I ran across a couple things that stuck me this week during what would have been Mother’s 98th Birthday Season. We’ll get to them in a second.
Back in 2014, Mother and I went trekking for pine cones that we could use as fire starters. She took to it like a kid on Easter morning.
Today, I took Road Warriorette Shari and her mother, Senior Honorary Road Warriorette LaFern, to an undisclosed location for a similar hunt. (“If anybody asks what we’re doing, tell them we’ve been sentenced to community service,” I told them.)
When we were through, I said we’d make a side trip over to New Lorimier Cemetery to wish Mother a Happy Birthday with a pair of our pine cones. I mean, flowers are so ordinary.
Gregory Lincoln’s Thoughts
Gregory A. Lincoln administrator of Facebook’s Cape Rewound, a popular group with 5,311 members (and counting) recently lost his mother. He shared this with the group:
Sitting in my bed enjoying the pretty full moon shine through my bedroom window. 🙂. It’s been a very rough weekend. It’s hard to imagine her gone. All my life she was very tough and fought death and seem to always win except that final battle. I don’t understand. I assume it’s a battle we will all lose sooner or later. I guess she knew in her heart it was her time. Her birthday is approaching so please excuse me if I share a memory, a photograph or heart touching song.
About the same time, I was sorting stuff that had buried my desk, deciding what I wanted to keep, and what would be good fireplace fodder now that the weather is turning chilly.
Memories Sneak Out of My Eyes
In the stack was a letter from Brother Mark. It was a rambling thing, all full of non sequiturs and whimsy. On the last page, in the last paragraph before reaching a photo of Mother in one of her signature red coats, he wrote, “As I find myself at the bottom of the page, I couldn’t decide which to end with, so you get both. Put it in context, if you will.
“My memory loves you; it asks about you all the time.”
and
“Sometimes memories sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks.”
Mother always asked, ” “Who will put flowers on the graves after I’m gone?” Her flowers were celebrating spring in fine fashion, so I dropped off flowers at four sites on Friday.
My journey took me to the beautiful Pleasant Hill Cemetery near Tillman, just outside Advance, Mo., where my grandmother’s father and mother are buried.
Mother and her grandmother
Here is Mother and her grandmother on the farm near Tillman. After this, the Adkins moved to the big metropolis of Advance, where they opened a general store near what is now Oak Street and East South Street. Mother remembered the store had a parrot that would occasionally use inappropriate language.
Mary Adkins’ Obituary
Mary Adkins’ death certificate attributed her death to acute bronchitis, with a secondary cause of senility. Dr. Reynolds of Advance was the attending physician. I never paid much attention to the family tree, but this obit helps me figure out who some of the names were that I heard in passing.
Tiny Altenburg said goodbye to one of its best-known members on Wednesday, November 7, 2018. Lillian (Schilling) Fiehler was a long-time resident of the town of 352, a member of the Bucket Brigade, and one of The Last Generation to speak German as a primary language growing up.
I feel like I have to tell a little about Lillian’s town before I dive into her life. (You can click on the photos to make them larger, then use your arrow keys to step through them.)
When I showed up at the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum on Nov. 17, 2010, with an armload of photos of Wittenberg, it never dawned on my how it would change the way I look at my pictures. The diminutive Lillian introduced me to museum director Carla Jordan, who handed me off to Wilmar Degenhardt, who was astounded to find that I had taken aerial photos of the house he was born in.
Decorating Christmas trees
Lillian Fiehler working on Altenburg Museum Christmas Tree exhibit 11-17-2011
It wasn’t long before I found myself making regular 66-mile round trips to the museum where I would watch volunteers like Lillian working on things like the annual Christmas tree exhibit (which they are decorating right now, by the way).
Insular, but friendly
Mother, Jessica Cyders with MO folks 10-29-2013
The amazing thing about Altenburg, one of eight German-Saxon communities founded in the 1830s, was how it could be both insular and extraordinarily welcoming.,
One day when I complimented Wilmar on how well homes were maintained, and how the yards were well-kept, he leaned over conspiratorially and all but whispered, “Yeah, but the ENGLISH are coming.” That he shared that with me made me feel like I was accepted.
When I took Mother and Curator Jessica to the Mississippi Mud (now Grayson’s Bar & Grill), It wasn’t long before Lillian’s son, Gerard pulled up a chair. Soon chairs were scraping across the floor to be be occupied by Schmidts, Deganhardts and others with Deutch-sounding names.
You’ll never find yourself eating alone at Grayson’s.
Gerard and his dad
I’ve spent many hours sitting with Gerard at Tower Rock, watching logs drifting to New Orleans, and waiting for the whirlpool the natives called The Demon That Devours Travelers to spin up.
In 2014, I did a video of Gerard talking about his dad, Bob, who was drafted at age 19 to go fight in the Battle of the Bulge as a tank driver. It’s worth watching.
