Category: Family

The Old Red Pump

Brenda Stratton

I remember it like it was yesterday, a moment caught in time. I was nine years old.

It was a cool, sunny day in spring. Dad was standing beside the old well, the sun at his back, creating a halo effect around him. 

He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of muddy jeans and work shoes, holding an old bucket with a rope attached to it. 

We had just moved to the Millersburg property, which was my mother’s childhood home. The only available water source was the old shallow well. We lived too far out in the country, so city water wasn’t available. 

The well hadn’t been used in nearly twenty years, since my grandmother moved into the city. 

Dad knew he had to clean the well and purify the water to make it safe before we had any usable fresh water at all. 

The well was hand-dug and approximately thirty-five feet deep. The sides and bottom were dirt, so the bottom of it was muddy. 

Dad repeatedly climbed down the ladder he had placed in the well, and brought up the mud bucket by bucket. 

He brought up other things, too: an old bucket and a wrench that had been lost down there many years before. 

After Dad cleaned the well, he began lining it with reclaimed bricks.

I know the weather was still cool because Mom had been cleaning the bricks with a wire brush and water they brought up beforehand. I remember her mentioning how cold her hands were, and I also remember how red they were. 

Once the brick lining was finished, Dad treated the water to make sure it was safe to drink. He said he put lime down the well to purify it, which is how they did it back then.

When that was all done, the last step was to restore the hand pump, which he had pulled out of the well before he started cleaning it. 

After cleaning it, he replaced the leathers, applied a fresh coat of red paint, and reinstalled it when the paint was dry. 

For several years afterward, before Dad built the new house, we had to go out to the well, pump the water we needed, and carry it into the house.

At age nine, I wasn’t strong enough to carry a full bucket of water, so the job mostly fell to Mom and Monty. Sometimes Mom was busy and Monty was off carrying his paper route, so Mom would ask me to bring in a half bucket. Once in a while, if she needed more, I had to make two trips. 

I remember hanging the bucket on the pump spout, having to pump it three or four times to prime it, the squeak the pump made, and the clatter of metal on metal as I brought the handle down and it hit the pump body. 

Later, when Dad built the new house, he installed a jet pump in the basement and connected it to the well. After that, we did not use the hand pump nearly as often.

Even so, Dad—and later Carl—kept the hand pump in good working order.

Dad’s reasoning was simple:

A family’s source of water should not depend entirely upon electricity if another choice exists.

Trying to Explain Death to AT&T

Brenda Stratton

Or: Bookkeeping 101

File this under “things that make no sense.” It was irritating in the beginning and most of the way through it, but I finally saw the humor in it.

You see, I was my brother, Monty’s, medical power of attorney until his passing in May of 2020. When he passed, the POA was no longer in effect. I had no further power to discharge any of his business.

So, I had no legal standing over his estate. All I could do was notify his telephone company about his passing and ask them to close his account.

The representative I talked to at the telephone company seemed to understand, thanked me for notifying them, and said they would take care of it.   

I didn’t hear anything more from them for a while, so I assumed it was settled.

A month or so later, I got a letter from them addressed to me at my home and along with a check for $79—made out to my brother stating that it was a refund on the balance of the account.

I was confused. I had clearly told them he was deceased. Not knowing what else to do, I wrote a letter to them explaining the situation again, referring to the date of our original phone call. I enclosed the check and sent it back, explaining why I couldn’t cash it… because fraud.

I considered the matter closed. 

I was wrong.

A few months later, I received another letter with another check addressed to my brother.

Once again, I wrote to them to explain the situation and referenced both of the previous communications, thinking surely the third time would be the charm.

Again, I was wrong.

For several months, everything was quiet, and I was lulled into a false sense of security.

Many months later, it started again. By this time I was getting pretty tired of the back-and-forth game with them. In all, they contacted me about a half dozen times.

The last time they contacted me was the one that sent me over the edge.

They sent me a bill and told me that my brother owed them $25. After everything that I had been through with them, I had no intention of paying it, also knowing that I was not legally liable for it.

