Home Again, Dance a Little Jig

Once again the ranch house opened its arms to us as we drove up the long drive toward our home. The smell of sweet clover and prairie grass was healing to me as was medicine to an injured person. The old meadowlark trilled her minor keys to warn us not to encroach upon her world. Even that was pleasant. Clouds came across the prairie sky like locomotives racing to some distant destination. The expanse and beauty of the landscape always, for all my life, left me feeling humble and aware of a Higher Power.

“If you don't believe in God it's because you haven't been out in His world to visit with him.” Dad always remarked. There was the richness of combined conditions where warm gentle breezes on a day like this day today married with the fragrances of wild flowers. Above all there was the eternal, uninterrupted, almost holy, silence.

Many a cowboy working to save a cow and her calf in a driving rainstorm with lightning cracking noisily close on his heels certainly was deprived of this silence and might give another reason for being aware of a Supreme Being.

My cousin, now the owner, and my uncle, wanted Rodney and me at the old home place. I can see now as it is in disrepair and falling down, the reason for this. We would have a choice to soon make but, for the moment, these grounds gave me security and respite from a hateful world I never knew existed.

Rhonda had a room ready and waiting for her. In the dairy barn was found an old fashioned, cast-off wicker basket of an earlier vintage to precede the stroller. It was on very large wheels and was hidden away in the now empty granarie. The buggy was the kind seen in black and white movies, when nurses were pushing babies about in Central Park.

After it was scrubbed with disinfectant, spray painted a pale yellow and lined with soft green satin I had quilted it made a perfect bassinet. A long ruffle dropping off the sides hid the oversized wheels. Simply releasing the brakes allowed the newly created crib to be easily moved from place to place in the overlarge, rooms of the house, and this was a plus.

My cousin, Ura May's old room had been painted a muted, soft, earthy blue and this is where I put the bassinet. A found desk in a junk shop was painted the same pale yellow. The flat top of the desk with a pad gave me a place for changing diapers. Windows of any of the rooms were never covered with fabric. Only slatted Venetian blinds were used and this allowed the outdoors to come into the house during the day. After all these years, all the furniture has been destroyed or stolen from the ranch house except that one yellow desk.

If I had visited a world filled with possibly, unsolvable problems, Rhonda, Rodney and I were back into our environment where nothing like that existed. Here were peace, love, and all things beautiful. Soon the events and damage done to my daughter I felt would only be forgotten memories. This never happened and in reality was just the beginning of our trek of close to fifty years for making major decisions regarding, not only our lives, but for our children as well.

But then soon it was to be we would walk away from that beautiful spacious prairie home to unknown places just as our Dad had done so many years ago. Why did we? It was because the blood of the Joneses goes to pioneering and that spirit to have gone with building this oasis had to push forward to a new world in desperate need of being pioneered with changes to be made. Our ranch home had always been there and we believed we would return.

The way disabled children were treated was sad. The pitiful condition of these children in the year of 1959 we saw and it was one of loneliness where little ones were deprived of the love from their parents and family. However, It came to be a time when many parents rose up and no longer allowed society to sandwich their beloved babies behind stark white walls of institutions away from curious eyes supposedly to protect them. Here was a regime inside our own country that was worse than the other supposedly superior race a mad man concieved. We would and did see that. The shock was to come in contact with rows of baby beds with bars to hold these sad faced children, who were less than perfect.