This, That, and Everything

By Norma Nightingale

This, That, and Everything shares the true and often hilarious account of the starts, the stalls, the reverses, and the restarts of Norma Nightingales life. It covers the whole range of her life, from childhood to becoming a grandma and beyond. In a memoir that is humorous and sad by turns, she recounts her life, which began as the sixth of eight children born into a Holdeman Mennonite family. Their way of life was to live in simplicity with economy and modestyincluding the way they dressed and how they conducted themselves, not drawing attention to themselves.

She tells of her childhood growing up in central California on the property of the Gallo Winery, where her father worked. Her marriage at seventeen to Winston Nightingale, who was eighteen at the time, opened a new and exciting chapter in her life, first in California and later in Kansas, where her husband was offered a new job. She talks of her devastation at discovering that, after having three children, she had early stage cervical cancer. Happily, she survived and thrived in Kansas with her family.

This, That, and Everything is the charming memoir of a woman who continues to live her life to the fullest, with love, hope, and a wonderful family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inspiring Voices
• Release date: Jan 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781462404513

Norma Nightingale

Norma Nightingale was the third youngest in a family of eight children and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of central California. She now lives with Winston, her husband of over forty-five years, in Montezuma, Kansas; they have three grown children. This is her first book.

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Copyright © 2012 Norma Nightingale

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ISBN: 978-1-4624-0452-0 (s)

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0451-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923079

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 01/03/2012

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

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PREFACE

This, That & Everything

I grew up the third youngest in a family of eight children. Our home was in the San Joaquin Valley of central California in the small town of Delhi. It boasted three grocery stores and a fruit stand that was open until midnight in the summer. We all knew each other and, as children, felt safe playing anywhere in town.

When I was in 7th grade the man Dad worked for, Joe Gallo of Gallo Winery offered us a large two story adobe house right on the yard where Dad worked. This house was old but lovely and I will always have fond memories of sitting in the wide window seats that overlooked all the grape vineyards totally surrounding our house on the hill.

Dad’s boss then moved our family about a half mile down the road to a much smaller house by one of the many canals that crisscross this part of California. After we moved, Mr. Gallo bulldozed the adobe house down and built his farm office in its place. I lived by the canal until I got married to Winston Nightingale in 1966. Today, after more than 45 years, we are still married.

In 1968 we moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for 2 years so my husband could work in St. Anthony Hospital in lieu of military service as we are conscientious objectors. The money he was paid was given to the Mennonite church except for $30 a month personal spending money. Two of our three children were born there.

We are Holdeman Mennonites and conscientious objectors or COs because we believe the Lord teaches to love your enemies, bless them which curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. We also do not believe we should take part in organized sports as it promotes too much pride and strife between teams. This is not in keeping with our nonresistant stand.

Our basic motto if you want to call it that is to live in simplicity with modesty and economy. Modesty includes the way we dress and how we conduct ourselves, not drawing attention to ourselves. For this reason entertainment such as organized sports and even amusement parks and going to public beaches in swimming suits is not condoned. We also do not believe in the entertainment received through television & radio. There is too much of the corruptness of the world involved in both for us to want to allow ourselves and, for sure, our children access to either.

In 1970 we moved back to California where our third child was born. This is also where the story of the Cwapped Wammuts takes place. California is where I first realized I wanted to be a nurse. It is where I first started to take nursing seriously as a career, but with ill health and 3 small children the road seemed too steep so I sold my books back to the college and took care of myself by having a hysterectomy in Modesto’s brand new hospital. That’s where I got the news I had early stage cervical cancer cells, but the Lord saw fit to spare me. It had been caught in time and we could move on with our lives.

Then--one day, out of the middle of nowhere, my husband got a job offer in southwest Kansas. With much agonizing and indecision we moved to the bare windswept flatlands of the Midwest. There we bought our first house in town. The main streets in town were paved but the rest were all still dirt. For five years we lived in town then managed to find one acre with a house on it in the country. Many and pleasant are the memories made there. The upholstery shop is one. Raising animals and a garden as well as three children is another. Three children giving their hearts to the Lord and two of them finding mates are also very special memories.

The Ghost story comes from here. For those of you who think all the roads in the world are paved chapter 17 may not make much sense. In Kansas, even today in 2012, only the highways as well as the streets in towns are paved. The rest of the roads are maintained gravel or sandy roads and can get awfully muddy when wet. Chapters 6 through 20 all take place in this wild country of western Kansas just 25 miles west of Wyatt Earp’s town, Dodge City.