I worry a little about Gerard. At the end of the video, he says, “One of my sisters said that “You didn’t just lose your dad. You lost your best friend.” Many of the stories that his dad told him ended with the tagline, “Don’t tell your mom.” Now, unfortunately, he won’t have that option.
Lillian’s obituary
Lillian Fiehler 07-16-2013
Lillian Marie (Schilling) Fiehler, 88, of Altenburg, was taken home to be with the Lord, Friday, November 2, 2018.
She was born November 16, 1929, in Altenburg, daughter of Rudy and Clara (Loebs) Schilling. She was baptized and confirmed at Trinity Lutheran Church where she worshiped her entire life.
Lillian married Robert (Bob) Fiehler on June 18, 1950. Their marriage was blessed with five children: Gerard Fiehler, Altenburg; Susan Fiehler, St Louis; Carla (Kent) Grebing, Altenburg; Ellen (John) Linxwiler, St. Louis; and Timothy Fiehler, St Louis. She is also survived by five grandchildren: Jacob (Sarah) Fiehler, Alison (Brian) Funke, Barrett (Chrysta) Grebing, Nick (Sarah) Fiehler, and Ben Linxwiler. Also, seven great-grandchildren; Jack, Faith, and Blythe Funke, Ella and Vivian Fiehler, Theo Grebing, and Aubrey Fiehler.
Lillian Fiehler 07-16-2013
Survivors also include two brothers and two sisters, Myrtle Kuehnert, Melvin (Mary) Schilling, Lorene (Leonard) Haertling, and Harold (Deb) Schilling and one sister-in-law, Lois Kersten, and numerous other family and friends.
Lillian was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, brothers, Raymond Schilling, Leonard Schilling, and a grandson, Wade Fiehler.
Lillian spent many enjoyable years serving numerous families as part of the “East Perry County Bucket Brigade.” Many of these families became part of her extended “family.” She also enjoyed her many carpool friends.
Throughout Lillian’s life, she participated in a variety of church activities including singing in the Trinity Choir, LWML, and serving as a docent at the Lutheran Heritage Center.
Lillian Fiehler 07-16-2013
Lillian’s greatest passion in life was caring for her son, Tim, who has Down Syndrome. She exercised great zeal for Tim to know the Lord and be active in church and the community. The family is grateful for the care that Tim receives at the Emmaus Group Home.
Lillian will always be remembered for her beautiful yard, love of cooking, baking, sewing and hosting people in her home.
Lillian enjoyed living at Independence Care and her family will always be grateful for the care that she received in her years there as a resident.
We’re coming up another Mother Birthday Season without the guest of honor. One of the things I’ve become almost used to are the sounds of a house that is empty except for me.
It used to startle me when I’d hear a BAM! like someone trying to break into the house. That would be followed by a RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE, SPLAT.
After awhile, I learned to identify that as the sound of walnuts hitting the roof, rolling down, then hitting the ground or driveway. In fact, it makes me think of the paraphrased lines of a B.J. Thomas song:
Walnuts keep falling on my head But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red Crying’s not for me ‘Cause, I’m never gonna stop the walnuts by complaining
Because I’m free Nothing’s worrying me
Winning the liability lottery
Warriorette Shari came down from St. Louis for the weekend and griped about the walnuts all over the driveway. I told her it was part of my long-range financial plan to have her slip and fall, collect a huge insurance payout (which she would, of course, split with me), and figure she had won the liability lottery.
She rewarded me with The Look.
While I was sweeping them up, it made me think of past dealings with the green bombs.
Dad got the great idea that we should round up all the the nuts that fell in the yard, crack the shells and spend the winter picking out the goodies.
There’s one big problem
The big problem with that is that the walnuts are encased in a hard, green husk that has to be removed first. That ain’t easy. We tried all kinds of ways.
Putting them out in the street to let cars run over them just meant that you had to chase up the hill, down the hill and in the ditches on either side of the road after they had squirted off in every direction.
Then, he got a great idea: he bored several sized holes in a 2×6 board. We were supposed to select a hole slightly smaller than the husk, then drive it through the hole with a hammer, leaving the husk on one side and the nut on the other.
The nut, unfortunately, was the guy holding the hammer. You’ve heard of walnut stain, haven’t you? Well, there’s a reason for calling it that. I think I was about 42 years old before all of the stain wore off. I tried to convince people it was Dektol developer stain from the making prints in the darkroom because that sounded somewhat professional.
Are you nuts for nuts?
So, here’s the deal. If you have a hankering for walnuts, I have a yard full of them. Some of them have been herded together, but there are probably a bushel or two in the wild scattered all over the yard. Come and get ’em. (If you want me to answer the door with pants on, I suggest you give me a 10-minute warning.)
I just remembered that I had written about walnuts in 2014, and had plowed much the same ground. Nothing much has changed since then. You can click on any of the photos to make them larger, then use your arrow keys to navigate around.
We were a pecan family
Because walnuts were so hard to crack, and it was no fun to pick them out, we were more of a pecan family. Dad’s favorite winter pastime was sitting in the basement picking out pecans while watching TV.
