Lana’S Choices: A Novel Based on a True Story

By Norma Treptow and Don Kain

Lana is one who faced choices from childhood right on through time as she became aged. She faced the loss of a child, the loss of what would have been a generous inheritance, and triumph through Gods intervention in her life.
Everyone has to make choicesfrom the moment of rising in the morning to the hour of settling in at night. Some choices are very difficult, while many result in great joy. The choices Lana made throughout her lifetime are encouragement for others who must make choices in their lives. Lanas choices may not always have been right, and you may think you would have chosen differently. But as you read this story, note how God weaves in and out of life according to our choices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inspiring Voices
• Release date: May 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781462406203

Norma Treptow

Norma Treptow lives with her husband in Minnesota. She is a retired nurse and mother of five grown, married children; she now has thirteen grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. This is Norma’s second novel. She is the author of Lana’s Choices, a novel that is based on her own life. She also writes a popular column for a local newspaper; during her employment life, she wrote a complete manual about how to begin and manage an assisted living business. She has taken various courses of study about writing and authorship.

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Copyright © 2013 Norma Treptow.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover designed by Don Kain

Edited by Elizabeth Kain

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4624-0621-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0620-3 (e)

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 05/07/2013

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapters

1. Harry & Luvy

2. Harry’s Choices

3. Children Who Date

4. Choice of Family Size

5. Spiritual Life

6. Unexpected Life Interventions & Choices

7. Family Lifestyle Choices

8. Adoption/Family Addition

9. Reflections

10. Financial Choices

11. A New Direction

12. More new directions

13. New Opportunities, New Choices

14. Another New Opportunity, Another Choice

15. Another Choice

Dedication

This book is dedicated to our children, and our deceased parents. With out them there would be no story.

Throughout life there are always daily choices to make. We choose to get out of bed in the morning, choose what to wear and what we’ll do that day. I dedicate my life’s circumstances to this story of choices day by day and year by year.

I dedicate the book to all the people that came into the story to make it what it is. This experience was of the power of God in a life that was full of challenging choices.

Acknowledgments

A huge thank you to my husband, who encouraged me to keep on writing. For years it was just a dream but now I realize why it took me 10 years to write this book, my life had not been completed enough until now.

I acknowledge our nephew Don Kain who designed the cover of this book.

I also thank Lucas Schuster, who took the time out of his busy life to help me with computer skills that I had not yet accomplished. Also thanks to Rick Broderick who helped me with computer skills as well.

I thank my son, Joel for helping me with computer skills, rebuilding it when it crashed right in the middle of the creation of Lana’s Choices.

Introduction

Many times friends have told me that I need to write a story about my life, though didn’t shipwreck at sea, or witness a bank robbery or any fantastic thing like you hear or read about in the media, my life did require choices that caused me call out to God and cry for help or wisdom but sometimes God’s wisdom wasn’t even given much thought and choices were made out of personal desires, and were not God’s choice, perhaps but what is amazing to me is how God can call someone to serve Him and we choose not to obey the call, but instead to do the thing you think could serve you best, which is your hearts’ desire, yet God has a way to allow events in one’s life by weaving opportunities and events throughout a lifetime so He does get His way and you get yours as well. Such a loving God He is and how amazing!

This book is meant to encourage the reader that mistakes are not the end. God can take a life and keep it maintained if one is willing to believe in Him and all names in the story have been changed.

CHAPTER ONE

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Harry & Luvy

It was January, 1936 and a typical Minnesota snowstorm had adorned the homestead and surrounding fields with a thick, smooth blanket of snow concealing everything but the top parts of the buildings. The few fox pens and 4’ x 5’ boxes the foxes went into was completely covered with snow. The downstairs windows on the house were snow covered. How did people get out of their homes when it was like, this you would wonder. You could see a narrow path that Harry had shoveled to the barn and the other out buildings and animal cages. There were no snow plows or tractors with snow blowers, so folks just stayed put for days or weeks at a time while shoveling each day to get themselves out so, eventually they could attempt to get out with their own car.

There was no running to the store for food during those times and it was common knowledge to folks that they needed to plan ahead and store the basic supplies then feast on the canned harvest of autumn and most folks had a cow and chickens in the barn for milk and eggs.

Out of the blanketed silence came a man bundled up, riding a horse up the long driveway. He appeared from the farmstead next door where the owner could lend him a horse to ride the rest of the way since their driveway was close to the main road and the contraption of a revised road grader, driven by an experienced operator, was able to plow the road from Allentown, which was seven miles away so Luvy and Harry’s family Doctor could make his way to their house where Luvy lay in labor awaiting the birth of their first child.