Fishing in Cuchara is set in Cuchara, Colorado. It’s an awesome place to vacation, summer or winter. As this chapter portrays it can tickle your funny bone on a dark evening. Added to that, there is nothing like the thrill of coming back to camp and finding your food supplies scattered all over and half of it missing. The goose bumps this gives one are really not very pleasant.

The Extras are still real blessings. When someone you never knew becomes close to your heart, as one born to you, life takes on a different dimension. One’s world is suddenly larger and way lovelier.

Wet Feet in the Caribbean was even better than going to Cuchara. Winston says, If I could live anywhere in the world I’d choose Haiti. It’s a country we fell in love with. Who wouldn’t with night blooming jasmine right outside your bedroom door, donkeys braying in the not so distant distance and the little black faces of adorable Haitian children staring at these rich white people? These are all enchanting, bewitching qualities of this tiny part of an island. It doesn’t get any better than that, at least not in this life. The friendly openness of the people is what really tugs at our hearts.

A Tribute to My Mother, and What My Father Taught Me, are special to me because my parents made me realize that the Mennonite church accepts people from all walks of life and from any faith under the sun. My mother’s father was a Methodist and her mother was a Baptist before coming to the Holdeman Mennonite church.

Read this story of my life together with loved ones, both birth family & adopted. I hope you enjoy it. I changed some names to prevent any feelings getting hurt. That was never intended.

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CHAPTER 1

Growing up in California

…in a family of 10 and sometimes more

1949-1966

I was born to Clifford and Ruth Koehn on a hot August evening in 1949 in Delhi, California. I was number 6 of 8 children born to this family. Starting with the oldest we are as follows: Lora (married to Ivan Nightengale, son of Carl and Minnie Nightengale), Allen (married to Vera Schmidt, the daughter of Melvin and Susanna Schmidt), Betty (not married), Alice (married to, separated for many years from Sherwood Koehn, son of Lloyd and Elizabeth Koehn), Mary (married to Raymond Koehn, son of Amiel and Hanna Koehn) Me, (Norma) married to Winston Nightingale, son of Herman and Irene Nightingale), Ronnie (married to Sherry York, then divorced and married to Gale Bain) and Larry (married to Rosemary Sommers the daughter of Melvin & Delilah Sommers).

What I write here are my memories and may not be 100 % right, but it is what I remember. Now, of course I don’t remember my birth, but about 10 years ago I had to get a passport which turned into a discouraging trial. Since I was born at home without a doctor in attendance I did not have a proper birth certificate. I had to prove I was born in the United States and attended school here for at least the first 5 years of my life. Then I found out the school didn’t have any idea where those records were stored. Now what? I kept digging for records to prove I am who I am.

At the time of my birth my mother, true to form, had cousin Dale Eagles and his brother-in-law, Ray Hemmingway, living with us in our one bedroom house. (Dale and Ray had come looking for work.) I don’t know how she did this, but growing up we always had someone living with us in our small house. Anyway, Mom asked cousin Dale and he wrote a letter attesting to the fact that he was present when I was born and had the letter certified so I could use it as proof of birth. I did have a note from the doctor who came after I arrived to check Mom and me over.

My Aunt Elsie, Dad’s oldest sister, had delivered me, which was a source of my oldest brother’s jokes for the rest of my life. She was long since deceased and so there was no help from that quarter. All this and $300 plus a good 3 months were needed to get a passport so we could travel to Haiti to visit our missionary daughter, Yvonne.

Back to the day of my birth … Mom told Dale and his brother-in-law to go for a long walk that hot August day in 1949. I’m not sure where they went but I do know they went swimming in one of California’s many canals because Dale told me about it when I called to ask him to write the letter. I guess I was so slow in coming that they came home before I was born, but discreetly stayed out of the way.

Mom called Aunt Elsie when she went into labor. Aunt Elsie was the family midwife and an uneducated nurse for the entire family. She was the one who later lived with and took care of Grandpa and Grandma Koehn when they needed help. That part I do remember. Mom said I made my appearance late in the day and I think I’ve been slow ever since.