By then, the situation had moved beyond irritation and straight into absurdity. I mean, how does someone run up a bill nearly a year after they pass away? And what happened with the $79 credit?

If I know anything at all about bookkeeping, the math doesn’t work.

Finally, I decided one last letter was worth a try. If this didn’t explain it, nothing would.

Following is a letter that I sent to them.

“Dear AT&T, 

I’m writing to you in regard to my brother’s telephone account. My brother, Monty, passed away in May 2020, which I advised you of at the time.

Since his passing your company has continued to send refund checks to him at my address. I am his next of kin. He wasn’t married, had no children, our parents have passed away, and I am his only sibling. Any authority I had over his business ended with his passing.

Your company has continued to send refund checks to him at my address. I am not legally capable of cashing those checks since I would be committing fraud. I am not going there.

Meanwhile, I received a bill on his behalf telling me that he owes you $25, a matter that boggles my mind as I do not see how he could possibly be responsible for this since he died over a year ago.  Something here is not making sense.

Please close this account and remove my brother’s name from your company’s billing system. The phone was supposed to be disconnected over a year ago and if it wasn’t someone else is floating on your dime. 

If you wish to discharge the amount you owe him to me, fine, but you would have to put it in my name. (I am not holding my breath.) As for charges against his account made after he died, that’s just nuts.

Please take care of this right away. It’s been a long time coming.

Brenda”

Then, crickets. They did not send me a check for a refund on his account, but I never thought they would. However, it seems they finally got the message. 

I never heard from them again.

A short time later, I closed my account with them as well.

I am reminded of the saying, “You can’t get blood from a turnip.”

You also can’t give money to, or request it from, someone who is deceased.

Where They Are Still Alive

Brenda Stratton

So many of my childhood memories are anchored to the farm where we lived until I was six. I have already written many of the stories that happened there, but there are so many more to come. 

I find myself coming back to them often. I think it is at least partly due to the fact that my parents were still young, and so was my big brother. My brother and I hadn’t grown up yet and found our ways in the world. We were all still  together. I can go back there in my memories, where they are all still alive.

The farm is where I began to learn about the world. It was the setting for so many firsts—first adventures, first friendships, first discoveries.

A few years ago, my daughter, Liz, drove me by the farm. It is all gone now—the buildings, everything. It has all been turned into pasture. But to me, it lives on in my mind, just the way it was in the 1950s. 

I can still point out where the barn was, the garage, Dad’s fuel tank, and the chicken yard. I still know exactly where the house was, and I can see the interior as if I was standing in it right now. I know the furniture placement, and I remember how Mom had it decorated. 

It has been sixty-eight years since we drove out of that driveway for the last time.

The buildings are gone.

The people I loved are gone.

But in my memory, the farm is still there—just like my family.

A Basket Full of Puppies

Brenda Stratton

The house next door hadn’t always been empty. Friends of my parents lived there once, so I was familiar with the house, yard, and outbuildings. 

I don’t know who the family was that moved in next, but they weren’t there very long. Soon, the house was empty again.

One day soon after, Dad was driving slowly by the house with his window down. 

You didn’t drive fast on a country road. There was too much dust, and several houses sat close together in a tight little cluster. You never knew when someone’s child might chase a ball into the road.

A basket full of small blonde puppies.


It was then he heard the puppies crying. He stopped and listened because he knew no one lived there.

Our house was nearby—what would be about two blocks by city standards. Dad went home and told Mom what he had heard. They were both upset and knew they had to rescue the puppies. 

Dad went back to the house and followed the sounds of the crying puppies. I remember hearing him tell Mom they were locked in the shed and he had to force the door open. There was no mama dog with them, and he wasn’t going to leave them there to die. Dad placed them in the box he had brought with him and carried them home to Mom.

There were three puppies. They were light brown in color with white markings, and their little bellies were round and tight—but I didn’t know what that meant then. 

They were dirty and smelly—and they were starving.

