“The Utes and the Southern Cheyenne illustrate the bitter hatred and mortal fear that many tribes have for each other.” That was the view of Richard Irving Dodge in his 1882 book Our Wild Indians. Dodge spent many years in the West during the 1800s.
          “The Utes are a mountain tribe, the Southern Cheyenne a Plains tribe,” Dodge explained. “Any single Indian of either tribe, on his own ground, counts himself equal to at least three of the other [men of another tribe].”
          “Brave as they undoubtedly are, the Utes go upon the Plains with fear and trembling…[T]he Cheyennes will scarcely venture at all into any Ute Country…Though always at war with each other, it is rare that anybody is hurt, each being too wary to venture far into the territory of the other.”
          Dodge relates an 1874 hunting trip by “some fifteen hundred Sioux and Cheyennes. [They] went well up on the head waters of the Republican [River] in search of buffalo.”
          A few Ute warriors slipped into the [Cheyenne] hunting camp during the night. At daybreak they stampeded the hunters’ ponies. They drove “over two hundred head into the mountains.”
          According to Dodge, there were “near four times as many [Sioux and Cheyenne] warriors as are in the whole Ute tribe…” Yet, he reported that the Sioux and Cheyenne “preferred to lose their ponies to taking the risk of pursuit [into Ute territory].”

From: Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years of Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West by Richard Irving Dodge, A.D. Worthington and Company, Hartford, CT, 1882.

On winter evenings in an Indian camp, “storytelling was the most popular amusement next to dancing.” Richard Irving Dodge visited many camps in his years on the western plains. And many times he joined the crowd in a lodge (teepee) to listen to stories.
          “A good story-teller was a man of importance among the Plains Indians,” said Dodge. “These stories are as marvelous as the imagination of the inventor can create, bumbling gods and men, fabulous monsters and living animals, the possible and impossible, in the most heterogeneous confusion. There is little point or wit in them, and scarcely any dramatic power, except the narrator be telling of some personal event, when he also acts the scene with all possible exaggeration.”

From: Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years of Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West by Richard Irving Dodge, A.D. Worthington and Company, Hartford, CT, 1882, page 336.

Richard Irving Dodge observed a number of games during winter visits to Indian camps on the Plains.
          When a game of chance was played, men and women crowded into the teepee to watch and wager. Bets might included saddles, war-bonnets of eagle feathers, shields, bows and arrows, moccasins, money, women’s leggings, necklaces and beadwork.
          Three or four players sat on one side of a blanket facing an equal number of players. One player held up a well polished piece of bone, 2-3 inches long and ¼ inch in thickness, for all to see. Then he closed his hand around it. Quickly and skillfully he shifted the bone back and forth between his hands. When an opponent pointed to one of his hands, he had to open that hand. If the bone was in the open hand, the opponent’s side got one point. If the bone was not in that hand, the player’s side got the point. Sides took turns holding the bone. Twenty-one points won the game.
          Dodge reported much “noise, wrangling, bantering, chaffing and blowing but win or lose everyone was in good humor.”

From: Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years of Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West by Richard Irving Dodge, A.D. Worthington and Company, Hartford, CT, 1882, page 326.

Northern Cheyenne girls with dolls and little teepees, about 1907

During his visits to Plains Indian camps in the mid 1800s, Richard Irving Dodge observed little girls at play. Young girls had much freedom to play until they were old enough to handle women’s work. Dodge said their mothers made dolls for them with dresses “copied in minute details from ceremonial dresses of parents or friends. [Their] baby-houses are miniature teepees.” While this photo was made 40-50 years later, the dolls and miniature teepees appear as Dodge described.

From: Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years of Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West by Richard Irving Dodge, A.D. Worthington and Company, Hartford, CT, 1882, page 346.

Photo: courtesy Library of Congress

During his many years as a soldier in the Western United States of the mid 1800s, Richard Irving Dodge learned much about the Plains Indians. In his book, “Our Wild Indians” he described men’s hairstyles and taking of scalps.

