Posey Magazine January/February 2011 by J. Bruce Baumann

January/February 2011

www.poseymagazine.com

January/February 2011

A magazine for and about

Posey County, Indiana

Cover story

Writer Charlene Tolbert recently spent some time listening and talking to the farmers who browse farm auctions looking for a bargain. Tolbert’s story centers on two auctions in Posey County. The Judy Straw auction was the result of her husband’s untimely death, while Don Beste decided that it was just time to start a new chapter in his life. BEGINS ON PAGE SIX © Photographed by J. Bruce Baumann

16 Feathers/By Sharon Sorenson Snow Geese 20 I’m just sayin’ Posey County students write about making plans 22 © A look back in time 24 Poetic Justice Including body snatching and murder — By Linda Neal Reising 26 Posey’s Own Rosie — By Alison Baumann 30 Posies/By Alison Baumann Gardens of our dreams

Posey Then & Now

Special thanks to the following for their help

Mary Feagley, Erin Koester, Joseph Poccia, Nancy Rapp, Kathy Riordan, Mike Whicker

TIME

“T

Then the days started getting shorter, and those endless summers were only a sentimental memory. More and more, work filled our time. Maybe it was I’ve been thinking a lot about time important work; for better or worse, it recently—probably because in my old defined who we were, or who we thought age I realize that its value to me exceeds we should be. all the money we owe China. Now time seems to be racing by. When we were young, time No matter how hard we try to hold on, stretched out forever before us. Summers we lose some of our allotted portion were endless. A single day could last a every day. You can’t put it back for a thousand hours. rainy day, or give it to someone who o every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” — Ecclesiastes 3:1

needs it more than you do. Whatever time you have has already been marked and dated. There is nothing you can do to change that. Nothing. This old truck, snuggled up beside a dilapidated barn, made me think about how we humans look for strength in others in our old age. The barn may or may not remember its glory days, but even weathered and torn it defies time for the moment. Maybe that’s the best any of us can hope for. — J Bruce Baumann Editor Posey Magazine www.poseymagazine.com

Winter Pond

POSEY POSTCARD “Spring seems far off, imposible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; aleady hope is stirring at the edges of the day.” — Kathleen Norris

By Charlene Tolbert

Just off the highway parked in the corn

stubble are long rows of pickup trucks. Their owners have gathered to witness a lifetime of labor — the possessions and memories of a hard-working farm family —disappear with an auctioneer’s gavel. They’ve driven in from miles around and from several states away, a kind of social gathering where they’ll stand around in the chill wind and talk about farming, their future plans and, of course, the weather. Don Beste admits to having the occasional second thought about putting a lifetime of hard work behind him, but then an ache or a pain will remind him that it’s a life that means getting up before sunrise and never counting on anything. But others, not ready to retire, wait out the auctioneer for a particular piece of equipment that will make their farm whole — quietly standing in the cold.

ÂŠ Photographed by J Bruce Baumann

“It’s always hard to know what the trend is. There has been an acceleration in the exodus from the farm. A number of years ago there was a tremendous paradigm shift. It’s all part of the natural attrition.” — Hugh Miller

They look as if they dressed from the same closet: Carhartt jackets and feed company hats, work boots and fading farmer’s tans. Even a small boy who had begged to come with his grandpa is wearing a miniature version of what seems almost a uniform, right down to the camouflage coat. They stand near or sit on a piece of machinery, claiming pieces of equipment slowly accumulated over years of hard labor and lovingly maintained. It’s still early, 9:30 a.m., well before lunchtime in the city, but these are men who’ve been up and working since just after dawn. So a steady stream make their way to tables staffed by the ladies of a nearby church who serve up porkburgers, home-made pies and steaming cups of coffee. One young farmer asks if anyone knows what happened earlier in the day at a nearby farmstead. “I saw medical trucks at his

Bidders came from six states to the early morning auction, hoping to find a bargain. Many of them did. place when I drove by this morning.” “Yes,” another man answers, “he died. Just fell over dead, I heard.” Emotions run deep in these taciturn men who are slow to claim their feelings. For while they have come to get the best price they can for a piece of equipment they need, it’s bittersweet. They know their good fortune as a buyer comes at a difficult time for the seller. Sometimes the sale comes at the end of multiple generations working the land; this

day the sale is the result of an untimely death.