Mom warmed some milk for them—milk she hadn’t yet skimmed the cream from. They ate eagerly, but Mom only let them eat a little at a time, knowing that if she gave them too much it would make them sick.  

When they were finished, she gave each of them a warm bath, then dried and wrapped them in towels to keep them warm. Then she made a soft bed in a laundry basket and said that’s all she could do for them that night. 

The next day, Dad called Dr. Beer, our veterinarian, and asked him to make a farm call. He also had some livestock for the vet to examine and asked him to stop at the house to look at the puppies while he was there. 

I had been quietly watching over them. When Dr. Beer came, I had to move back to give him and my parents room. I heard him say in a low voice that he didn’t know if they would survive because they were pretty little and very sick. He told Mom she was doing exactly what needed to be done—little meals often. He said they would know in a few days if they would live. 

A few days passed with Mom giving the puppies round-the-clock care, and Dr. Beer stopping by whenever he was “in the neighborhood.” I think that was his way of saying he was worried about the babies. 

With Mom’s tender care and steady feedings, the puppies rallied quickly. They grew strong and were ridiculously fat and round, but this time it was because of good nutrition. 

On one of his trips to check on the puppies, Dr. Beer said they were out of the woods and would be just fine. 

It wasn’t long before the puppies were playing, tumbling, and finding their voices. Mom started letting me hold them, then. The weather was nice, and when they got big enough, she let me start taking them outdoors to play. She knew I would be careful with them. 

They were so wiggly and squirmy but didn’t seem to mind me dressing them up in doll clothes and pushing them around in my doll buggy. Most of my dolls had dresses with panties. So, when I dressed the puppies, I wasn’t sure what to do with their tails—so I put them through one of the leg holes with their legs. 

I had so much fun with them, but too soon Mom and Dad said it was time to find new homes for them. We already had one farm dog, Brownie, so these little ones would need to have homes of their own. I wanted to keep them all. 

One by one, people came to see them, and soon they all found new homes.

I missed them. A lot.

I had watched my parents do what needed to be done. That seemed to be how things worked in our house.

Looking back, I realize they were teaching me something far more important than how to care for abandoned puppies.

If something was hurting…

…you helped it.

Army Beans

Brenda Stratton

A Dad Story.

When Dad was in the Army back in World War II, the soldiers took turns cooking. None of them liked KP duty. In fact, they had a rule that whoever complained about the cooking was to be the next one to take over the chore.

One night, the soldier who was on KP duty made navy beans and over-salted them on purpose to avoid cooking again the next night.

When meal time came that day, the soldiers took turns filling their plates and settled in to eat.

It was immediately apparent what the cook had done, but the soldiers continued eating stoically.

But one guy just couldn’t hold it in.

“Damn, those beans are salty!” he exclaimed. Quickly realizing what he had done he went on to add, “But, BOY are they good!”

Every time Dad told this story, it was punctuated by one of his signature belly laughs. We couldn’t help but laugh along with him.

The Day I Sold My Husband

Brenda Stratton

As an introvert, I have never liked to be the center of attention. 

I’ve taken piano and organ lessons as a child, and more organ lessons as an adult. But, I never liked to play for anyone outside my family. 

The business world wasn’t any different. A boss once asked my opinion on the subject at hand during a meeting—before I had formed one.

I felt like a deer caught in the headlights and spent the next minute or two feeling like I was babbling.

Carl and I went back to college when I was 36 and he was 39. 

As I was choosing my classes, I realized I needed one extra English class for my English/Writing major. I’d already chosen all the classes I really wanted. Of the ones remaining, speech was the most intimidating. But, I had it on good authority from other students in my class that it was easier (less intimidating) if I took it as a six week summer class.

Fortunately, it turned out that I only had to give one speech during the summer semester. That speech came at the end of the session—and counted as a significant portion of my grade.

The professor gave the class the freedom to choose our subjects, with some gentle direction on possible subject matter. 

After giving it a lot of thought, I settled on giving a sales pitch.

I decided to “sell” my husband. 