Dr Ben, with his bag tied to the saddle, gently encouraged the horse to hurry even though the animal was stomping in snow up to his belly and the vapors coming from the horse’s nostrils demonstrated that galloping was hard labor for him but the doctor knew he needed to get there to be on hand to guide Luvy through the delivery process of her first baby and from experience, he knew she would be progressing in her labor and felt the urgency to be there for this woman’s first time to give birth of a baby.

Harry and Luvy were a young couple who had been married three years, living on love and hard work which was the norm for them and other newly wed couple their age during the early nineteen thirties at when the great depression for America was happening. Harry and Luvy had heard on their radio about the stock market crash and how some investors had committed suicide because of their losses but that didn’t seem to affect them because the European ways and techniques of their immigrated parents had been passed down and taught them life lessons about self-sufficiency and independence with out wealth so to them, wealth had another meaning. It meant depending on each other, finding a place to live and raise a family, paying the doctor for services that might mean giving him milk, eggs, and meat that equaled the balance of the medical bill.

In Harry and Luvy’s home, there was no indoor plumbing which meant there was no indoor bathroom, so there was a water pail that required refilling through out the day, but there was electricity , and a light bulb hung on a wire over the round oak table that Luvy and Harry had received from Luvy’s uncle for a wedding gift.

They were grateful for that table and the electric light above it and the luxury of a radio. Luvy loved the wooden round table because she thought it dressed up the décor of the room and made the wood floor look better in the small kitchen. She and her sisters had painted the floors a hi-gloss grey which made the floors look shiny and that was very important to Luvy because she was an excellent housekeeper and loved decorating it to look as attractive as possible. There was an ivory-colored cookstove that heated the whole house—upstairs and downstairs with plenty of wood placed near the cookstove which Harry had brought in for fuel.

Harry had begun to prepare himself mentally about things he may have to do for Luvy if the baby came before doctor Ben arrived—if he arrived at all, because there seemed to be no life outside after the measurable snow fall, followed by high winds but he was so very grateful that the phone line was still working when he cranked the handle on the side of it to ask the operator to call the doctor to ask him what he could do or ask if he could possibly come because his wife had been in labor for several hours already.

Harry had never been around any births except for a cow once, when as a boy he watched his father assist the cow to deliver her calf and he remembered there would be a cord to cut and in his farm trained mind, he questioned if women were like cows in birthing, but he knew one thing from being around animals, cows or horses didn’t make the sounds such as what was coming from his miserable, frantic wife and he felt helpless not knowing what to say or how to help her and it seemed that her pain was becoming so intense that she was moaning more and louder and he was seriously thinking he would have to do something now.

Then he suddenly heard someone stomping off snow out on the porch of the house and saw what looked like a woodsman or mountain man covered with the fluffy white snow that had accumulated on his clothes from the horses hooves that caused movement of snow clouds around him. The doctor entered the house, immediately hearing the familiar sounds of a woman who was near her time to give birth, and seeing the anxious, worried eyes of the young man who was obviously relieved to see their friend and family doctor. He threw off his wet, snow covered heavy coat and rushed to Luvy’s bedside in time for his experienced hands to lift up a newborn baby girl wailing out her first cry to the exhausted young mother and relieved father who were now parents the first time.

After the doctor cleaned newborn Lana from the birth, the couple examined their miracle of togetherness and noted the thick dark hair on her head and numerous dark hairs on her arms and legs. The two new parents were in awe about what they had just experienced as they looked at their little miracle and began to speak softly to each other, saying Look at her feet and her fingers, who does she look like? She’s covered with fur like your minks are, Luvy teased, sleepily then they both laughed with a soft glow in their eyes as they looked at each other and then at their little miracle.

When the doctor saw that all was well, he moved toward the pile of wet clothes and started to bundle himself up again but Harry rushed to get himself dressed warm and went out ahead of him so he could tend to the horse he had ridden to come there, wishing he could get his pickup truck out of the barn so he could take him back to the neighbors place himself instead of the doctor riding the horse back to the neighbors’ farmstead. But there was no way he could get his truck out of the barn and his friend said he had to start the journey to the next place where he was needed because another family was waiting for him to come so Harry rushed to the barn to get the horse ready, still wishing he had the garage built that he had planned on paper a year ago so he wouldn’t need to dig the vehicle out of the snow but then realized he would need a tractor to move the snow after a storm like this and he hadn’t been able to save enough for those things because, he was building pens for silver foxes now, and it took every spare dollar for animal pens even using the $100 his father had given him to buy the farm they were living on.