Judy Straw

Judy Straw, widow of Gary Lynn “Corky” Straw, says her husband always said he would farm until he died, and he did just that. Pancreatic cancer claimed the lifelong farmer at the much-too-early age of 64. “Farming was his life. He pushed himself, working long hours, right until the end. There was a certain type of beans he had always wanted to plant and he finally got them in the

ground. It’s almost a good thing he didn’t live to find out that it cost more to plant them than they brought. But that’s just the way it is with farming. You never know what tomorrow will bring.” Judy had always sworn she would never marry a farmer, but that vow went out of her head after she met Gary Lynn at a dance. Now after 37 years of marriage she continues to farm a little bit on some ground she got from her parents. The land she and

“We had a good life. Nothing is easy in this world. There is always something to be learned. You take a lot for granted, and then you learn otherwise.” — Judy Straw

Judy Straw watched and waited as a lifetime of equipment and memories were auctioned off. her husband had farmed near Wadesville was leased. And her son teaches English in South Korea. So it was time to dispose of combines and heads, trucks and trailers, tractors and miscellaneous equipment. Judy is quick to say, “When we were farming, it was a struggle. We almost went under once or twice, but that never kept Gary Lynn from taking good care of everything. A couple of days before the sale several guys came and wanted to look over some of the

equipment. I said ‘sure’, but I kept an eye on them. They were pulling things apart. They finally came to me and said they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I told them, ‘Of course not. You had to know the man.’” Even though she knew the equipment was in near-perfect condition, she still worried about how the sale would go. “I didn’t sleep the night before. Got up before 5 a.m. and went down to the farm. As I sat there in the truck, a few drops of

rain came. I just sat there in the truck a while longer and then I started in walking down through the equipment and said a prayer for what’s left here. You know you have to have faith. But the raindrops kept coming and I kept worrying about it. Right before he died, he had been totally worried about how the sale would go. “But by the afternoon, the sun was shining. And I thought, ‘Well, he’s looking down and smiling now.’” Hugh Miller of Curran Miller Auction/

Farmers at the Beste auction filled the barn waiting for that one of hundreds of pieces of equipment to be raised for bidding.

Don Beste claims to have had no such sentimental attachment to any of the equipment on the 1500 acres he and his wife, Donna, walked away from.

Realty, Inc., conducted the sale that blue-gray November morning. “It’s people’s lives you’re dealing with,” he said. “It’s a very gratifying thing to be able to help her in that special time of her life. It might seem strange that I would view it like that. It is a very difficult time, but we become kind of a team, marketing her assets to produce the maximum amount of money. We had potential buyers in from all over the Midwest that day. And we did pretty well. But you have to realize that it’s hard for people to let go. “I remember Judy talking about driving one of the trucks…seems like she had a special feeling about that old red truck.”

Don Beste

Don Beste claims to have had no such sentimental attachment to any of the equipment on the 1,500 acres he and his wife, Donna, walked away from nearly three years ago. The couple who have shared a half century of marriage moved to a house in Mt Vernon where all three of their children and six grandchildren can visit. Their sale followed about 18 months later. Donna observes that while her husband says he had no trouble turning loose, she remembers when they were clearing things out of the sheds on the farm. “All the sheds were full. Even the corners were full, and people were putting stuff on wagons

to empty the sheds. And there Don was, following behind and taking stuff off to save.” But that’s how it is with farmers, Don says. “You never know what you’re gonna need and when you’re gonna need it.” Old habits are hard to break. Don admits that he recently had a little job to do around the house and needed some special screws. So he went to the hardware store to buy some from an old friend, Bud Funkhouser. He told Bud he’d take 10 of them. “Bud asked me, ‘How many do you actually need?’ I told him, ‘Three.’ And Bud said, ‘Then I’ll sell you three. If you need more, you can come back. You don’t need to be starting that collecting again.’” The Bestes grew “corn, soybeans and a smidgen of wheat.” The equipment accumulated over 50 years to accomplish that included five tractors, a combine, three trucks, two disc harrows, two plows, a couple of grain augers, a corn planter, a grain drill and miscellaneous other items. He admits to having the occasional second thought about putting a lifetime of hard work behind him, but then an ache or a pain will remind him that it’s a life that means getting up before sunrise and never counting on anything. He smiles when he recalls having to deal with the price of soybeans being determined by the size of the anchovy catch off the coast of South America. “Now how do you plan for that?” he asks with a chuckle. But he has few complaints, grandchildren who love to come visit, a wife who teases him the way only a wife can, and good friends. “I try to be a good friend,” Don says. “I’ve learned that friends are more important than money.” Judy Straw agrees with him. “In a farmer’s world, we have to share our thoughts. It takes more than just friendship. It’s a community.” Charlene Tolbert is a nearly lifelong Hoosier who continues to be captivated by the people and places of Southern Indiana. She can be contacted at poseymagazine@aol.com.