Ute man, Ta-Wits-Na, 1890, wears braids wrapped in beaver fur

          According to Dodge, the Cheyenne and Arapaho men parted their hair in the middle and wore two long tails of hair on each side of their heads.
          Kiowa men parted their hair in the middle. On the left side a long tail of hair dangled. They cut the hair on the right side just below the ear and wore it loose.
          The Comanche combed their hair back from the forehead and wove it into one long braid.
          The Sioux, Crow and Winnebago men parted their hair in the middle and tied it in one unbraided tail on each side of the head. A two inch circle of hair just over the crown of the head was separated out and braided.
          Indians took scalps from other Indians killed or seriously wounded in battle. They believed taking the scalp of dead enemy killed his soul. The scalp was also proof of valor, of success in battle.
          Among the Plains Indians, a scalp taken in single combat became the personal property of that warrior. But scalps were shared when taken in a battle involving a number of warriors. Some of these scalps were given to the chief, even if he did not participate in the battle. Some were hung in the Medicine Lodge, touched only by the Medicine Chief. Others were danced over by the war party and afterward returned to the warriors who took them.

From: Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years of Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West by Richard Irving Dodge, A.D. Worthington and Company, Hartford, CT, 1882, page 515-517.
Photo: Courtesy Library of Congress

         The Plains Indians measured distance and travel time by “sleeps” (one night = one sleep).
          They marked the passage of time by moons and winters. The first night of a new moon was the start of a new period of time (or a month). 
          A year began with the first snowfall.
          Each year was identified by a significant event: the death of a certain chief, a sickness that affected many people, a great battle with an enemy, particularly abundant or scarce food, lack of snow or particularly heavy snow.
          A year with no significant events might be identified by something as simple as the location of winter camp that year.
          An Indian marked his birth by the event that defined that year. He counted his age by the number of winters he had lived.

From: Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years of Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West by Richard Irving Dodge, A.D. Worthington and Company, Hartford, CT, 1882, page 396.

A year, for Plains Indians and many other Native American peoples, began with the first snow in the autumn. They measured time by moons and the seasons when certain events of nature took place. Here are more examples:

Zuni (New Mexico in the Southwest)

Jan    When limbs of trees are broken by snow
Feb    No snow in trails
Mar   Little sand storm
Apr    Great sand storm
May   No name
Jun    Turning moon
Jul     When limbs of trees are broken by fruit
Sep    When corn is harvested
Oct     Big wind moon
Dec    When Sun has traveled home to rest

Omaha (Central Plains)

Jan    When snow drifts into tipis
Feb    When geese come home
Mar   Little frog moon
Jun    When the buffalo bulls hunt the cows
Jul     When the buffalo bellow
Sep    When the deer paw the earth

Sioux (Great Plains, Dakotas, Nebraska)

Jan    Wolves run together
Feb    Dark red calves
Mar   Sore eye moon
Apr    Red grass appearing
May   Moon when the ponies shed
Jun    Strawberry moon
Jul     Red blooming lilies
Aug   Cherries turn black
Sep    Calves grow hair
Oct    Changing season
Nov   Falling leaves
Dec    When dear shed their horns

For more moon names see previous post: http://chipeta.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/indian-moons-and-seasons/

Photo courtesy NASA

Indian names for moons (from the Western Washington University Planetarium) http://www.wwu.edu/depts/skywise/indianmoons.html

A year, for Plains Indians and many other Native American peoples, began with the first snow in the autumn. They measured time by moons and the seasons when certain events of nature took place. Here are some examples:

Apache
Jan      Time of flying ants
Apr     Moon of the big leaves
May    Season when the leaves are green
Jul       Moon of the horse/time of ripeness
Oct      Time when the corn is taken in

 Cheyenne (Great Plains)
Jan       Moon of the strong cold
Apr      When the geese lay eggs
May     When the horses get fat
Sep       Drying Grass Moon
Oct       Freeze begins on stream’s edge
Nov      Deer rutting moon
Dec      When the wolves run together

Arapaho

Jan       When snow blows like spirits in the wind
Feb      Frost sparking in the sun
Mar      Buffalo dropping their calves
Apr      Ice breaking in the river
May     When the ponies shed their shaggy hair
Jun      When the buffalo bellows
Jul        The hot weather begins
Aug      Geese shedding their feathers
Sep       Dying grass
Oct       Falling leaves
Nov     When the rivers start to freeze
Dec      Popping trees

Lakota (northern plains)

Jan        Hard moon
Feb       When the trees crack because of the cold
Mar      Moon of the sore eyes
Apr      When the wife had to crack bones for marrow
May      Moon of the green leaves
Jun       When the berries are good
Jul        When the chokecherries are black
Aug      Moon of the ripening
Set        Moon of the brown leaves
Oct       When the wind shakes off leaves
Nov     When winter begins
Dec      When the deer shed their antlers

Photo Courtesy NASA

Native American people identified a year by a memorable event that took place. It might have been the year a certain chief died. A weather event, such as particularly deep snow or a flood, might be most remembered. A great battle with enemies could mark a year. Sometimes these events were recorded in painting on a piece of animal hide or even on the side of a teepee.