By the time I was born Dad had added on to our one room tarpaper shack. If I remember the story right, the family was living in Ballico on the Batterman Ranch, a fruit farm. Dad was a ranch hand there. For some reason my parents decided to move to Delhi. Dad traded his new car for the property with a tar paper shack on it. He then bought an older car. He and Mom needed extra income for this large family so they learned the trade of shoe repair, following after one of Dad’s uncles, also a cobbler by trade. Dad had actually bought the equipment prior to moving to the little house in Delhi. Since the house was too small and there was no outbuilding to use he rented a small place in Delhi and did shoe cobbler work in the evenings and on week-ends, while still working days as a ranch hand. Finally, Dad added onto the back side of this little house, making it L shaped, to make a room for their growing new business. This was where I made my entrance into the family.

In this L shaped room I lost the middle finger of my right hand at the age of one year. Mom said she had me in the shop with her while she was fitting a new pair of soles on a customer’s shoes. I was just learning to walk and I stumbled, grabbing onto the nearest thing for balance which happened to be the belt of the auto-sole machine. The belt went over the pulley taking the tip of my middle finger with it. Mom had only Uncle Henry, who fainted at the sight of blood, to take us to the doctor’s office. She warned him not to faint. My oldest sister, Lora stayed home to care for the rest of the children. While we were gone to the doctor, she found the tip of my finger and saved it to show Dad when he came home that evening. Now I have a pretty good memory, but I do not remember that incident.

My earliest memories were of a trip we took to Kansas when I was 2½ years old. I think we stopped at Hoover Dam on that trip. I remember Mom asking Dad to carry me because my shoes were too slippery for the floor. Dad ignored Mom’s request for a while so I put on a show of slipping so Dad would pick me up and he did just that, tickling me with his long beard. My next memory of that trip was a stop in the Painted dessert to see the petrified wood. I remember a log I tried to step over and couldn’t make it so Allen, my oldest brother, lifted me high and swung me over the log. Oh, how I laughed.

The next memory was at Grandpa Hughes farm. I’m told this was at Marienthal, Kansas. I was sitting on a fence watching the pigs when Mom’s younger brother, Don, acted like he was going to throw me into the pen with the animals. I also remember how he held me over the table in the kitchen so I could dip my finger into the butter and lick it off.

At Grandpa’s farm we children also sat out by the road watching for the snow grader to come along. Being born and raised in California we didn’t see snow unless we drove up into the mountains, so this business of a snow grader was new to us. It was Christmas time and we were all so happy. It was cold so we hunched down into our coats to stay warm while we waited.

I remember getting attention in a family of 6 children was hard to do. I do remember eating fried chicken and saying, This is so good I could eat the bone and all! Oh, how the family laughed. Also I remember Mom getting farm fresh eggs and me watching her bake. One day she said, Look, Norma, this egg has two yokes in it.

One day, shortly after Mom showed me the double yoked egg, we went to visit Dad’s older brother, Alvin and his wife Grace, where they lived in Winton or Atwater, about 7 miles away. Aunt Grace let me pick out a kitty to take home. That kitty was solid gray and fluffy. She put him in a brown paper bag so he would travel better driving home. I stood in the front seat between Mom and Dad on the way home holding tight to my bag with my kitty in it. I didn’t want that kitty to get loose in the car because Aunt Grace told me animals don’t like to ride in cars and I must keep him in the bag until we got home.

On the way we had to wait for a train to go by before we got to our road. I was in a real hurry to get my kitty home and was pouting about the wait, until I saw the train. I became excited because the train had two engines. I said, Oh look! It’s a double yolker. The whole family roared with laughter. My dad didn’t laugh often, so I was really proud of myself for that remark. The family would later tell others how I called that train a double yolker. I don’t remember anything else about that kitty growing up except I found out it wasn’t a boy when it had kittens of its own. I named him/her Fluffy.

The second injury of my life, that I remember, was when Dad and the older children were digging a new septic tank hole. Allen acted like he was going to throw me in head first just as Lora brought up a shovelful of dirt, cutting my head. That meant another trip to the doctor to be stitched up.

At the age of 5, I contracted Polio. Mom tells me I had neck and facial spasms that could not be controlled. I remember the leg pain and weak ankles. I was taken to a Chiropractor weekly for treatments because, for some reason, our family doctor would not or could not treat me. I remember the treatments were painful and I had to wear high top white shoes like the babies wore when they were learning to walk. My ankles were so weak they wouldn’t hold up my legs for walking. Oh, how I hated those shoes! What I remember most is the leg pain that continues today.

As I grew I tried really hard not to let the weakness and pain get in my way of sports. Anything the boys could do I would try. Doing gymnastics has left permanent damage to my spine. This was confirmed in the year 2009 by a spine specialist in Wichita, Kansas.

