Janet's Blog

An old Nebraska hotel was a magical place to grow up, with creaky staircases and secret passages, expansive party rooms and a huge, mysterious basement where we played for hours and, of course, we met so many interesting people! We were just kids, but hotel living was our everyday reality. Our upbringing was not typical. My brother and sister and I were raised in two different hotels. We moved into the first, the Oxnard, in Norfolk, Nebraska, the week I started Kindergarten, and we moved out of the second, the Mary-Etta, in Fairbury, just two weeks before I graduated from Fairbury High School. I was 4 1/2 when Mom and Dad had a farm sale, bought the Oxnard, and moved to Norfolk. At first, Dad relied on a manager to oversee the hotel business while he worked for Nash Finch, loading and unloading freight that was being shipped to grocery stores all over northeastern Nebraska. It wasn't long, though, before he and Mom made the decision to move into the hotel and take over managing it ...

I always considered Shorty to be my dad's friend. I don't know if Dad knew him before he came to stay at the Hotel Mary-Etta, where my family lived, or if they became acquainted because Shorty returned once or twice a year, staying for a few weeks each time. Anyway, Dad enjoyed spending time with him, and we all grew accustomed to seeing Shorty around, especially in the summer, when it was easier for him to travel from place to place. Shorty wasn't his given name, of course, but that's what everyone called him, probably at his request. He undoubtedly signed his legal name on the hotel register when he checked in, but I didn't know what it was. As a child, it seemed logical for me to call him Shorty because he was, well, short . You see, Shorty was a double amputee who walked on his well-padded stumps. He may have been injured in a railroad accident, or perhaps his disability came about in World War II. Whatever the cause, both legs had been removed just above his kn...

I think Mom sort of fell into her collection of candelabras. She certainly didn't plan to amass so many of them, as well as numerous single candlesticks and pairs, but her laundry room cupboard was filled with them long before she moved to her final home at Gardenside. It all started when we moved to the Hotel Mary-Etta in Fairbury. The warren of basement rooms included numerous storerooms, but one, in particular, contained boxes and boxes of household items that had been left at the hotel by previous tenants, including a former manager whose family was Jewish. Mom and Dad worked long hours in that basement room in their attempt to clean out the clutter. They checked each box, ultimately throwing some stuff in the trash, while donating much of it to charity. In true "waste not, want not" fashion, they re-boxed some things they thought might be useful someday, keeping a few of the best items for themselves. That included several candlesticks and one or two beautiful candel...

Doves and pigeons, pigeons and doves: ever since I was a little girl, I’ve noticed them. In my experience, I've found pigeons to be city birds, while doves live in smaller communities or in the country.  Years ago, even centuries ago, people hunted both birds for food. Even now, they are still hunted in some parts of the world.  Over the years, I’ve been acquainted with a few people who hunt doves, and I’ve known some who shoot pigeons because they are considered to be nuisance birds, but I've never known anyone who hunts pigeons to provide food for their families. I’ve enjoyed eating pheasants, quail, and wild turkey, and I’ve suffered through meals of duck and goose, but I’ve never eaten either pigeons (sometimes called squabs) or doves.   In the US, pigeons are not currently a popular food because they can’t be raised commercially in large numbers, making them too expensive to eat. I suspect the same is true for doves. Additionally, even country pigeons are associated...

Have you ever noticed how one event leads to another, and another, all through our lives? For example... Because my Dad was in the Army, I was born at Fort Benning, Georgia. Because my parents grew up in the Bloomfield area, so did I, at least for a little while. Beause my Dad was raised in the Methodist church, so was I, until we moved away from Bloomfield. Because my Dad's parents farmed, Dad did, too, after he left the Army. Because Dad received training to be a company clerk in the Army, he realized he had the skills to do something besides farming. That's why we moved to Norfolk, and Mom and Dad began their venture into the hotel business. Because I grew up in hotels, I lived in a more diverse community than most of my extended family and friends, and learned skills that most kids didn't have. Because we had no backyard, I joined my family in exploring the surrounding parks and countryside nearly every weekend, which inevitably resulted in closer family relationships a...

A Gideon gave a short presentation at church on Sunday. That's not unusual. Every church I've ever attended has welcomed representatives from The Gideons International at least once a year. The Gideons International began in 1908 as an association of Christian businessmen who began placing Bibles in hotel rooms. Their outreach expanded from there, providing billions of Bibles, in more than 100 languages, to school children, nurses, prisoners, members of the military, and other people all over the world, in almost every facet of life. For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.   Hebrews 4:12 I remember receiving a maroon Gideon New Testament when I was a fifth grader. All of my children came home from school with Gideon New Testaments, as well. When Bill and I visited India, I was pleased, but not surprised, to find an English l...

I have been counting the days since last week's oral surgery, until I am allowed to exercise again. Today's the day! When the weather cooled off a little this evening, I was out the door with Jackson to walk the neighborhood. In the summer, the best time to walk is often just after the sun sets, when the air is cool and still. It's only been the last three or four years that I've been making a conscious effort to walk regularly. At first, I used the Health App on my phone to track my steps, but I have been more motivated since Bill brought me a FitBit from some convention he had attended. This time of year, I walk more than 10,000 steps nearly every day. It's become a habit now, except when I'm sick, or when the weather is nasty. When I was growing up, first in northeastern Nebraska, then in Fairbury in the southeastern part of the state, exercise was not a priority for most people, probably because it just wasn't necessary. Farmers and their families got pl...