Years are sometimes identified in religious works by events. In the Bible, for instance, Isaiah 6:1 references an event in “the year when King Uziah died.”

A Native American might say, “I was born the year the grasshoppers came and ate everything that grew from the land.”

If you had to identify the past five years by a major event that took place in each year, how would you name those years?

Colorado’s College of the Sacred Heart, located West of Denver, was a boarding school that accepted younger boys than its name implies. Students lived by a strict schedule. Here is the “Order of Daily Exercises” in the 1890’s.

On Class days:
5:30 A.M. Rising, Toilet
6:00 Mass, Morning Prayers
6:30 Study
7:30 Breakfast and recreation
8:30 Mental Philosophy, Latin, English
10:00 Recess
10:15 Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics
11:15 Recess
11:30 Study. Optional Branches
12:00 Dinner, Recreation
1:30 P.M. Study
2:00 Moral Philosophy, Greek, English
3:00 Recess
3:15 Christian Doctrine, Evidences of Religion,
Chemistry, Elocution
3:45 Penmanship
4:15 Recreation, Lunch, Calistthenics
5:15 Study
6:30 Supper, Recess, Night Prayers
7:30 Study
8:30 Dormitory
9:00 Retire

On Sunday:
6:00 A.M. Rising, Toilet
6:30 Sodality Mass, Morning Prayers
7:30 Breakfast, Recreation
9:15 Mass, Catechetical Instruction, Recreation
10:45 Reading of Marks, Instruction on Politeness
11:45 Toilet
12:00 Dinner, Recreation
5:15 Study, etc.

Families could visit a student between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. on Sundays.

See previous post for more information about the school.

Researching a new biography led me to the collection of pre-1900 records from the College of the Sacred Heart in Colorado. The school was chartered by the Colorado legislature in 1887. This school for boys was located on 50 acres in Clear Creek Valley west of Denver. It was operated by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus. The school later became part of what is now Regis University.
          In the mid 1890s, tuition and board at the College of the Sacred Heart cost $100 per five month term. There was a $10 fee per term for “Washing and Mending of Linens (clothing).”
          Here is the list of “necessary articles” a student was expected to bring on entering the school each term:
3 changes of underwear
6 shirts
3 night shirts
6 collars
4 cravats
12 handkerchiefs
3 suits of clothes
6 pair socks or stockings
3 pair shoes
1 pair overshoes
6 table napkins
8 towels
combs and other toilet articles
Note to parents: “The student’s number should be marked on each item.”