Of course, I asked Carl if he minded doing this for me. I explained that he would have to come to class with me and sit in front of the class beside me while I explained what a bargain he was. He readily agreed.

Here were just a few of his best features:

He’s a great cook and baker.

There is nothing that he can’t fix.

He is good-natured and has a terrific sense of humor.

He’s very smart. If you ask him a question, he usually has a ready answer. (This was before the internet.)

He pays the bills.

And there was so much more.

Having him beside me during that speech helped calm my nerves and made it much easier for me to get through it. 

As I had been advised by other survivors of speech class, it also helped imagining the whole class in their underwear. 

Between having Carl beside me and thinking of the class in that state of undress, I actually made it through my sales pitch with a smile. 

I also got a couple of offers for him, which made us both laugh. 

Somehow, between Carl beside me and an imaginary classroom full of people in their underwear, I got through the class and walked away with an A in Speech.

Meet Carl

Brenda Stratton
My husband, Carl, wearing the patient half-smile I came to know so well.

Christmas at our house was always so much fun. Our kitchen was the heart of our home, and our family naturally gathered around the kitchen table.

Our annual cookie baking marathon was a family affair. Carl stirred the huge batches of dough, while I measured ingredients. The kids helped by rolling dough into balls and washing dishes, jobs assigned according to age. Christmas lights twinkled merrily through the wide doorway into the living room. 

Excited chatter came mostly from the kids, along with plenty of sticky hands as they sampled cookies—and occasionally the cookie dough.

With a bitter north wind swirling drifts of snow around our home, we were snug and safe inside with a crackling fire to warm us. Carl always made sure to carry enough wood inside to keep the fire going late into the evening. 

The light scent of wood smoke mingled with the aroma of cookies rich with cinnamon and molasses. To me, those scents spelled home, and it was exactly where we wanted to be.

Carl was a fantastic helper in the kitchen, not just at holidays, but every day. 

He arrived home from work at 5:15 pm through the week. I tried to have supper ready by 5:30 pm so he didn’t have to wait long to eat.

I was usually standing at the kitchen stove when he arrived. After coming in the back door, he kicked off his shoes and slid in beside me to help finish cooking, often before he had time to say hello. 

One night when I was working as a crochet designer, I dropped a crochet hook into my printer as I was preparing a pattern to send to my editor the next day. I couldn’t get it out, and I was afraid I would damage the printer if I tried running it that way. 

So, I woke Carl up. He went to get the long forceps he used for working on TVs and was able to quickly retrieve the hook. The pattern went out to my editor the next day, and Carl was back in bed within minutes. 

Sometimes, I attended needlework conventions in Chicago to meet with my editors. It was a two hundred mile drive, and lasted for three days. He always drove me, and helped me find my way around the convention hall. Whenever I had materials to carry, he handled it for me then stood quietly by, waiting for me to finish talking with my editors. 

He was always up for a road trip, whether it was local or halfway across the country. 

He was the same with the kids when they grew old enough to go places without us. Since we lived in the country, and some of their friends lived in town, they would need a ride and Dad was always ready to take them. 

In the summer, he planted a garden to help provide fresh food for our family. When our family grew, he planted a second garden. 

While he tended the gardens, I was usually in charge of preserving the harvest.

If something was broken, he fixed it. He knew how to fix everything from household appliances and TVs to air conditioning and broken toys. If it could be fixed, he found a way to do it. 

If I could choose one way of describing Carl, it would simply be that he showed up, something that he did every day for the entire 52 years that we were married. 

He didn’t stop to ask if it was something that he wanted to do or might inconvenience him. He just did it. 

His quiet devotion and sense of humor meant everything to me. He was my  home. 

Your Pants Are On Fire!

Brenda Stratton

When we lived on the farm, there were only two bedrooms on the ground floor. Monty had one room and Mom and Dad had the other. 

I was only four or five years old, so they put me in a tiny room off Mom and Dad’s bedroom that I think must’ve been a dressing room. 

Because the room was so tiny, there was only a small white dresser and my single bed which was tucked under the north-facing window.