No one denied that my little brother, Danny, was smart. He spoke plainly, in complete sentences, for several months before he even turned two. He was curious about everything, often taking things apart that would have been better left alone. When he was four, he taught himself to read. After Grandpa taught him how to play checkers, he soon won more often than he lost. A few years later, he taught me to play chess, but I quit playing with him before too long, because I could never beat him. As he grew, Danny became an avid reader; when nothing else was available, he read the whole set of encylopedias, cover to cover. Danny was just three when our family moved to the Oxnard Hotel in Norfolk. We lived in the main level, manager's apartment, which had a south-facing, outside door, leading to our trikes and the sandbox Dad had installed for us, as well as a large, sometimes vacant, used car lot, where we often played. Another door opened from the north side of our apartment into th...

Frances was a woman of indiscriminate age, with scraggly hair that people would have called dishwater blond. She was thin, too thin, really. She always wore faded, cotton house dresses. She never made eye-contact with anyone. I remember when she first came to work at the Hotel Mary-Etta, sometime in the mid to late 1960s. Some agency made arrangements with Mom to hire her. I suppose that her wages might have been government-subsidized, and I'm sure she received some extra job training and supervision. Frances was an outcast, of sorts, because she had mental health issues. She was always talking to herself and the voices she heard, in a high-pitched little voice. Sometimes she even argued with herself. She didn't talk much to the people around her, just answering direct questions with a yes or no, while gazing off to one side, or scrutinizing some tiny spot on the floor. But she was able to wash dishes by hand, in the tiny dish room just off the Mary-Etta Cafe. The other...

I was speed-walking my way through the neighborhood last night, just at dusk, with my little Shih-poo, Jackson, in tow, thinking about some long-lost sights and sounds, and even smells, and it occurred to me that I've experienced countless things that my grandchildren will never encounter. Oh, I know, they will undoubtedly be faced with a wealth of experiences, throughout their lives, that I can't begin to imagine. Just think of the stories they will tell their own grandchildren someday... But today, I wonder if Tobin, and Evelyn and little Lydia, and the newest grandson, due any day now, along with any of their future cousins, will ever get to milk a cow by hand, as I did, with limited success, when I was three or four. And, I wonder if they will ever get to hold a newborn piglet, or hear the eager snorts of a dozen little pigs as they crowd together to nurse from a patient sow. I don't remember bottle-feeding my little lamb, Lola, but I suppose there is some chance ...

Dad had been out working in the field on that sunny, spring morning, when he stopped to come into the house, and called me over to see what was in his pocket. At three or four years old, I was curious about everything, so I hurried over to see what he had brought me. Carefully, he reached his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a tiny, fluffy, brown, baby bunny, staring at me with its beady, black eyes. I reached for it eagerly, and he taught me how to hold it gently, while Mom went to find a shoe box. We lined the box with grass from our yard, then placed the bunny in the shoe box when I tired of holding it. For the next few days, my nameless bunny lived in the box, behind the cookstove, where it was warm. After the chores were finished on Sunday morning, we all got ready for church and Sunday School, leaving the bunny safely in his box behind the stove, while a savory beef roast, and pared potatoes and carrots, cooked in the oven. We only lived a mile northwest of Bloomf...

It was an exciting day when Dad brought the dinosaur home from the Sinclair station across the street. It was a bright green dinosaur, the kind you blow into to inflate. The gas station owner, who worked across the street from the Oxnard Hotel in Norfolk, had given it to Dad just for us! Back then, we didn't have too much stuff. Most of our toys, Dan's and Laura's, and mine, fit into one old, metal, brown trunk that we called the toy box. We had trikes, and then bikes, but they were kept outside. My treasured Barbie doll and the clothes Mom sewed for it at the front desk when she worked in the evenings, after we were asleep, were kept in a shoe box in the bedroom I shared with Dan. Most of our books were borrowed from the public library, although a few were purchased at school, for a quarter, from the Scholastic Book Club. We also had a full set of Collier's Encyclopedias, which Dan read from cover to cover before he finished grade school, and a well-loved, acc...

This is the time of year when I remember the hotel people, those permanent residents who considered my family to be their family. This time of year brings them to mind because my family usually included them in our fall wild game feeds, and even Thanksgiving dinner, when we stretched out two or three banquet tables, in our apartment living room, to accommodate everyone. While my family attended the Christmas Eve children's program at church, one or two of the old men usually played Santa, moving our presents from their hiding place in some storeroom or convenient hotel room, to our apartment, where they carefully placed the gifts under our Christmas tree. I was only five when we moved to the Oxnard Hotel in Norfolk. All of the permanent residents there were lonely, old men, mostly retired from their lifetime livelihoods. I was too shy to talk to them, but my brother, Dan, who knew no strangers, got to know them well. They got a kick out of his large vocabulary and willingness to ...

It was my favorite outfit that year, when I was a sixth grader. I wore it often, that gold corduroy jumper that Mom had made for me, and the hand-me-down, pink polka-dotted, white blouse. It's hard to tell from this old, faded photo, but the inch-wide polka dots were bright pink. The jumper was warm and soft, and the long-sleeved blouse fit reasonably well. I didn't realize at the time, or even care, that the jumper and blouse didn't go well together at all. In fact, they clashed terribly! No one made fun of me, at least not to my face. I was just glad that no one ever mentioned the glasses that I thought were so ugly. Individual quirkiness was tolerated a bit better, back then, than it is now, especially in Fairbury, Nebraska. Oh, our school had its share of cliques, but we all treated each other with respect, for the most part. I suspect that most kids of that era wore home-sewn clothes and hand-me-downs from time to time. When I was in late elementary school...