Back to school time always reminds me of teachers. Let me introduce one of my favorites.
          The first college class of my freshman year, Honors English, met on the third floor of the massive old stone administration building. I climbed the well worn stairs with trepidation.
          The classroom door stood open. Coming from a sleek, modern high school, I was shocked when I peeked inside. The room was tiny! A battered desk faced rows of wooden seats with attached writing plates. The last row of chairs touched the back wall and the front row pressed against the professor’s desk.
          The one redeeming feature in the tiny room was the bank of tall windows that filled the far wall. The well-worn wood floor squeaked and groaned as I stepped inside. The chair creaked when I sat down. Other students arrived, but no one spoke.
          The professor arrived right on time. He was short and compact. He wore a shapeless black suit with a white shirt and plain tie. He walked with a Chaplinesque waddle. I stifled a laugh when I saw his bulbous-toed shoes that looked like small versions of circus clown footwear. His bald head was shiny as the capital dome. Wire-rimmed spectacles perched on his beak nose. He looked like a penguin!
          Placing his black briefcase on the battered desk, he continued across the room to raise the sash of the forward window. Fresh air filled the room. Returning to the desk, he carefully centered a small lectern and stepped into position squarely behind it. He surveyed the class. Slowly. Solemnly. Silently.
          “Hello,” he said at last. “My name is Archie.”
          Okay. I expected college to be different from high school. Maybe college professors liked their students to address them by first names.
          He continued. “I am a cockroach.”
          Whoa! I hit the weirdo jackpot in my first class. Frozen in place, I lowered my eyelids and shifted my eyes to the right. The student beside me sat wide-eyed and sphinx-like.
          Without a hint of a smirk, The Penguin proceeded to recite the full opening poem from Archie & Mehitabel, Don Marquis’ book about a little cockroach who lived in a newsroom and hopped from key to key writing poems and messages to the editor. One by one, we let go our held breath as we realized this professor did not really think he was a cockroach.
          Honors English turned out to be a writing class. Three mornings a week, with windows open, we watched the seasons change from our tiny aerie as the Penguin and a fictional insect trained our minds.
          He used no overhead slides, no video presentations, and no handouts. Thought-stimulating quotes from Archie the cockroach looped across the blackboard in the Penguin’s neat handwriting. We simply wrote. We wrote in class. We wrote in the library, in the shade of campus trees, on busses, and in dormitory rooms to complete our assignments.
          The Penguin critiqued our work with a red pen and read selected papers aloud to the class. We discussed structure, word use, and overall effect. While some of our papers came back looking bloodied, the Penguin never failed to write notes of encouragement on each paper. The exercise opened mental windows to the diversity of thoughts and writing styles among class members and the value of divergent ideas and expressions.
         
Most class members returned for a second term with the Penguin. A sign on our third floor doorway informed us that Honors English had been moved to the much touted—and very expensive—new academic and theater complex. It had kept the campus in mud and construction fences most of the fall.
          We trouped down the stairs together, tiptoed over slick sidewalks and found our room in the center of the new building. It was spacious, freshly painted, and brightly lighted. Polished metal desk-chairs faced a sleek professor’s desk with a formidable lectern positioned beside it.
          The Penguin arrived right on time. The floor did not make a sound as he entered. He set his black briefcase on the desk and surveyed the room from side to side.
          “Well, what do you think of this room?” he asked.
          In unison we replied, “It has no windows!”
          He nodded in agreement. “I’ll see what I can do about that.”
When we met again two days later, we were back in our cramped third floor room with open windows and creaky floor.
          The Penguin taught me that brand new bricks and mortar, fancy equipment, and the latest textbooks are not the essentials of an exceptional learning experience.
          The teacher makes the difference!

The Penguin, aka Dr. George Klinger, died in 2010 at age 81.

Secret passwords were a fun part of childhood. It felt special to have a secret shared by only a few friends.
          On the popular 1960s TV game show Password a contestant had ten chances to guess a secret word. Before the game began, the password was shared with viewers at home. In those days of low tech communication, there was little chance of the home audience slipping the secret word to a contestant.
          Lately, passwords have become an aggravation.
          For many years my husband and I had one password for the few places where a password was required. If one of us became incapacitated, the other could easily access bank and investment accounts. But cyber hackers have changed all that. Passwords have become complex. Our one word no longer fits.
          Today’s advice from the security experts: Create a password containing eight or more characters in a random combination of letters, numbers and symbols. Use a different password for every account. Then, change your passwords often.
          Right!
          The number of my passwords now exceeds my age (remember, I was watching the original Password on TV) and fills two columns of a page!
          Yes, I can store them in The Cloud. Of course, I’ll need a new telephone with Internet access so I can look them up–assuming I can remember the password.

I came across the following verses, excerpted from a slender collection of poems, The View From Pike’s Peak by Bernard L. Rice, published in 1898.

THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS

Silent friends are the books we read;
Yet they speak with note sublime,
Oft in the august voice of praise,
Oft in the sweeter tones of rhyme…

They tell us strange legends and stories old
Of the far-off days of the long-ago,
And we’re sitting beside the tavern gray
While the village clock strikes long and slow.

And often they tell us a merrier tale
Of revels and glittering banquet halls,
Bright glimpses we catch of faces gay
And a mirthful laugh to the pleasure calls…

There’s a world of wealth in the printed page,
There are hoarded treasures, rich thoughts of gold,
There are diamonds of wisdom from every age,
The well-gathered wages of labor untold.

