MY DAD'S FAVORITE PASTIME

My Dad was most happy when he was fishing or hunting. He especially enjoyed going fishing or hunting with people from his home town of Nashua, Iowa.
The top picture shows him after hunting geese with John Emmons and Billy Cook. Bill Cook was a jockey who rode at race tracks all over the country. I always heard that Johnny Emmons flew a light plane under the railroad bridge in Nashua.
The picture on the lower right shows my Dad holding a fish and Hod Strike, his brother in law cleanilng fish back of 2911 Oakoand Road in Cedar Rapids.
The picture on bottom left shows my Dad with a fellow I don’t recognize, holding up a stringer of northern pike..
My Dad could skin a squirrel faster than anyone I ever have seen do it. When I was in high school we always had fish or game in abundance.
My Dad was always ready to go fishing or hunting.

SURPRISE! SURPRISE! WE HAVE TWINS

On September 18 1961 I was watching the Jack Paar show which came on TV at 1030 PM. My wife, who was very pregnant came out of the bedroom and informed me we had better head for the hospital. I asked her why and she informed me that the water had broken. Back in my deep memories I had heard that when the water broke it would be a short time until we had a baby boy or girl.
We took off for St. Lukes hospital and, once we arrived, they put Mary in a wheel chair and took us to the maternity ward. I was very nervous and apprehensive and kept asking questions and probably getting in the way of the nurses etc. doing their duty. They sent me downstairs to check Mary into the hospital and get me out of their hair.
They asked me the usual questions about our address and other pertinent questions which I had no trouble answering. Then the lady asked me my wife’s maiden name and my mind was so full of all kinds of things that I could not, for the life of me remember her maiden name.
They then sent me back to the maternity floor and to a small room where husbands waited for the birth. I was a smoker at the time and smoked cigarettes one aftert another. Going through my mind were all kinds of things. What would the baby look like? What color hair would it have? Would it have all the parts it was supposed to have? Would the baby ever come? We were four weeks early so no Xray had been taken prior to the birth.
Shortly after midnight the nurse came in with our little boy who had been born at 12:25 AM. He weighed 5 pounds 4 ½ ounces. All I could see was his face. It was beautiful.
I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back in the chair while the nurse started to leave. As she opened the door she exclaimed, THERE’S ANOTHER ONE RIGHT BEHIND HIM.
This opened a whole new can of worms in my mind, which was full to overflowing. Would this be a boy or girl? Would this be a long wait. I had no time to wait as the nurse returned and reported we had a girl born at 12:31 AM. She weighed 5 pounds 1 ½ ounces. The nurse said she couldn’t bring the girl in as she was turning blue and they had put her in an incubator.
What do I do now? Do I dare call anyone in the middle of the night? I thought I would call my Dad. I told him we had twins but that he couldn’t come up the hospital as only the husband was allowed on the floor. He answered me with, typical of him, The hell I can’t, and It was a short time until I heard him bellowing up the hall.
We named our precious babies John Charles Stuelke and Lisa Elllen Stuelke. They finally let me in the room and we got to see both babies. They were perfect.
I returned home and thought , now I must find another bed, another high chair, anoither stroller etc. etc.
We went to the hospital to bring the twins home and the Doctor decided they couldn’t come home until they gained back to their birth weight Finally, they regained the weight and we were able to hring them home.
We have watched them grow up and, graduate from college, get married and have children of their own.. Thank God for our twins.

OUR TWO IN THE MILITARY

We have two grandchildren who are serving in the armed forces.
Megan is in the Air Force and is a Chaplain’s assistant stationed at Arlington National Cemetery.Prior to this she was stationed on Okinawa.
Sean took his boot camp in the Marines at San Diego, then was stationed in Pensacola, Florida and is, at present, finishing up his training as an Aircraft Communications/Navigation/Electrical/Weapon Systems Technician.
We are very proud of our military grandchildren.

I remember hearing her in Phoenix as the Doctor performed the ultra sound.

I remember going the Phoenis and taking her on her first stroller ride.


I remember her calling us and telling us her pet fish had died.