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Spent many happy hours roller skating here

Our town was very small; about 850 to 1,000 people. We lived across from the grade school, so we spent many happy hours playing over there when school was out. We never had many toys but we had a whole playground of swings, monkey bars and more. The school had half buried tractor tires in the ground for the students to play on. On cold days we would squeeze into the tires to shield ourselves from the cold winter wind.

Later, when we got roller skates, we spent many happy hours skating on the miles of cement sidewalks. At least it seemed like miles. We got bold and learned to skate backwards grabbing hold of the support bars for the roof and swinging around them then taking off skating again without missing a beat. When we got really brave we rolled 55 gallon barrels over there to jump and continue skating without falling down. Well, except when we were first learning this brave maneuver. There were a few broken tail bones. I could jump two of those barrels so I thought I was great. We would announce to a pretend audience, And now for the great Norma Koehn to perform her act of jumping, not one, but two barrels.

We had a whole neighborhood of playmates. Uncle Henrys lived next door to the south of us. Henry was Dad’s older brother who married Myrtle Nightengale. She was the daughter of Carl and Minnie Nightengale. Carl was from Russia and I was always just a little afraid of him. He would take long walks and you could hear him talking to himself in Russian.

Ten Cent Shorty and his friend, Lindsey, lived straight east of us. I always thought Ten Cent Shorty got his name from giving all the kids in the neighborhood 10 cents on their birthday, but Mom said he was called that because he owned a junk yard and sold everything for ten cents. I ask him what his real name was and he said, Kit Carson. I later asked Mom if that was indeed his name and she said she thought it was.

East of Shorty lived Dad’s sister, Aunt Lorene, and her daughters. Her husband, Kenneth Lions, had left her, so she raised her twin daughters, Loretta and Lenora and daughter, Carolyn, alone until Frank Schmidt came on the scene and married my aunt.

Back of Aunt Lorene’s, across the field, lived the Schell kids. Around the horse shoe bend in the road lived the Lunns and Puttmans and also Winston’s Uncle Sam who was an alcoholic. He also had a large family but they were older than us. Then across the street from us were some more of the Schell cousins. We played with or went to Lana Schell’s house to watch cartoons sometimes. She had older brothers who were in sports in school and I loved to watch the one practice pole vaulting. Across the school yard was another family of Schell’s.

On the other side of Uncle Henrys lived the Tucker boys. They were raised by their dad after their mom died. He never remarried. There was another Tucker family that lived across the school yard toward town. When Mrs. Tucker died my mom took care of them until Mr. Tucker could find more permanent care for his children. One of those Tucker boys was in my class at school. His name was Mike. He had bright red curly hair that I thought was very pretty. He was very polite. I really liked him and stayed in touch with him for a few years after I was married. He told me how much he loved my mom, but that was nothing new to me. Everybody loved my mom. So you see we had lots of play mates.

Our house was always full and over flowing with people. Mom often talks about the time her brother, Uncle Howard and his family, came to visit. I was about 10 years old so Mom and Dad had added two more boys to our family by then. We were now 8 children. Uncle Howard’s had 7 children. They brought Grandpa and Grandma Hughes along on that visit. Mom said there were 17 for breakfast that morning already. I think we ate breakfast outside because we wouldn’t all fit in the house. As we were eating someone looked down the road and said, I wonder who that could be? Mom said, Well it looks like it could be some of my relatives. Sure enough it was Uncle AL’s and their 2 children. I’m sure they joined us at the already loaded table. Mom always said there was room for one more!

In the summer time we children slept outside and I’m pretty sure the company did too. They had too. After all we only had one bedroom and a very small one at that. That was Mom and Dad’s room and it didn’t even have a door on it; it was too small.

I remember years later my parents picked up a set of steel Army bunk beds from somewhere and set them up at the end of a very short hallway, right at their bedroom doorway. Facing the beds, their bedroom doorway was to the left and the doorway to the right led to the shoe repair shop. Both doorways had curtains on them. Mom said her cousin Dale slept on a single bed in the shoe repair shop. She doesn’t remember where his brother-in-law, Ray, slept. I do remember at some point in time we had a small camper trailer that my older brother Allen slept in. At one end of the trailer dad built shelves to hold our canned foods such as rabbit, fruit and vegetables.

