Nell Misses The City

 As Grandma Lu was about to quit for the day she saw another entry she had missed in the old journal of Nell's. It said, "Oh how I miss the city. The big hotels and restaurants and people. It is so quiet out here all I hear is the prairie grass blowing in the wind and crickets chirping. And kids saying that they are hungry. They are always hungry! I have no flowers, money or friends. Is this what I thought I was getting into? All I do is cook and clean. I am no good at either. The floors are always dirty and my cooking is usually burned or tasteless. I look out the only window of this log cabin and see the sun rise and the sun set. There has to be more to life than this. That old cat out there isn't even friendly to me. He hisses every time I go outside."

Grandma Lu felt sorry for the city girl stuck out in the middle of nowhere, but knew how the story would end. It would end with her and her children's children and theirs. Grandma Lu grinned as she thought of her daughter and her family living in St. Louis. They had a beautiful home and lots of friends. So unlike the young girl that traveled by herself to a land unknown by covered wagons and oxen. The Iowa territory was mostly unsettled and wild with angry Indians because the white men often broke their treaties and killed their buffalo. The hardships were too numerous for Grandma Lu to think of or for that matter to imagine. "It's too bad that she didn't know she would be remembered by her ancestors. Good things were coming. She just didn't know it. was going to be for her children's children."

She looked through more newspapers and realized that her mom had saved the complete Centennial issue of the 1956 Cherokee Daily Times. Newspapers in those days of 1856 were often late with the news. There were no telegraph wires in those days and often contained gossip rather than news. Real news was delivered by footmen. They are now called mail deliverers. That term has also evolved over the years.

"Just think, my great grandfather was one of the very first settlers in my hometown. He even had a school named after him; Banister school. I suppose because he built it." she chuckled. "It seems to me that my grandfather's sister, Nettie Banister, wrote a big history of the Banister family. I'm going to see if I can find it. She never married, but stood up for women's rights, but by the same token gave up her home and career to take care of her aging parents in their home. That was tradition carried out years and years later. My grandparents spent their last days in my home."

 Grandma Lu grinned and thought to herself, "Oh how I waited for the mail when I was a little girl out on the farm. I was so lucky to have parents that loved to read. They ordered me the Weekly Reader and a magazine called Highlights that only came once a month. I was only three years old when that magazine was published for the first time. I have a feeling that Irene Leeds, the librarian in town told Mom about it. Oh it was such fun. It had games and puzzles and stories. I hear it is still in publication. I wonder if Miss Marlee would like it."

There were no more entries in Nell's journal, however, the history was there and her children were to help settle the then territory of Iowa. Their history was in published books, a museum, and was passed on from generation to generation. Grandma Lu will find more interesting tidbits, but there is a problem at Marleewood that no one is aware of. Felix has moved into a house across the street from Marleewood.