There was no overhead light, just a bare lightbulb screwed into a light socket on the wall with a pull chain to turn it on.

One evening, while Mom was busy in her bedroom, I wandered into mine. 

There was a pair of Mom’s black-and-white zebra striped pedal pushers hanging from the lightbulb.

I remember the light turning on, but I don’t recall who did it, although I’ve always suspected it was me. Mom would have known better.

I was fascinated when I saw the smoke starting to curl toward the ceiling.

All of a sudden, Mom was there. 

She moved me out of the way and grabbed the zebra striped pants, flinging open the front door and hurling them out onto the front porch.

If I was the one who turned on the light, I didn’t get into trouble.

But Mom never hung anything on the light again, and that was the last time I ever saw the zebra striped pants.

Thirty Years and a Lunch Bucket

Brenda Stratton

Dad walked into the East Moline Works of International Harvester one Monday morning carrying his black lunch bucket with the silver latches—the kind with the domed lid that held his Thermos of coffee in the top. 

He didn’t work there. His last job had ended, and he was looking for a new one. He  told Mom he would be back when he found one.

International Harvester was a big employer in our area. Getting a job there could easily become the start of a career. 

Dad walked into the plant manager’s office. When it was his turn to be called inside, the plant manager offered him a seat and asked him why he was there. 

“I’m looking for a job,” Dad said. “I’ll do any job, no matter what it is. I’ll sweep floors if that is all you have.”

The manager listened, then shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything for you. We aren’t hiring.” 

Dad stood and thanked him, then left the office—but he didn’t leave the plant. He took a seat in a chair just outside the manager’s office. 

When the day shift ended at 3:30 pm, Dad left to find something to eat. At night, he slept in the car. He returned at 7 am the next morning when the day shift began, lunch bucket in hand.

He continued this routine for most of the week.

Dad said the plant manager began giving him odd looks as he went in and out of his office. Later that week, he stopped and asked Dad, “You’re still here?”

“Yes, and I’m going to be here until you give me a job.”

Dad said the manager shook his head and walked away. 

The next day, the manager approached him with a broom in his hand. 

He handed it to Dad and simply said, “Start sweeping.”

Before the day was over, Dad had his ID badge and was an official employee. 

Dad swept floors for a few days but was soon promoted to machinist, a job he held for over twenty years. He fed sheets of metal into a machine, making parts for combines and other equipment. 

As he neared retirement age, Dad developed some health issues, so they gave him a job as a fork truck driver. 

Eventually, Mom and Dad relocated to East Moline so Dad wouldn’t have the nearly 75 mile round trip to and from work every day. They were fortunate to locate a home just outside the entrance to the plant. 

When I was in my late thirties, International Harvester hosted an open house, inviting the families of their employees to attend. 

Dad said they cleaned for days to get the plant ready.

Our whole family attended. Dad showed us around and explained what his job was. It was amazing how many processes those sheets of steel went through before they became finished pieces of farm machinery.

It made Dad’s stories about the different jobs he performed in the space of a day easier to understand. 

I was impressed. The machinery Dad was helping to build was so much bigger and more complex than the simple machinery he had back on the farm. 

The open house answered questions I had wondered about for years. 

“What was it like where Dad worked?” 

“What did he do there?”

Of course, he had shared what it was like, but that isn’t the same as seeing it for myself.

The next day, I wrote a letter to the plant manager thanking him for allowing me to see what I had always wondered about as a child.

He didn’t answer me, but I didn’t expect him to. 

However, I was surprised the next time I saw Dad. He grinned, and handed me a copy of the company newsletter. 

They had printed my letter verbatim thanking them for the open house and telling them about the questions it had put to rest for me! 

I was so surprised! And it was obvious that Dad was proud something I wrote was chosen for the company newsletter.

Dad retired at age sixty-six, after a career that spanned thirty years. 

The lunch bucket was retired, too. 

A short time later, he stopped by to visit with his foreman. They shared a good laugh when his foreman told him they had given his job to two younger men—because one couldn’t keep up.