While browsing the many bookshelves in our house, I came across a little brown volume titled Water-Closets. The inside cover is signed by author Glenn Brown, an architect. A little tab of paper bound in front of the Preface page notes, “Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1884, by John Phin, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D.C.”
          Yes, this intriguing little book is about toilets. It begins with history and includes many illustrations drawn by the author.
          The ancient Romans had four types of toilets. “Close stools (lasana) in which rich ancients used gold or silver bowls; vases (gastra) which were stationed on the roadways; public privies (cloacina) [Mr. Brown says there were 142 in the city of Rome]; and privies (latrina).” Mr. Brown concludes that the cloacina and the latrina were water-closets, or private rooms with water for drainage. He offers details of various designs and construction through history.
          According to Mr. Brown, one of the earliest mentions of a water-closet is found in a poem. “Metamorphosis of Ajax,” by Sir John Harrington, published in 1596, is about a water-closet that the poet invented for his house.
          I suppose this simply reminds us that anything can be the subject of a book.

Guest Post
by Dian Curtis Regan

My first published book was a young adult novel called I’ve Got Your Number, published by Avon Flare/McMillan.

A few months after the novel was released, I received a letter from a person in Flint, Michigan. Apparently, I had used the names of many of her relatives in the story. It was a coincidence on my part, but I could see how this person might have wondered why so many of my characters were named after people she was related to. Even the minister in my book shared the same name as a relative of hers who was also a minister.

The person had read my bio and noticed that I’d attended the University of Colorado in Boulder. Since another one of her relatives had gone to the same college, she wanted to know if I’d somehow met him in Boulder, gotten to know him, then “borrowed” names of his relatives.

It was all very unusual, but I assured her that I’d never met anyone from her family and had not borrowed anyone’s name to use in the book. I guess this incident could be classified under “stranger than fiction.”

Dian Curtis Regan is the author of more than 60 books.

Seems like anybody, or, um, any critter, can write a book these days! While You’re Only Human: A Guide to Life is a creative bit of company promotion, it is more welcome than most television advertising.

          Reviews posted on Amazon.com call the little book “deliciously entertaining,” “uncommonly delightful,” “quite a hoot.” One person admited “I found myself laughing outloud.”

          I am thoroughly entertained by the idea. After all, for several years I have referred to the Geico Gecko as “my favorite television personality.” Ever since an ad showed him driving his gecko-size red sports car to work, I have been totally charmed by the little green guy with the down-under accent. So much so that my husband gave me a Geico Gecko bobble-head figure for Christmas. It sits on my computer table offering an encouraging thumbs up when I sit down to write.

          When my husband processes an order for our used book business, I always ask, “What did this person buy?”
         Recently, the book purchased was Faith, Hope and Hilarity: The Child’s Eye View of Religion, a 1970 work by Dick Van Dyke. Yes, TV’s funny man.
          I delayed shipment for half a day while I sat on the patio and read this slim volume.  Here are a few of the stories that kept me laughing:

          The children’s Sunday School teacher was explaining the concept of the Trinity, three persons in one. She used an egg to demonstrate how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost could be one entity. God is the yolk. Jesus is the white of the egg. The Holy Ghost is the shell. Then she cracked open the egg to show the three parts. Wouldn’t you know, that egg had a double yolk!

          A New York City Sunday School Teacher asked a boy, “Who defeated the Philistines?”
          The boy replied, “If they don’t play the Mets, I don’t keep track of them.”

          A first grade girl insisted that Adam and Eve had two children – a boy and a girl! “Their names were Cain and Mable,” she said.

When first married, my husband and I lived in a cute little house in a small town. Our next door neighbor, Lottie, was well past 90. She was unsteady on her feet but she kept busy. Lottie knitted lap blankets for “the old folks in the nursing home.” She liked to sit on her front porch and watch the children walking to and from school.
          One spring morning Lottie was nestled in her porch swing when the postman delivered the latest Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Four or five current best selling novels were printed in abbreviated form in one volume. Lottie started reading the first book.
          When children began walking home after school that day, Lottie was sitting in her porch swing as usual. However, she had not moved from that seat all day. She had read that entire volume of books from cover to cover.
          And what books did Lottie read that spring day? Volume 85 (Spring 1971) contained:
Halic: The Story of a Gray Seal by Ewan Clarkson
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Six-Horse Hitch by Janice Holt Giles
Bomber by Len Deighton
A Woman in the House by Wm. E. Barrett

Reader’s Digest Condensed Books were published for 47 years (1950-1997). The quarterly volumes usually contained five stories. By the early 1990s, publication was increased to bi-monthly. The popular series continues today as Reader’s Digest Select Editions.

