2026-07-01
Looking Back
Looking back, each of us has a significant segment of history we can recall having experienced.
I remember standing a night sky watch from a press box at a small Iowa high school for cold war Russian bombers and an available landline to alert a chain of command. Before that as a kid during World War II, I would bicycle a half gallon of kitchen cooking grease to the local meat market that sent it forward for military munitions use. We had one neighbor who served as a civil defense person, assuring that no lights were showing at night in our neighborhood. Another neighbor could be heard pounding on a dye to make rubber gaskets for a local wartime factory. There were victory gardens and sharing of production among families.
In our early marriage I had to sign to get my new wife her own credit card. I have first hand knowledge of my mother being first able to vote a few years before I was born and my father’s military experience after basic training when his group was train-bound for the east coast only to be returned when they learned of the World War I armistice. My father told of his delight when Amelia Erhart was barnstorming and flew around their small county fair.
And there were surprises that made me think of times I experienced and heard about when I noticed that my grandkids put drinking glasses in the cupboard with the open top up. I always put them away way upside down as we did in my early life. Then, during the dustbowl era, upside down kept the fine sandy dust from getting into the clean glass!