I don’t remember how old I was when dad built the new shoe repair shop outside, but I’m thinking I must have been around 10 years old. The shop in the house was turned into a big bedroom for us girls. We had 2 regular-sized beds in there and a small closet for all four girls. I say four because Lora had married Ivan by that time. She was only 16 when they got married, but Ivan was 24, and just out of the Army.

We were very poor, but happy for the most part. I’m still surprised none of us got hurt very badly because we did some really stupid things. For instance Allen wanted to be buried alive so he could brag to his friends. So one day he dug a hole in the drive way. (Oh, how Dad hated for us to do that!) When he deemed it deep enough he jumped in and told us girls to cover him up. We did his bidding as usual. We properly stomped the dirt into place like we were taught to do never once thinking that this would give Allen less and less breathing space. Finally he was all covered except for his head. He then told us to hurry and dig him out because he could hardly breathe, but just as we started to dig him out Uncle Alvin’s drove up to our house. Allen called a halt to the digging and yelled for Uncle Alvin to run over him so he could tell his friends he had been run over and not hurt one bit. So to Aunt Grace’s protest he drove the car over Allen. By now Allen was looking pretty blue so we increased our efforts to dig him out quickly. Later he chewed us out for stomping the dirt down around him and for digging so slow to get him out. At times like that some of us secretly said he was so demanding we should have left him in the hole. But no! We did whatever he told us to do, always.

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Allen also had us girls play chicken. We had to stand still while he threw his pocket knife at us from about a foot away. Wherever the knife landed we had to put our foot. He then pulled the knife out of the ground and threw it again. Pretty soon we would be doing the splits. This went on until Allen hit one of twins, Lenora, in the foot. The game was stopped then. Loretta said she & her sisters were always trying ways to get him back but they never could because he wouldn’t comply.

Allen said he always had to prove how strong he was because he was in a family of all girls (This was before my younger brothers were old enough to be his allies) plus, I think there were 12 girls in our neighborhood. One day someone said he was hard headed and someone else denied it. Allen said he did too have a hard head! To prove his point he backed up and ran with head lowered, running it right through the wall! Then he wondered why he got so many spankings. Is it any wonder to you? It just seemed like he was in the middle of any mischief we got into.

One night when Mom and Dad went to town and we children stayed home Allen rammed his fist through the ceiling proving he was strong. Betty told him, he would get into trouble again and he said, No I won’t, just watch. He got a recipe card out of mom’s box and then got out his model car paints and tried to match the paint of the ceiling. Then he pasted it over the hole. One thing was wrong … The card had a hole punched in the center at the top so it could be put in a binder and that hole could easily be seen. I kept looking up at the patch job. Allen finally said, Norma if you tell on me, I’ll knock your block off. I didn’t tell, exactly. When Folks got home I just kept looking up until Mom finally said, What are you looking at? Then Dad noticed and Allen got punished so I knew I’d catch it from him and soon too.

A few days later he threw me through the kitchen window for some small infraction that he decided I needed punished for and as an afterthought he said, …and for telling on me too! I argued that I didn’t tell on him and he said, Well you might as well have the way you kept looking at the ceiling until Folks noticed. I argued that they would have noticed anyway because the card didn’t match the ceiling and it had a hole punched in it. And now he would be in trouble for breaking the kitchen window. He argued that he wouldn’t because it was an accident. Now, all these years later I’m not sure if he did get in trouble for that, but he was in trouble plenty anyway.

There was the time him and Betty were doing dishes and got into a fight. Allen threw a spoon at Betty and she ducked making the spoon hit the secretary/bookcase and breaking the glass in the door. They both got into trouble for that one.

That reminds me of the time Mary and I fought with Alice over doing the dishes. Alice was chasing us around and around the table. She was going to force us to do the dishes. Mom and Dad were in the shoe repair shop. I got tired of her chasing us so I picked up a fork and threw it at her, gouging out a hunk of skin close to her eye. The next week she was chasing us around the table again trying to force us to do dishes. This time Mary picked up a fork and threw it stabbing Alice in the cheek where the fork stuck & quivered a little. In her high school yearbook pictures she has two wounds on her face from the tines of that fork. It shows up pretty clear. Her teacher said, Boy, you guys play rough.

We did play rough. Like I said earlier, there were a lot of kids in our neighborhood and what one didn’t think up, the next one did. We would try just about anything. One day Mom told me to babysit Ronnie and Larry, my younger brothers, while she went to town. She said I could take them over to the school to swing and go down the slipper-slide. Ronnie had a cut off piece of bamboo that he was playing with. I kept telling him to keep it out of his mouth, but he would