Guest Post
by Kayann Short, Ph.D.

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women feel just as men feel . . . and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.”
 
So spoke Jane Eyre, the fiery heroine of Charlotte Bronte’s book of the same name. Reading the novel as a young girl, I felt the injustice of Jane forced to stand on a stool in the middle of the schoolroom because she had accidentally dropped her slate.

From the time my schoolteacher grandmother taught me to read, I was drawn to young women protagonists: Alice in Wonderland, Nancy Drew, and Jo March of Little Women were some of my favorites. When I started college at CSU (Colorado State University) in 1977, I majored in microbiology but pursued the newly created Women’s Studies certificate as well. I took every women’s literature course I could, all taught by wonderful professors who were building this new program. But I thought of these courses as electives, taken more for fun than as preparation for any career.
 
Following my sophomore year, I discovered Ellen Moer’s Literary Women: The Great Writers at the small library in the New England town where I was spending the summer. Akin to my Women’s Studies courses, Moer’s book examined writers like Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, and George Sand as women–for their gender–rather than as members of a literary movement, regional location, or social affiliation. With the Dictionary Catalogue of Literary Women at the back of Moer’s book as my guide, I set myself a course of summer study of whatever women writers the small library offered, taking notes on yellow legal pads that I wish I still had today.

What began as a passion became the topic of my Master’s and PhD research, followed by 24 years teaching a diversity of women’s literature course at CU-Boulder. On the first day of class, students always asked me to choose my favorite book from the syllabus. I would tell them why I liked each of the books and, while I could never choose just one, how all the protagonists were in the mold set by Jane Eyre years ago: women speaking against injustice, defending their rights, and insisting their voices be heard.

Kayann Short, Ph.D., is the author of A Bushel’s Worth: An Ecobiography. She blogs at www.pearlmoonplenty.wordpress.com.

We operate a used book business and are often entertained by the items we find tucked inside old books. Cards received with a gift book are common along with printed bookmarks and business cards. Here are a few oddities we found in old books:

Pages from a Cardiologist’s note pad with two hand-sketched diagrams of a heart. Arrows apparently indicate the patient’s problem. Page three notes the estimated annual number of deaths from the particular condition.

An invitation, dated May 1967, to the fiftieth anniversary party of the 1917 graduating class of Centennial High School, Pueblo, Colorado.

A letter from a man to his father. It is written in very large, back-slanted script on a very large piece of paper. In part it reads, “I no you didn’t entend to upset me. But you did – you no when one calls long distance – it is something very important…”

Two copies of a color photo of a family posed with Elvis Presley. The backdrop stage curtain announces “The King Returns to Vegas.”

A postcard, date stamped Hutchinson, KS 1958, offers advice to Mrs. Lee on locating someone who did caning (the craft of weaving chair seats or backs using rattan cane).

A copy of a man’s fully completed 1990 credit application for purchase of a new car.

In the summer of 2010, forgotten treasure arrived in my mailbox. My childhood neighbor and lifetime friend, Sharon, returned two books to me. She found them while sorting more than fifty years of accumulated keepsakes in her parents’ house.          
          To The Store We Go by E.C. Reichert, illustrated by Ora Walker (Rand McNally & Company, Chicago) is a bit worse for wear. The front cover is barely hanging on. The back cover is missing but, the pages are in good condition and offer an interesting look back in time.
          In this little story, Tim and Debbie take a trip to the grocery with Mother. They learn about taking a number at the meat counter,  picking ice cold frozen food from the freezer, and what happens when you take an orange from the bottom of the pile. 
          Rereading this little book after more than fifty years, I noticed a few things have changed. In one scene a grocery clerk uses a rubber stamp and ink pad to put bright blue prices on the tops of cans. The can of tomatoes cost 17 cents! After checking out, a “big, strong boy” carried their two paper bags of groceries to the car. One thing has not changed – the temptation of candy and gum displayed in easy reach at the checkout counter.

