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Essentially Esther Banner

Thursday, May 13, 2004

TIMELINE....SUMMER 1956 

When George started work riding the trains and sorting mail he met and liked a man who was new to the job as well….Eldon Schneider. He kept talking about him and how much they had in common…at least in attitude. He and his wife, Evelyn, lived in an apartment on the Plaza and didn’t have children. The Plaza was the showcase of the greater Kansas City area and was the most expensive.

George wanted me to invite them to dinner some evening when they were both in town. I agreed and a date was set. When they arrived the four of us liked each other from the start. Evelyn was ‘taken’ with Becky who was almost three. She was a pretty little girl with blue eyes, blonde hair and a winsome personality. She was the inspiration Evelyn needed to decide she wanted a baby. The four of us visited back and forth and were good friends……still are.

Vacations were always the same with us. We never had the extra money for the normal term of “vacation” but since both our parents lived in South Central Missouri we always went “home.” The grand-parents didn’t see their grand-children too often and I felt bad about that. I had grown up with such a large family of aunts, uncles, and cousins I felt our children were missing out on the larger family influence. It’s true that by the time I married I only had one (maternal) grandmother but she still was a major factor in our family. She was a strong woman who stayed in touch with ALL of us.

Going home always meant going to grandma and grandpa Strain’s house in Cabool for a couple of days and then to Willow Springs where my parents lived. Grandpa Strain was in his late 70’s when George and I married and grandma was in her 60’s. They were living in a little stucco house not too far from the railroad tracks. Grandma would always make beds for the children in the living room and hearing the trains roar by during the night was part of the fun. They loved it.

In the morning you could always hear grandpa telling the “little jaspers” they better come up out of that bed or they were going to get water thrown on them. The first time this happened they thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. He returned with a full dipper of water and soaked them good. Any visit after that there wasn’t any problem about getting out of bed. Grandma was a quiet little woman who never was exposed to any luxuries in her life. George (and me too) as well as the grandchildren were her joy. Since George was an only child we were always her focus.

She would walk to the local motel where she cleaned rooms and did the laundry for them. She bought groceries with her money and saved for gift buying. Grandpa did odd jobs about town and took care of the other expenses……they had a simple life and were good people. After visiting there we would then drive on to Willow Springs to visit my parents.

Mom and dad had loved boating from the early days of their marriage when they, uncle Ted and aunt Beulah and uncle Emil would fish and boat on the Missouri River between Blair and Omaha. I have pictures of mom on a surfboard being pulled by dad. Mom couldn’t swim but dad had such influence over her confidence she never worried about being thrown off or drowning.

Sometimes my brother, Louis, and his buddies from Milwaukee would meet us all at the lake and we would have wonderful times of water skiing, fishing, and camping. Those were fun times. One summer my brother had a boat and engine so large he could pull five skiers behind with no problem. The children loved all the wild campfire stories that dad, Louis and his friends would tell far into the night. They would fall asleep wherever they were sitting because they didn’t want to go to bed and miss anything. Being in the water most of the day and the fresh air made for early bedtime.

People often wonder why old people always talk about the “old times” so much. Since I am almost 72-now I have figured it out. It’s because we have more life behind us than we do ahead of us. We also have the pleasure of deleting the memories that are painful and high-lighting the ones that brought pleasure. We are the masters of what is past but the present and the future are sometimes not within our control.

Orson Wells read a piece once that I love and in it he said, “I know what it is to be young…..but you do not know what it is to be old.” Tred lightly on the “old folks” who repeat stories. You will miss them when they are no more.

Until tomorrow,

Essentially Esther