I can picture him laughing with a twinkle in his eye when his foreman told him that, because it happened every time he told the story afterward. 

That was my Dad. He was an exceptionally hard worker, always focused on the job at hand, and doing it to the very best of his ability. 

When I was growing up, I didn’t think too much about why he worked, other than the fact that it was just something that fathers did. 

Now I realize he did it all for us—to give our family a nice home, plenty to eat, and the kind of loving home life we enjoyed growing up.

I know it couldn’t have been easy, but he did it anyway. For us. For thirty years. 

Because that is just who he was. 

The Accidental Casserole

Brenda Stratton

A Note From The Porch

It was a typical busy late afternoon. Carl and Scott were home from work, and I was in the process of starting dinner. 

I gathered the ingredients together, which included a forage into the garage where our overflow pantry and freezers are located. 

I came back to the kitchen and started assembling dinner. 

Mom always made sure there were at least three different things for dinner, followed up by a dessert of some kind. 

Since she is the one who taught me to cook, I did the same. It worked equally well when there were six of us for dinner as well as just for the three of us after our other three children moved out and established their own homes. 

One of the dishes we were having that night was a corn casserole, a recipe Mom had given me many years before.

After I assembled the casserole and put it in the oven, I put together the rest of the meal and began tidying up the kitchen. 

The corn casserole calls for a box of Jiffy Corn Muffin mix. I picked up the empty box to throw it away and froze. 

Emblazoned across the front of the box it clearly said Jiffy Yellow Cake mix. 

I froze, horrified by the discovery. I had just ruined dinner!

Trying to decide what I was going to feed the guys, I decided the best thing to do was to make a new corn casserole, this time with Jiffy Corn Muffin mix. It would only delay dinner by a few minutes, since it was very quick to put together. I had enough ingredients on hand. 

Less than 15 minutes later, I slid a new casserole into the oven satisfied that I had saved dinner. 

I had every intention of throwing the accidental casserole out. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to eat a cake with creamed corn, cheddar cheese and green chiles in it. 

Except… Carl and Scott both said they wanted to taste it. 

I thought they were teasing me at first but quickly found out they were serious. 

So I gave them each a serving, fully expecting them to take one bite and push it away.

They didn’t.

They liked it.

So, now I was curious and tasted it, too. 

I was shocked to find out it was actually good. 

We have always liked a little bit of sugar in our cornbread, so I suppose it wasn’t such a stretch to think they might like the sweetness of the cake in it. 

Fifteen minutes later, when the actual corn casserole came out of the oven, they weren’t interested in it. They had polished off the accidental casserole, so I saved the right one for dinner the next night. 

We have talked about the incident at different times over the years. The horror of what I had done soon wore off, and now I find it funny, too. 

But I never made another one with a cake mix. 

I learned several things from the incident. 

  • Mistakes are not always failures.
  • Sometimes the “ruined” thing becomes the memorable thing.
  • Family stories often come from ordinary kitchen accidents.
  • Perfection is overrated when people are laughing and eating.
  • Always read the label. Jiffy Cake Mix and Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix look remarkably alike, and you may end up with an accidental casserole of your own.

In case you are curious, I have listed the original recipe below. And if you decide to substitute a cake mix for the corn muffin mix? I won’t tell anyone. 

Corn Casserole

Prep Time: 10 minutes  | Cook Time: 45-60 minutes  | Total Time: 55-70 minutes  | Servings: 4-6 

Ingredients:

  • 3 eggs
  • ¼ cup oil
  • 2 cans creamed corn
  • 4 oz. can of chopped green chiles
  • 8 oz Jiffy corn bread mix
  • ¾ – 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (for topping)

Instructions:

  • Preheat oven to 350℉.
  • Combine all ingredients, except cheddar cheese, in bowl, beating eggs before adding the rest. 
  • Pour into a casserole dish. Top with cheddar cheese. 
  • Bake for 45-60 minutes or until the center is set. 

NOTE: If you like a little spice, add a few jarred jalapeno pepper slices and a tablespoon or two of the liquid.