I remember taking her to Villisca to visit family when she was five years old and, going to the cemetaryshe noticed a grave stone with the name WEBER and asking whether or not it was her WEBER.
On this same trip, to pass the time, we made up a game we called POLICEMAN---POLICEMAN which we played all the way there and back.

I remember walking the trail with her and finding an appropriate stick to anihilate the tall weeds.

I remember going to Montreal and going to a maple sugaring=of with she and I sitting in the back of the station wagon and that it was so foggy we couldn’t see.


I remember her being a little girl who made me very proud to be her Grandpa.

Now comes a new chapter in our lives.

She and Joe informed us last evening that she was pregnant.

What a wonderful day it will be when the baby arrives.

I will be proud when this child arrives and I will be very proud to be the child’s Great Grandpa.

GRANDPA STRAIGHT

My Great Grandpa, Francis Marion Straight, came to live with us when I was three years old and stayed until his death in 1938. He was a veteran of the Civil War, having enlisted at St. Louis, Missouri, in the 23rd Missouri Infantry, Company E, at the tender age of 17. I have vivid memories of him. He wasn’t very tall but stood ramrod straight. He had a beard and goatee. His hair was pure white. His eyesight was failing which caused him to do some funny things.
The house was lacking most of the paint and the rusty nail heads on the siding were easy to see. Grandpa would sit on the porch, raise his trusty fly swatter, Whack the nail head and exclaim, "I got ‘im"! He would also get ahold of the hoe and proceed to the garden where any thing he approached was a weed. Grandma had to replant vegetables a lot. He received a government pension for his wartime service. He chewed Sweet Mist chewing tobacco and smokee cigars. One time he sent my Sister and I downtown to get him tobacco and cigars and told us to also bring him some candy. We got the right tobacco and the right cigars but messed up by bringing him BB Bats, a candy on a stick which melted and stuck to your teeth.. He got the sucker stuck in the few teeth he had and Carolyn and I weren’t very popular with him for awhile.
As I look back, the fact that I knew and could talk to someone who was there about the Civil war was an education in itself. I can still see him, sitting in the living room, my Grandpa Abbott on the drum and my Aunt on the piano, playing Civil War songs like Marching Through Geoirgia and Tramp, Tramp,Tramp the boys are marching and others while Grandpa Straight would tap his can in time to the music.

SEGREGATION

As I watched Barack Obama take the oath to be the 44tth President of the United States, my thoughts regressed to 1948, sixty years ago when I was introduced to segregation. Having been born and raised in the state of Iowa, my interaction with black people was almost nonexistant. After joining the Air Force and being processed at Fort Sheridan in Illinois, I went aboard a troop train bound for San Antonio, Texas where I was to go through basic training.
The train stopped in Tennessee and we were allowed to get off the train. For the first time I saw signs with the words, WHITE ONLY and COLORED ONLY on the rest rooms. WHITE ONLY and COLORED ONLY on water fountains and WHITE ONLY and COLORED ONLY on two different waiting rooms, the COLORED ONLY waiting room being much smaller than the WHITE ONLH one. This was a great shock to me.
Arriving at Lackland, the training base in San Antonio, I found that even in the military there was segregation and discrimination. While the white troops had two story wooden barracks the black troope were housed at the end of the base in tar paper covered barracks. This was resolved with the integration of the armed forces.

Though there are still things that need to be addressed and acted upon. Today, we witnessed the beginning of an era that was long overdue.

REGRETS

Today, perusing my mind for something to think about, I thought of the word regret.
As I think about those things I regret the most, I guess the number one regret I have is not finishing my education by going to college. For years, I have used numerous excuses as to why I didn’t go to college, but had I had the desire, I know I could have achieved that goal.
The second thing that comes to mind is something that happened quite a while ago but I will never be able to make it right.
My Mom was in a nursing home for eleven years.
We had set up a time on every Saturday when I would call her. She had no phone in her room, so had to get in her wheel chair and go to the office and await my call. One Saturday I completely forgot about the call. When I realized it, from that time on,I have a mental picture of her waiting for my call. She forgave me but this is something I regret to this day.