Since Harry knew he could not use his truck to help his doctor friend, he quickly offered him a sleigh ride to the farm next door where he had left his model T Ford but they soon agreed that the horse would be better off carrying him rather than pulling the extra weight of the sleigh so Harry expressed his gratefulness and thanked him and told him that he believed it was a miracle that his car started and was able to drive the seven miles from town and his middle aged friend received his thanks then added that he had to turn the crank quite a while before it started and informed Harry that he had given the neighbor lady some bricks that he had used to warm his feet and she promised to put them in the oven to keep them warm so he could use them again when it was time to go back to his office in town. His car, like most cars those days, had no heater and the driver needed to keep a window open so the windshield wouldn’t fog up and make it impossible to see in order to stay on the road. Once the doctor mounted the horse and went on his way, Harry went back to the house to check on Luvy and his new born daughter. Later he sat down in his rocking chair by the stove, going back to his thoughts of his father’s gift to help get the farm started.

Luvy and Harry’s parents had immigrated from Germany and the children spoke German until they attended classes at the small country schoolhouse. Learning English was so exciting and new. They did not get out much, but a visit to the neighbor’s was always fun and exciting; and of course, they always went to church every Sunday unless a snowstorm stopped them, but summers were great. Harry and Luvy met at church during their childhood and they attended separate country schools within two miles from their home during the week but on Sundays they went to the same class in Sunday school. Harry was a shy quiet boy, and Luvy was a polite lady who had a desire to help anyone who needed it and would make a special effort to speak to the shy people and try to make them feel more comfortable and Harry was one of the shy people she would talk to.

During the summer months, Sunday School picnics were the highlight and parents with older children played softball while those who didn’t play ball sat on the sidelines and talked or gossiped about the government and what the President would do about the prices of things people needed such as a new car that cost $610 and they would ask each other how any one could afford such a thing at that high price and buying gas to run the car was the horrific price of ten cents a gallon. Some one in the group had learned that a new house in the city cost $7,146 and they decided that was for the very rich for sure and since bread was nine cents a loaf, it was considered a luxury item. Men’s shirts, women’s blouses or dresses, and pajamas were commonly made from 50-pound flour bags and were thought to be much better quality with their colorful designs that most children loved and adults wore for practical reasons so the ladies at the Sunday school picnic discussed the latest designs and patterns of the flour sacks. It was always a great day for younger folks like Luvy and Harry who tried to go for walks and get to know each other better and that is where the romances started and that is where Luvy and Harry’s relationship began: They went for walks as often as they could and after becoming increasingly comfortable around Luvy, Harry began to show her his books about fur-bearing animals and tell her things she had never heard before about animals. She was intrigued by him and the more he opened up to her, the more her interest in him increased. She grew to love him and everything about him because he was different and interesting and full of dreams for the future. He would tell Luvy often how he had found a stray animal and built a pen for it then gave it medical attention before letting it go back into the wild. He also began to share about his dream which was raising hundreds of animals that would produce skins for fur coats for the rich people who could afford them. I know there will be a future in the fur business, he would tell her.

Harry was very shy about advancing the courting because it meant he would have to deal with his mother who was an unhappy person with a reason he didn’t understand nor never told. She was always scolding him about spending to much time with a girl and tried to find more work for him so he wouldn’t leave the place. He was afraid she might cause him some embarrassing moments if she talked with Luvy and he was afraid she might scare Luvy away. Harry seldom saw his mother smile but instead he heard her temper tantrums and the screaming that went with it but that didn’t change the natural jovial personality that he exhibited when he was aone with Luvy and she enjoyed being with him and she truly wanted to be his wife so she waited and waited for him to say something about marriage but he never seemed to have enough courage to do so. She waited a couple of years and finally when another fellow at church was showing interested in Luvy, she became confused but was still wishing Harry would come more often yet, but she returned the friendship to the other guy while still wishing Harry would tell her how he felt about her.

Harry noticed the new and growing interest of this intruder, and to him it was a threat to a relationship he felt was suppose to be his and the invasion in what he had already claimed as his in his mind and heart so this drove him to panic and became desperate so he created a letter and delivered it to their mailbox personally during the night so no one would see him do it. The letter read like this:

Dearest Luvy,

Will you be surprised to receive this letter or will you not?

Will you enjoy reading it or will you not?

Will you answer or will you not?

Will you leave your happy home for me or will you not?

Will you want to or will you not?

Will you want me or will you not?

Will you have me or will you not?

Will you want to talk to me or will you not?

Will you let me come to see you or will you not?

Will you want me to or will you not?

Will you leave me or will you not?

Will you know me or will you not?

Will you see me soon or will