The bidders at the Straw auction stand near a piece of machinery, claiming pieces of equipment slowly accumulated over years of hard labor and lovingly maintained.

Feathers/By Sharon Sorenson

Three snow geese soar overhead along with a blue goose, recently recognized as the blue form of the snow goose rather than as a separate species.

S now Geese

Much like a wisp of smoke, they materialize and leave without notice

The flock of 5,000 – 6,000

lifts up amid a roar of wings and a chorus of raucous, nasal “whouk, whouk, whouk.” White birds with black wing tips, they display their characteristic restlessness, lifting up, swirling like windwhipped snow, spiraling, dropping back down only yards from their lift-off point, then repeating the performance all over again.

Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re snow geese, noisy mediumsized geese about two and a half feet from tip of bill to tip of tail with nearly five-foot wingspans. Among the nearly all-white birds are so-called blue geese, until recently thought to be a different species but now recognized as a plumage variation unrelated to age or sex, a variation caused by a single gene. The dark form, or morph, looks gray-brown except for white head and neck front. At their peak in early February, somewhere around 12,000 snows typically blow in on the Sloughs Wildlife Management Area Sauerheber Unit in Union County, Kentucky, directly across the Ohio River from Posey County, Indiana. After wintering on the Gulf Coast, the nomadic birds move in flocks of thousands, chorusing their way through Kentucky and then across Posey County, winging their way northward toward their breeding ground on the high Arctic tundra. Much like a wisp of smoke, they materialize and leave without notice. Reports of thousands in one place on one day may be reduced to reports of none the next. Even during the course of a single day, their numbers rise and fall dramatically, depending on which 20 minutes you watch. Over all, snow goose numbers have grown in recent years. Less than 100 years ago, in 1916, snow geese had become so rare that hunting was banned. Even today, folks who keep track of such matters can remember when seeing one or two snow geese in Posey County generated news headlines. Now, however, since the world-wide snow goose population has rebounded from 2,000 or so to well over 7,000,000, news headlines have changed tone. Excitement has evolved into concern. The handsome birds put on quite a show, a joy to watch; but when these strictly vegetarian birds eat, they are grubbers, not grazers. So, unlike Canada geese that nip off tender shoots, snow geese root up entire plants. Although their short visits here cause no long-term damage, their grubbing wreaks dramatic havoc on the high Arctic tundra where they breed. Ten million snows root up tundra nesting grounds where hundreds Thousands of restless snow geese lift up from a partially frozen Posey County lake.

of other species also nest, threatening those species with habitat destruction. And unlike local farmlands that heal in weeks or months, the tundra heals in years and decades. As tundra soils grow barren, salts in the subsoil leach to the surface, creating a saline condition toxic to desirable tundra plants. So the devastation is critical enough to warrant conservation orders to increase hunting harvests and prevent snow goose overpopulation. To date, however, hunting seems not to have slowed their exponential growth. The influx of these aggressive, noisy birds also tends to drive off other waterfowl, like white-fronted or Canada geese and most duck species, all of which prefer a more sedate, quiet setting for winter feeding and roosting. So most wildlife managers see the growing number of snows as an unwelcome trend. In Posey County, however, the snows’ visit is of such short duration that their presence rarely causes grief. Flocks gather on open water in area lakes in late afternoon, remain for the night and into much of the next day, leaving around noon to forage in nearby wheat fields, and then return to the protection of water for the night. Typically in February, they grow restless. They like to move as far north as they can as soon as they can in order to snare the best breeding spots, so they’ll leave at the first break in the weather. The flock will likely lift off in unison, readily identified families traveling together, resuming an amazing migration to the high Arctic breeding grounds, the urge to move regulated by lengthening days. And when they lift off, the multitudes darken the sky, a spectacle that’s a sight to behold.