   I wrote about the other book, Sugar Bear <a href=" http://chipeta.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/summer-reading-3/trackback/ (Samuel Lowe Company, Kenosha, WI, 1952), in a July 2010 post.

Mother grew up on a Kentucky farm during the Depression. Books were a luxury and much treasured when received as a gift.
          Mother left the farm to attend Vanderbilt University, where she lived with her uncle and aunt. Uncle’s wife shared Mother’s love of reading and later left us many boxes of books. When mother died, the books found a home with me.
          One cold, snowy day I searched the collection for something to read. I pulled out Katherine by Anya Seton. Between the pages I found a card. The book had been a new release when mother received it as a 1954 Christmas gift from Mr. Barksdale, her employer during the war years.
          I settled in with the red volume and a cup of tea. The titlc character was a real person, Katherine de Roet, born in 1350 England. Her descendants included Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scotts. This lengthy, fictionalized account of Katherine’s life occupied me for many evenings.
          Halfway through the book, a nagging thought began to distract me. There was something I had forgotten. I dug out my family genealogy notebook, stored away after several years of obsessive research. Sure enough, Mr. Barksdale’s gift was the story of Mother’s own ancestor. Neither Mother nor Mr. Barksdale ever knew the connection.

I read Donis Casey’s first book, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, because the title jumped off the new book shelf and grabbed me.

          It turned out to be an engaging mystery story but, more importantly, I fell in love with her large family of characters and the language and lifestyle of early 1900s rural Oklahoma.

          Over the next years I waited with great anticipation to learn the title of Casey’s next book (and I promptly read each one):

Hornswoggled
The Drop Edge Of Yonder
The Sky Took Him
Crying Blood (okay, that title didn’t light my fire)
The Wrong Hill To Die On

          When I saw that her new book Hell With The Lid Blown Off will be released in June, 2014, I immediately logged onto my local library’s website. One copy of the book was on order. I was first to put in a hold request. Now I’m waiting for that wonderful email message that says, “You have a book on hold at Barkman Branch.”
          If you have not read any of the Alifair Tucker series, start from the first title listed above to follow the story of a most engaging family.

For more information about the Alifair Tucker Mystery series, visit http://www.doniscasey.com/

He was a trim, attractive man, neatly dressed, with a suntan that complemented a full head of carefully groomed white hair. He took the aisle seat a row ahead of me on the Dallas to Denver flight. With a pleasant smile he greeted the young woman seated across the aisle with her small daughter. “Looks like a good day for a flight. Not a cloud in the sky.”
          “We’re going to Denver,” the little girl announced.
          “Heading home?” he asked.
          “No, just going for a long weekend with my sister,” the mother said.
          “You live in the Dallas area?”
          She named a particular upscale community.
          “My wife and I looked at a home there a few years ago,” the man said.  “Very attractive neighborhood. We ended up buying further west. But, we have some good friends in your community.” He offered a name and asked if she knew the couple.
          She did not.
          “Stan’s house is straight through the gates and around the curve. You live back that way?”
          “No,” she said, “we’re on the first street to the left.”
          “Lived there long?”
          “Four years. We really like the neighborhood.”
          “Stan and Martha feel the same way.” He casually introduced himself.
          The young woman gave her name just before the pilot announced we were ready for takeoff.
          During the flight the man returned again and again to bits of friendly conversation with the woman and her daughter. By the time we descended into Denver, this stranger knew her husband’s job and where he worked, the name of the school where she taught fourth grade, the date when teachers returned from summer break, and a variety of details about her family’s lifestyle.
          I didn’t think much about these revelations, however, until the woman volunteered that the family was going on a ten day Florida vacation starting the first of August. “I have so much to do before we leave,” she said. “We’re having the inside of the house painted while we are away.”
          “I hope you have someone staying in your house to keep an eye on things,” the man said in a concerned tone.
          She calmly stated they didn’t feel that was necessary.
          I was stunned. The woman had just offered an open invitation to this stranger, and to any interested person seated nearby, that her home would be available for burglary during the first weeks of August.