while to figure out that you have to hold down the brake to start the beast. I think he was confused because he didn’t seem to understand the concept of a brake. He operated at two speeds: Fast and You’d Better Get Out of My Way.

Here he is contemplating if Mother really LIKES those flowers. “They’ll grow back,” I could hear him thinking.

Dust and a spray of walnuts

I watched him running at full tilt boogie right up until the time he made a turn and sprayed me with sticks, rocks, boulders and a rat-a-tat-tat of walnuts propelled faster than the speed of sound. I know it was that fast because they hit me before I heard ’em coming. I got the hint.

I calculate that he’s gonna be slowing down a little this week: he’s turning 60 on September 12.

August 22, 2014

Cape to Athens

I was supposed to head out for Athens, Ohio, on the afternoon of August 19 and make a leisurely two-day drive out of it, with some sightseeing along the way.

Right before I started breaking down the computer equipment for loading, the weather alert radio went off with a severe thunderstorm warning with reports of baseball-sized hail west of us. I didn’t want to take a chance on getting holes punched in my windows before heading off cross-country, so I holed up under the overhang at the nearby funeral home. I was joined by two other cars shortly after.

We got some gusty winds, heavy rain and about five minutes of pea and marble-sized hail, but it blew through quickly. A few limbs snapped off a walnut tree on the side of the house, but that was about it. Based on scanner traffic, Jackson must have gotten more of the storm than we did.

Saying goodbye

Mother and I usually take a group selfie when I head out, but since I’m going back to Cape in about a week, we decided to go with a wave.

I think she’s been watching too much TV news out of St. Louis. That looks less like a wave than a “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” pose.

Traffic was OK

With only a couple of exceptions, traffic was light and moving smoothly. Some clouds popped up a few times, but I had more bug splatters than rain splatters on the windshield.

Worked in a few naps

Listening to a good audio book about World War II kept me awake, but I did stop at some rest areas for seven and nine-minute naps. This is what I saw when I woke up from one of them.

I was in good company: there were six or eight 18-wheelers in the parking lot with their diesel engines grumbling away. It was either that or their pilots were really snoring.

Rolled into Athens with 532 miles under my belt at about 1:18 a.m. (I lost an hour due to the time zone change.) Wife Lila complained that 1:18 isn’t an “about” time.

I tried to explain that the exact time would be 1:18:42. I just rounded it to 1:18.

I don’t think it’s going to be safe for me to go home.

August 3, 2014August 2, 2021

Neighbor Rhonda Turns 50

When we moved into our house on Kingsway Drive 58 years ago, Bob and Mary Tinker lived across the street; the Grays lived next to them, the McCunes lived in a small cottage down the hill, and the Hales and Heislers in their farm houses finished off the neighborhood. We were way outside the city limits and cows grazed in the field behind our house.

That’s Mrs. Tinker in front of her house.

Boltons came Memorial Day 1994

Bill and Rhonda Bolton moved into the house on Memorial Day, 1994. Even though they’ve been living there 20 years and have been the best neighbors you could want, we all still call it the “Tinker House.”

They keep an eye on Mother for us. When Brother Mark kept getting a busy signal on her phone one night, he called me and I reached out for the Boltons and Carla Jordan, who lives over by Food Giant. It turned out to be a false alarm: Mother had failed to hang up the phone properly and that’s why it rang busy.

When Mother’s mower stopped while she was massacring grass the other day, Bill came over to help her push it away from the street. It’s nice to know you have friends and neighbors who will come running if you need them.

Come over for Rhonda’s party

Bill stopped by Friday to invite Mother to Rhonda’s 50th birthday party on Saturday. I’m not sure if he used the phrase, “if you can make it up the hill,” but that would have insured that she would attend.

“A good time was had by all”

That’s a line that one of The Missourian’s country correspondents would tack on to any story involving more than two people, even if it was a funeral. In this case, it was true. There was a nice mix of family, friends and neighbors, good food and even a photo booth.

Birthday party photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the images.