Sharon Sorenson and her husband, Charles, settled in St. Philip in 1966 and continue to improve their certified backyard habitat that to date has hosted 160 species of birds and 46 species of butterflies. She can be contacted at forthebirdscolumn@yahoo.com © Photograph by Charles Sorenson

I’m just sayin’

Making Plans

Having a successful weekend involves making successful plans. After a week of school, nothing is worse than a weekend filled with disappointment and missed opportunities. For me, the toughest part of the planning process is the permission stage. I am always nervous when making my plans because the lingering possibility of being denied permission by my mother is ever present. If I am told no, I must resign myself to my basement easy chair and stew in my disappointment. This does not please me. Alex Maile North Posey Senior High Dividing up my minutes, And plotting out my life, Dreaming of my future fame, And wishing for a wife. Just when it’s set in stone I hear a gentle chuckle. God hears my haughty plans, And bursts my foolish bubble! Michael S. Emerson Mount Vernon High I plan to not plan. I live life as it comes to me. With this plan to not plan, my life is like a fire. It’s spontaneous and unpredictable. Sure others may be more efficient, but my journey is one wild ride. That’s why I plan to not plan. Austin McConville Mount Vernon Junior High

I’m Just Sayin’ is a sounding board for young people. All middle and high school students (including homeschoolers) in Posey County are invited to submit essays, stories or poems on the designated topics for each issue. Submissions must be no longer than six sentences. Topics and deadlines for the next two issues: Mar/Apr issue: Staying Up Late Deadline: January 20, 2011 May/June issue: My Best Day Ever Deadline: March 20, 2011 One day I plan on living in the country in an open area. I plan on trying to find a place that is very close to a river. I would not like a big house just a small place. I would like to live here with an amount of money that could let me relax the rest of my life. Here I would live forever. This is my plan on living. Devin McCune Mount Vernon Junior High People make plans every day and they’re always changing. That’s why I think it’s funny when people get mad because their plans didn’t work. Plans always change and rework themselves. One day you might want something, and the next day you want the opposite. Plans will always change along with what you want from life. So next time your plans go astray, just calm down and get ready for your next adventure. Shy Zwiefka Mount Vernon Junior High

After school I plan on going into the military. I would like to be in the Air Force. It gives you challenges every day. Being a leader of your squad would be an honor. Serving my country is all I want to do. Ty Hurley Mount Vernon Junior High Planning what you do is similar to managing a fictional zoo where dinosaurs are the inhabitants. Each day the keepers must prepare for the types of dinosaurs they must feed this day, or else they may end up overfeeding some and starving others. Also it is crucial that those tending to the zoo make plans on when to enter and leave the electrified fence that keeps everything inside. If you do not enter and exit at the planned time, you will get punished, just like in real life. Finally, the managers should make plans for extreme situations, like if the raptors escape. Contingency plan-making skills are crucial in everyday life for all leaders of all sorts, such as President Barack Obama. Joey Priest North Posey Senior High When I make plans about anything, I like to find a place to sit and really think about it. I am very frequently making plans about swimming, how far I want to go with it, my goals, and my dreams. Right now my goals in swimming are to make the Olympic Trial cut for the 50 freestyle, which I am a second

off of right now, so I can swim in the 2012 Olympics. It won’t be easy, but I don’t give up quickly. I like making plans because it is the first step in taking actions for my dreams. Clara Baggett Mount Vernon Junior High There is a dance on Friday, That is my favorite day. There is going to be lots of people there, So remember to comb your hair. For the last time, y’all, There is a dance this Fall. Know about it. David McGary Mount Vernon Junior High The hot sun, sand between my toes, and the sound of waves crashing; I am making plans for Florida. I am going to win the lottery and take a private jet that is owned by Lady Gaga to Florida. My friend and I are going to shop and relax all seven weeks. We are going to stay in a condo by the ocean and get back massages and pedicures every week. Then, the jet, with Lady Gaga, will take us to Los Angeles. There, we will go to the biggest celebrity party, and be on the front page of People magazine. A.J. Morlock North Posey Senior High

