Random Thoughts

THE BABYSITTER AND THE BOYS

It seems a lifetime ago, in the land where the Chiefs ruled the gridiron and the court, my Dad was a young Superintendent of Schools working his way up from one large school district to an even larger school district with more students and more responsibility. Iroquois was in fact the fourth place I had come to live in my young life after having lived in Hosmer, Selby, and then Bowdle where our Dad had served as either a teacher or Superintendent. Iroquois is where I spent my First through Fourth Grades in elementary school. The neighborhood where we lived at the time was full of kids our age, most of whom were under the age of 10. Across the street from where my two brothers and I resided, lived three other brothers all roughly our age and their older sister. The streets were gravel, the streetlights few, with their primary purpose to alert us that when they came on it was time to go home. We were a bit more feral and freer as kids as I look back upon it. Few of the of the worries I had while raising three daughters seemed of much concern to my parents. We even had BB guns at an inappropriate age, and all survived, although I did get shot in the head by a schoolmate while playing Cowboys and Indians. I was an Indian riding my bike/horse, and presented a moving target that must have been irresistible. Suffice it to say, a lucky shot from the 'cowboy' knocked me off my horse/bike and then the real war began. I was about to take a scalp until cooler heads prevailed. Remember, we were living in the land of the Chiefs at the time.

Mom and Dad were young and full of life. Both are gone now, but back then they and the neighbor couples enjoyed dances, card games, and socializing. I know now that socializing also included adult beverages which Mom and Dad never served unless there was company. Dad enjoyed an occasional beverage, but Mom was his polar opposite, so spirits were unavailable unless company was present. It was a helpful lesson learned at an early age to moderate such behavior lest I become a burden to society. Admittedly, I burdened society and my parents a time or two until I married a young lady whose views on adult beverages mirrored my Mom's. And so, the old adage is proven, men DO marry women that share similar characteristics of their mothers. Full disclosure, I subsequently achieved the goals set forth by my parents, namely, (1) Get a Job, (2) Pay my Taxes, and most importantly, (3) Stay out of Jail.

More to the point, while Mom and Dad and Velma and Bob, the couple that lived across Quapaw Street from us in Iroquois with their three sons and daughter, would enjoy an occasional evening of cards or dances, it sometimes fell to their high school daughter Kathy the lamentable duty of corralling the three Burrer boys, all under the age of 7, and seeing them off to bed at a reasonable hour. Anyway Kathy, her last name was Snyder back then, would get the call to be a pinch-hit parent called 'babysitting' back in the day. It was called babysitting, and why children are not protesting the term and burning diapers in the street seems odd given how so many segments of our society these days find the most innocuous of terms to get their knickers in a knot over. Our parents would instruct my brothers and me to be on our best to behavior, and within minutes of our parents' departure chaos would ensue and the test of wills began. It was the next door neighbor girl and high school cheerleader versus three barely housebroken boys, the youngest only recently walking and still wearing cloth diapers that were utterly repugnant to change. Her cheerleading skills were rapidly applied yielding similar results to those necessary to organize and control the massed screaming one usually finds inside the basketball auditorium or along the sidelines at a football game. The results being that no glass was broken nor hospital visits required when Kathy was in charge.

The years have flown by, the boys are grown and married. Two live in South Dakota and one in North Carolina. Kathy married and owned and operated a respected West River newspaper for 42 years with her husband before stepping away from the print press and into semi-retirement. Pictured below is a March 2023 photo I located of Kathy with the new owner of the Timber Lake Topic/Isabel Dakotan. Until the day the above picture was taken, we had not seen each other since all three boys were in short pants, and our parents were the most dominant figures in our young lives.

Upon reaching out to Kathy after several decades without communicating an October 2024 luncheon date was arranged in Mobridge to simplify the drive from Dewey County for Kathy and Edmunds County for the three 'boys'. Both my brothers and I shared stories on the drive from Hosmer to a local café in Mobridge of our memories of Kathy and her brothers, our joint exploits, and frequent and immediate punishments for same, and how much fun it was to be free spirits in the age before the internet.

This article took an unusually long time to prepare as life interceded since the picture of Kathy Nelson and my brothers and I was taken in early October. Pheasant season and the hosting of an annual pheasant hunt with my extended family and veterans from far and wide that I was privileged to serve in both peace and war. Then God gave me a bit of a reality check to ensure that I understood I was truly mortal, and no longer ten feet tall or bulletproof, and certainly not in charge. Prostate cancer and all it entails suddenly became a fixture in my life, temporarily thank goodness as we caught it early. Healing prayers and great surgeons have worked wonders and now I am on the mend and able to once again sit comfortably on my desk chair in front of my laptop.

Ending on a positive and somewhat humorous note, and this is for all the husbands out there who have had a prostatectomy and heard their wives frequently tell them in the past, "Quit complaining about pain! You have no idea what it feels like to give birth."

Well...now we know, Happy Thanksgiving!