This and That from Nebraska

A couple of weeks ago my sister commented on the "Nebraska" series.  She suggested some things she hoped I would tell.  This one, about the lamb, I posted among my Christmas stories in 2009.

• The year I turned two, we lived in Nebraska and there was no such thing as money in our household, except, as Dad told it, the sole nickel he had in his pocket. Wanting desperately to buy me a present, he shopped the small town over and found there was nothing to be had within his means. But. On Christmas Eve before the stores closed, he took one last walk into the village, and behold there was a sign in the drugstore window which said "all toys and Christmas items, 1/2 price." And there was a stuffed lamb in the window with a ten cent price tag on it. He bought it with his last nickel, and presumably a happy Christmas was had by all.

Yet even more important than the retelling of this incident is that I say "happy birthday" to this sister, for Vee was born in the parsonage in this little Nebraska hamlet in which we lived exactly a certain number of years ago this very day!  

Happy Birthday, Vee, and may you have many more!

My memories of life in this village are limited by the shortness of the time we were there (four years), my own immaturity (we moved the day before my fifth birthday), and the length of the backward view through time (2013 - 193x, you do the math).  In addition to these few little stories over the past three weeks, I also recall several other things, most of which I think I have mentioned in the past on STSTT.  

• Mrs. Anderson's great console radio.  How did those teeny tiny people get inside that thing?  Who fed them?
• The interurban cars that ran perhaps a quarter mile behind our place.
• The harvest crews cutting and thrashing wheat in the field behind our house.  Stationary steam threshing machine, horses pulling wagons through the field.
• The baby diverting my parents' attention from the one who had been the center of their universe to another more cuddly, more lovable.  Well, even that turned out okay.