Most people make plans to make an “easy” list, To make something go along a little smoother. But the way I look at it, It’s more like a “stressful” list. You have to talk to a lot of people Write a lot of things down. Which for people like me is redundant, Because we spend hours Poring over that small sheet of paper. And guess what happens? It ends up getting lost. Darean Brock Mount Vernon Senior High Making a plan for your life can get you a long way. Most teens avoid making longterm plans. It is much easier to make shortterm plans for a few days or weeks in the future. Most times a long-term plan doesn’t go as expected. There are many curves and obstacles that slow down the plan’s progress. Although plans don’t always work out, a long-term plan can help guide you in the right direction. Reed Gerteisen North Posey Senior High Some people are leaders; others are followers. When it comes time to decide what to do, somebody must formulate a plan. These plans could be what do to for the evening, a trip or simply where you are going to eat. In any of these situations, somebody must

make a decision on where to go, and the other members of the group will follow. As long as your group has a creative leader, you are bound to have a good time. Every adventure starts with a plan. Eric Wargel North Posey High Lately I have been making plans for high school and what my four years should look like. I have chosen to go with the Academic Honors diploma, because I want to do my best. I am planning on making a lot of new friends, and experiencing new experiences. I plan on going to school with my cousins on the first day so I know where to go and don’t get lost. Hopefully high school will be easy if I continue to plan! Gwen Raibley Mt. Vernon Junior High Making plans can be very challenging but also very simple. At the end of this week I shall be asking a very special girl to the dance. I have a very unique and an extremely complex plan to do so. I will become very good friends with her, then ask this amazing person to the dance.

Mitchell Jackson Mount Vernon Junior High

Posey Then & Now Circa 1919

Courtesy of the Alexandrian Public Library

Farmersville School No. 3, built in 1875, offered grades 1-8 to the children of the small community of Farmersville, also known as Yankeetown, three miles north of Mt. Vernon. The brick building was unusual for the time in that it boasted four classrooms on two floors. A 1971 study by the Indiana Junior Historical Society noted, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The wide entablature boards with brackets are from the Italianate style, the cornice returns and lintels from the Greek revival.â&#x20AC;? By 1957, enrollment had risen to more than 50 students.

Posey Then & Now Circa 2010

ÂŠ Photograph by J Bruce Baumann

When the Metropolitan School District of Mt. Vernon was created in 1956, it purchased 11 acres to add to the 2-acre site where Farmersville School No. 3 was located. In 1958, the new 38,000 sq. ft. Farmersville Elementary School was completed to serve students from Smith, Springfield, Farmersville, Walker, and Thompson Schools. Farmersville underwent extensive renovations in 2008, increasing its size to 51,000 sq. ft., and now houses 35 staff members and 212 students in grades preschoolâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;5.

P J

OETIC USTICE

Posey history reads like a mystery novel By Linda Neal Reising

hey sound like the ingredients for an Agatha Christie mystery novel—a snatched body, a hired killer, a murder by bludgeoning, a jug of poisoned whiskey. But all of these played a central role in a sensational, real-life Posey County thriller. On October 29, 1817, a young physician named Thomas Moore Parke moved with his wife to Mount Vernon. Quickly settling in, the couple started their new life, and Dr. Parke began his practice. One day, about five months after the doctor’s arrival, a young man named Peter Hendricks was riding his horse when it bolted, throwing him against a tree stump near the corner of Walnut and Second Streets. The rider was immediately killed. There is no record that Dr. Parke tended to the young man, but their lives were soon to be intertwined. Shortly after Hendricks was laid to rest, a pedestrian, passing through the alley at the rear of Dr. Parke’s stable, discovered a pair of feet sticking out from under a pile of hay. Upon investigation, the corpse was found to be that of the newly-buried Peter Hendricks. Charges of body-snatching, supposedly for the purpose of dissection, were at once lodged against the

