Mother's advice to the teen-ager — "Clean up the world tomorrow. Today just do your room."
Mayor Edith Fenstermacher and the city commissioners are doing their part to enter Nebraska City in the national Arbor Day Foundation program, but they can't do it alone.
The council directed City Attorney Wm. F. Davis to draft an ordinance on Tree Citv USA, the national contest.
It would be appropriate that Nebraska City win one of the and, oh yes, putting another home on the tax rolls.
The truth is, there are a lot of other towns that do much in forestry that we probably won't know much about until the entries start coming in.
Sen. Calvin Carsten, chairman of the executive committee of the Foundation, and Ellsworth Merkel, a member of the board, will need a lot of help from many of us.
The newspaperman
Excuse me, folks, while I mention a friend.
Clyde Moore of Fairbury has retired after almost 50 years of newspapering. I worked as a printer's devil for him at the Fairbury Daily News, learned the trade as a printer, linotype operator and turned in my first picture and story in the news department.
In those years the daily newspaper and the weekly were stiff competitors and I was the goat . . . like the time one of the printers sent me out for type stretcher to the weekly, and the printer there directed me on to the next place. Clyde wondered where I had gone, and in his good humor, he passed it off . . . another newcomer was "initiated."
The Moores plan some traveling. They have three children and several grandchildren.
Of newspapers, he says, "I look on them as ongoing institutions bigger than any of the individuals working for them."
Best wishes and good health to the Moores on their retirement.
The open house
If you missed the open house of the Wayne Brown home built by the trades and industries classes taught by Ron Booth and Paul Stevenson, you didn't get to see a true accomplishment and certainly pride by the teachers.
Wayne gave us a tour of the home shortly before the opening when the final touches were being put on the project. Mr. Booth pointed out a number of features including the swirling texture of the ceiling in the garage . . . always wanted to watch someone do that.
It's a good project. It accomplishes several things — among them teaching boys the building trades, completing the project and, oh yes, putting another home on the tax rolls.
The new 'furniture'
Thanks to my mother-in-law, I have some new furniture in the office at the News-Press.
Well, actually, it's only one piece and I'm the only one who calls it furniture.
"You're not going to put that THING in the office at the paper, are you?" the Queen Bee asked.
"Whattya mean . . . that THING happens to be a reminder of yesteryear," I answered.
"Well, it's awful . . . dirty and doesn't fit," she snorted.
Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Wusk, got a bang out of it.
"It sure brings memories and of not too long ago," the retired farmers said. "There's one thing about it . . ."
"What's that?" I asked.
"You've got the only one of its kind."
The talked - about piece of furniture is a milk stool, not just any old milk stool, but a T-shaped stool that I'll betcha brings back a lot of memories to many of your readers.
It took a bit of digging to get just the right one. I wrote my mother-in-law, Mrs. Adela Eret, in Fairbury.
Dear Mother-in-law:
How'd you like to help out your son-in-law? I need a milk stool.
Signed,
Son-in-law.
She wrote back.
Dear Millie:
I thought after 25 years he might change. You can still come home.
Signed.
Mother.
That didn't discourage me one bit. In fact, it created some interest. My mother-in-law located the RIGHT milk stool from Harold H. Germer at Jansen. I don't know what she told him, but one day I got a package . . . rather it was a milk stool in a paper sack.
Today, the stool graces the office in the News-Press. And I explained the situation to George Bischof.
"Whattya want one of those for?"
"To sit on, George, to sit on."
"Oh," he answered.
We reminisced the milking days.
Ole' Bessie would stand in the barn while I snuggled up to her on a hot summer afternoon seated on the RIGHT stool. It was hot . . . yeah, man, hot. The flies were bothering her and when she swished that tail I had to duck because the tail was loaded with cockleburrs and getting swatted in the face with that was about like getting slugged with a baseball bat wrapped in sharp weeds.
Meanwhile, I held the bucket firmly between my legs, pressed my forehead against her flank and grabbled ahold. Sometimes.
KER-POW! That meant a cold hand or I had just touched something that was tender and healing from a cut on a fence.
I became an expert left-handed leg catcher, that is . . . sometimes she didn't get her leg into the milk bucket and knock me flat and spill milk.
When that happened, the faithful RIGHT milk stool became a "persuader."
So there you have it, the memory. It was gone for years but it's back and everytime I look at that stool I forget about printing presses, ink and paper and daydream.
. . . like the time Bessie stepped on my bare foot and when I opened my mouth to holler she belted me with the cockleburr tail or when I didn't do as the folks told me and did the milking in my school cothes on the same day she had eaten too much "green" stuff and I couldn't get her out of the barn before she raised her tail . . . and the winter days I forgot to clean my shoes and sat in a steam heated school building and wondered what that smell was.
Oh, yes, mother-in-law, those were the days. That's why I wanted the milk stool.