This is a story about the Nebraska City Rescue Squad and the Carl Ball family at Seventh Street and Tenth Corso.
Rescue squadsmen Harold Rowe of Rowe Motors, Herm Royer of City Utilities and Ken Kendall, anesthetist at St. Mary's hospital, delivered a bouncing girl on November 28.
If you're wondering why you never saw the birth announcement along with other hospital news, the baby was not born at St. Mary's. She was born at the Ball home.
Rescue squadsmen did take the mother and baby to the hospital Saturday and they were released Monday.
It all happened Saturday afternoon. The family had called the doctor. "My pains were less than a minute apart," said the mother of six children. "I knew we didn't have much time."
"Why didn't you just go to the hospital instead of waiting for the rescue squad?" she was asked.
"I wasn't going to get in any dirty car with six kids to go to the hospital," she replied . . . and that brought smiles from the men in the room.
And so as the story goes, rescue squadsmen dressed in white uniforms roared into the driveway at the Ball home. Police Chief Clarence Iversen and Officer Roger Warren also answered the emergency call.
Kendall told the squadsmen, "this baby will be born any minute."
Mrs. Gladys Bird assisted and in a few moments the infant was born and let the world know with her new breath that she was indeed, very much a strong little girl with equally strong lungs.
There were a lot of smiles among the men in the room.
Chief Iversen said it was his first experience in 23 years as a law enforcement officer.
Mrs. Ball was not particularly worried earlier in the day that birth could come any time. Her husband was waxing a floor and when he quit for a few moments to rest his back, Mrs. Ball took up the waxing cloth and started work.
Well, nature put a stop to that and it wasn't too long after that Patricia was born.
Patricia has six other brothers and sisters. They are Carl, Jr., 10; Lorna, nine; Bonnie, eight; Linda, six; Levi, three; and Timmy, 15 months.
The Ball family formerly lived in the Thurman, Ia., area when Mr. Ball worked for the railroad at Pacific Junction, Iowa. They moved to Oregon about three years ago where their families lived, but returned to Nebraska City for work and a better place to live.
They returned in September and Mr. Ball worked on farms until he enrolled in the Manpower Training program. He goes to school in Lincoln and hopes to enter custodial service business after completion.
Grandparents are Mr. and Mrs. Loren Fawver, Canby, Ore., and Mrs. Myrtle Ball, Oregon City, Oregon.
And now you know the happy ending to an exciting rescue squad story. Patricia? Well, she's someone special.
"She's OUR girl," a squadsman said.
And what better Christmas gift for all.
Nebraska Safety Patrol Chief Col. James Kruger spoke bluntly and "shook" a number of his listeners the other night at the Elks Law and Order program.
The colonel said something has to be done about terrorism and revolutionaries or the U.S. will be plunged into civil war. He attributed permissiveness and disrespect for law and order as factors.
What the colonel said may be true. It's pretty hard for ole' John Q. Public to say baloney to the top lawman in the state. But this you can't deny; the lawman knows something. He's an expert and he draws the respect of the law enforcement officers with which he works. It's not very pleasant to accept his statements, but then it's not very pleasant to think about what it would be like if such a statement was true.
So, it seems that we had better wake up to those seemingly "minor campus unrests," "disturbances" and "bombings" and put some teeth in the law and help the men who are dedicated to die to protect us.
Update today:
What's "Brigette The Midget?"
Congratulations to the adult board of directors of the youth center for their selection of Joe Kafka as the director.
Joe is announcer-news man for KNCY in Nebraska City, and just recently he purchased a new trailer home for his family. (Wonder where he parks his motorcycle?)
Joe is in on the know. Betcha he knows about Brigette.
He's a fine caliber man who I'm sure will do a fine job with the youth center.
Mrs. Richard Kimmel has put her brush and colors to something new and different, but very old indeed.
I particularly enjoyed watching the facial expressions of the visitors as they stepped across the dining hall to get a better look.
The six different, well maybe the same, paintings are in one frame. They're exhibited on the west wall at Steinhart Lodge as "American Architecture."
Take a friend with you. Then you watch him as he looks at the paintings.