new physician. According to a grand jury indictment, after Hendricks was buried, Dr. Parke “did dig up, untomb, and carry away the dead body.” The good people of Mount Vernon were outraged, perhaps none more than Mrs. Rachel Givens, a woman of high standing in the community. So appalled was she, that she decided to take the law into her own hands and hired an alcoholic by the name of George Gibbons to avenge the wrong-doing. She promised him, in return, a jug of whiskey. Therefore, on March 29, 1818, as Dr. Parke was crossing Second Street, George Gibbons sneaked up behind him and struck the doctor several times with a club, fracturing his skull and killing him instantly. Gibbons was arrested a short time later. He wasted no time in implicating Mrs. Rachel Givens, the instigator of the crime, and she, too, was indicted and held as an accessory. Here the story takes two different paths. One account states that the prosecutor entered a nolle prosequi, dropping charges in both cases and allowing Gibbons and Mrs. Givens to go free. Another version implies that since Gibbons’ testimony was vital to convict Rachel, her supporters assisted George

Gibbons in escaping from the county jail. As promised, before being put into a small boat with his pregnant wife, George was given a jug of whiskey. The two hadn’t traveled many miles down the Ohio River before Gibbons began to imbibe. He was quickly overcome by the drink, which had been laced with poison, and he soon died, leaving his wife alone to give birth to their child on the boat. Rachel Givens, then, was free, since there was no one left to testify against her. However, any good mystery must end with poetic justice. Several years after the death of George Gibbons, Rachel left Mount Vernon and started on a journey to California. While crossing the plains, she was attacked by cholera and died. Ironically, she was buried in two barrels somewhere in Wyoming Territory. Perhaps they were whiskey barrels! Linda Neal Reising writes both poetry and fiction. She has taught English for over thirty years. Her publications include Open 24 Hours, Southern Indiana Review, The Comstock Review, Fruit Flesh (published by Harper Collins), and And Know This Place, an anthology by Indiana writers that is slated for release in spring of 2011.

Posey Portrait

Lena Feiner, Directress, Women’s Institute & Gallery, New Harmony

Posey Portrait will feature a random photograph of a friend or neighbor — in a place we call home

osey’s P own

hile her mother struggled to come up with a decent meal for a husband and six children on a small farm on South Caborn Road, 18-year-old Dorothy Meinschein found herself in the huge Briggs factory in Evansville, carefully measuring the depth of the rivets she’d driven into the wing of a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter plane. Behind her, the ever-watchful foreman kept up the pace: The boys need planes...The boys need planes… It was the spring of 1942. The War had changed everything. Dorothy had read about the riveting job in the newspaper. As she remembers it, all the plants in Evansville were calling for workers, from young girls to grandmothers, to contribute to the war effort. “I’d never been in a factory before,” Dorothy says. “It was so big and so noisy. To tell you the truth, I was kind of scared. I still have dreams about it sometimes.” Airplane wings rolled in on long tables. Teams of four women stood on each side, placing rivets in pre-drilled holes, measuring, moving along to the next. The only time they got to sit down was during a half-hour lunch break, when they’d find some boxes to sit on and eat sack lunches they’d brought from home. Even then, there wasn’t much chance for socializing in all the noise and commotion. At the end of a long workday, Dorothy locked up her toolbox, with its punch,

osie R

By Alison Baumann

HistoryImages.com

Although she has slowed down a bit since a fall and hip surgery two years ago, Dorothy Friemiller still goes to exercise classes at the Posey County Council on Aging twice a week and can be counted on to bake coconut cream pies for dinners at Trinity Church and the American Legion Auxiliary. Above, the poster that was widely distributed early in the war, recruiting women to join the war effort. It was coined “Rosie the Riveter.”

screwdriver, hammer, ruler and riveting gun. “They told us if we lost that riveting gun we’d have to pay for it ourselves. And they were expensive,” she recalls. Then she met five other workers to carpool the sixteen miles back to Posey County. If she was lucky, her mother would meet her at the corner of Caborn Road and drive her the last two miles home. If she was really lucky, there would be a letter waiting for her from Tech Sergeant Richard McAlear of the U.S. Army Air Force. Like Dorothy, Richard had gone to Mount Vernon High School. They’d dated a few times, but when the war came Richard was sent to New Guinea to fly reconnaissance missions, Dorothy went to Evansville to build airplane wings, and a romance blossomed by mail. “He was so handsome,” Dorothy remembers with a smile. “When you got a letter from Richard McAlear, that was really something.” One day, Dorothy was called to go up to another plant, where they’d brought in a bomber that had been damaged in combat. She climbed up into the dark, cramped fuselage and looked around. We’re going to teach you to weld, the foreman told her, so you can help fix this. “I thought to myself, Oh gosh, I just learned how to rivet!” As it happened, Dorothy never did learn to weld. The day after Christmas in 1943, Richard, who had mailed her a ring a few months earlier, came home on a four-day leave. Dorothy had already bought herself a

ÂŠ Photographed by J. Bruce Baumann

wedding dress and hidden it in her bedroom closet. When Richard said he wanted to get married right away, she spirited the dress out of the house, and the young couple drove to Evansville to tie the knot. “Then the hard part came when we had to go home and tell our parents,” Dorothy says with a laugh. Before New Year’s, the newlyweds had moved to Dearborn, Mich., where Dorothy worked briefly making bullets. Then the Army sent Richard to Wilmington, Del. A few months later, with their first daughter on the way, Dorothy and Richard came home to Mount Vernon, and Richard was discharged from the Army. Soon they had another daughter, and they settled down to raise their children in Posey County. After the deaths of Richard McAlear and her second husband, Fred Friemiller, Dorothy lives in the house she and Richard built in the 1950s. It’s been a long time since she was a teen-age riveter on the Evansville Home Front, but the memories came flooding back when she was asked to write her story for the Rosie the Riveter Memorial at the World War II Home Front Park in Richmond, Calif. Her memories of those years are now part of the archive at the Museum there. As she looks back, Dorothy remembers that the war brought plenty of hardships, but working on the airplanes wasn’t one of them: “I was glad to be doing something for my country.”

Alison Baumann shares a small farm in Savah with an assortment of creatures, both wild and domestic. She has had poetry, essays and fiction published in numerous regional and national literary journals. She can be contacted at poseymagazine@aol.com.

At the insistence of Richard’s mother, Dorothy and Richard donned their wedding clothes again the day after they were married and had their wedding portrait taken at Miss Buell’s photography studio in Mount Vernon. The picture is now one of Dorothy’s most treasured possessions, though she notes that when you look at it carefully, you can see that the flowers are a little wilted.

Poetry Left to Wonder Just days ago, a flock of gulls sunned themselves on the parking lot of an abandoned mini-mall. What drew them to this place—a mystery. Perhaps from far above, the concrete glistened, shimmered— impersonating water and wave. But now, two-faced January has turned his head, and the world has grown fangs and fur— an albino wolf, howling at the eaves. And we’re left to wonder about the gulls. Picture them, lifting off in the storm, their wings fluttering in disarray, a blizzard of feathers, and for just a moment, one might think that the snow has been resurrected, reborn, taking flight, from earth back to sky. — Linda Neal Reising

At the End Snow is saddest at the end, when all pretense of perfection has given way to defeat, where feet and paws have marred the surface, face now pocked and scarred. Scared birds have sown seeds across cross-stitched patches in the shade, shed by the icy arms of firs, wearing furs, ermine stoles, stolen from the January winds that wind their way across the fields, feeling the loss of the season as they sweep— weeping. Snow is saddest at the end. — Linda Neal Reising

Posies/By Alison Baumann

Gardens of our

dreams It amazes me that people

grow flowers. It isn’t necessary to survival. It’s painstaking work, hard on the back, and fraught with failures and disappointments. But growing flowers makes us feel happy in some way we can’t quite describe. Like music or art, flowers feed our souls. © Photographed by J Bruce Baumann

Sunflowers come in a dazzling variety of colors, plant types and sizes, but they are never delicate or subtle.

In the Midwest winter, gardening books have to fill the need as best they can. Most of my how-to books have, for better or worse, been superseded by the Internet; if I want to know when to divide gaillardia, it’s easier to google it than to start leafing through dusty indexes. But I have one book I turn to again and again, winter after gloomy winter, and think about in the summer when I’m on my knees ferreting weeds out from under the Russian sage. America’s Cottage Gardens by Patricia Thorpe and Eve Sonneman doesn’t tell you how to garden. Instead, it takes you to the gardens that ordinary people across the country have created to feed their own souls. As Thorpe puts it, “These gardens are not trying to be anything, to show anything other than a single person’s love of flowers… [They] are not created for anyone else; the idea of an audience does not exist.” Blue Victoria sage requires only sunlight and offers brilliant purple color all season long.

Wild morning glories twine through the garden and pop up in the most unexpected places.

My favorite garden in the book is on a farm outside Huntington, Indiana. One photograph shows an old man and an old woman standing side by side, like a windblown version of American Gothic, behind a row of giant purple alliums. No staggered spacing, no care-

fully arranged groupings of three of this, five of that. No planning for continuous threeseason bloom. Just a row of alliums. It’s easy to get talked into plants. People give you clumps of daylilies and irises; you lose your head looking

through the catalogues that start arriving before you’ve even taken down the Christmas tree; you go wild at the garden center; you look at other people’s gardens lush with blooms from April to October and feel ashamed of your own paltry efforts. But in the gar-

It may be true that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t kill daylilies with neglect, but with a little loving care they really shine.

I love taking care of daylilies— deadheading yesterday’s blooms, cutting spent flower stalks and combing out browned leaves with my fingers den of my dreams, I grow only the flowers I love. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Last year, I tossed some old sunflower seeds into two hollow logs at the corners of my garden and fought off the deer that kept eating the seedlings down to the nubs. When the sunflowers finally bloomed, I was happy for a month. I love black-eyed susans for their cheerful enthusiasm, but I find myself grimly curbing the enthusiasm of lambs’ ears and bee balm. I don’t think the pale, short-lived blooms of penstemons are worth the trouble of growing them, but I love nepeta just for the sound of the bees that feast on its modest flowers. I love taking care of

daylilies—deadheading yesterday’s blooms, cutting spent flower stalks and combing out browned leaves with my fingers—but I resent the labor of cutting back irises and heliopsis. This year, I think I’ll pull out the penstemons, the bee balm and the Mexican poppies. I’ll resist the siren calls of catalogues and garden centers. I’ll divide the daylilies and the nepeta and let the black-eyed susans and Victoria sage run free. I’ll plant sunflowers and zinnias everywhere and let wild morning glories weave their way to sunlight. At least that’s what I’m thinking now. It’s a long way yet ‘til spring; there’s a long time yet to dream.

Out In The Back Of Beyond/Editor’s Notebook

someone who loves dogs and never acquired a liking for cats, I now find myself with four. They’re barn cats and have the run of the farm. I didn’t want them when they were delivered by a “friend” and wasn’t sure I cared what happened to them. Coyote dinners were my first thought. But that was a couple of years ago. Cats are arrogant. Ask a cat to sit and you’ll get a look like you’re some kind of control freak. Dogs, on the other hand, like to please. Cats bury their feces, while dogs just let it lie wherever it falls. (That’s a point for cats.) Dogs come when they’re called. Cats yawn. I think it’s the indifference I’ve fallen in love with.

Free doesn’t carry the weight it used to. I think we’ve all have developed a cynical side that tells us if it’s free — it probably costs too much. But Posey Magazine is free and can only be found on the Web at www.poseymagazine.com. There’s no hidden agenda. Well, maybe there is. We want to share what we have here with the world. More than 5900 visitors accepted our offer — from 56 countries — when we uploaded the first issue. It’s OK to share Posey Magazine with family and friends. And you can tell them it really is free.

discouraging drought and dream of baskets of fresh veggies. If you’re having another hot chocolate, would you mind making one for me?

I saw a promo on the Internet recently, with the headline offering this advice: “How to pick the perfect wallpaper.” Isn’t that an oxymoron? All of our authors work on the magazine as a labor of love. That translates into no pay. If you like a particular story, let them know. The contact information is at the bottom of most stories. If it’s not there, just send a note to poseymagazine@aol.com, and we’ll see that it’s delivered. The winter months are the best for gardening. You’ve harvested your bounty and put it up for the season. Your garden has been prepared for the cold months ahead. No weeds. No watering. You’ve left the plants that will offer seeds to your feathered friends. Now is the time to think about what you’ll plant in the spring. While I sit by the fire running my fingers through the cheery pages of seed catalogs, I forget about last summer’s

I found this quote while searching for another. See if it means anything to your life. “As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.” —Henry David Thoreau J. Bruce Baumann is the editor of Posey Magazine. He can be contacted at: poseymagazine@aol.com.

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