Easter Coming to Wisconsin

by Delores Miller

Full moon shining all night, but a big snowstorm is forecast in a few days.  Just what we need for a sloppy Easter egg hunt that the Easter Bunny will scatter around the Miller yard along with chocolate Easter Bunnies and real colored cooked eggs.  Want to come along to Good Friday and Easter Sunday church services with us?

It has been a busy spring for us, we are getting slower so things take longer.  Went dancing twice last week, good polka bands and saw lots of people to gossip with.    Tucker, Matthew's 5 year old son had grandparents day at his school and we went for tea and crumpets.  Was fun.  Here is a poem that was handed out:  'Grandparents bestow upon their grandchildren, The strength and wisdom that time and experience have given them.  Grandchildren bless their Grandparents with a youthful vitality and innocence that help them stay young a heart forever.  Together they create a chain of love linking the past with the future.  The chain may lengthen, but it will never part.

So last week was St. Patrick's Day, March 17.  Not Irish in our family but all the bars serve Corned Beef, cabbage, carrots, red potatoes and marble rye bread.  Russ cannot stand the smell of cooked cabbage, so took me out twice to eat it.  Was very good.  Nancy Reagan former first lady and wife of President Ronald Reagan died at 94 and we watched the funeral on tv from the Presidential Library at Simi, California.  Had visited it about ten years ago, beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean.    Russ had a luncheon with his Marine Corps buddies, they all joined together in 1953.  Needless to say they have gotten older.    And now this is Leap Year, had an extra day on
February 29.  Politics with people running for President in November and we will hear all that hullabaloo.  Went to a church luncheon, their speciality was pea soup and banana pie.  Was very good.  Another church had a pancake supper.  Girl Scouts were selling cookies, bought two boxes.    Another church had a polka service and a chili luncheon.

Funerals of friends, sad.  Cancer, heart trouble and a fiery truck accident.

So on that happy note we close and wish you a Happy Easter.  Think spring and planting a garden.

Russell and Delores Miller in sunny Wisconsin

 Delores Miller lives with husband Russell in Hortonville, Wisconsin.    In the summer of 2007 they  celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a party hosted by their five children and ten grandchildren.  It’s been a long road.  Dairy farming until retirement in 1993, they continued to 'work' the land, making a subdivision of 39 new homes on their former hay fields.

The Dupont Gunslinger

By Harold Ratzburg

I'd guess that by now, anybody who knows me, knows that I have been a "gun nut" (also known as a "Collector") for all of my life. How that fascination came about is anybody's guess, but there it is and I just have to live with it.

My first memories of a gun comes about in the first and second grades of Maple Valley Grade School in Dupont township.. With imagination of a kid, we kids found that you could fashion a gun of sorts out of a straight stem out of a lilac bush, (of which there were plenty around the school at that time) about seven inches long. What you had to do then was break the stem about three inches from the heavy end into a 90 degree angle and then peel the bark down at the angle and the bark would make a passable trigger guard. That left a barrel about four inches long. Then, armed with this formidable weapon, and if you could holler "Bang, you're dead" first --and loud enough, you could win the schoolyard shoot outs or nail those pesky Redskins hiding out behind the lilac bushes.

As time went on, I got bigger and more trustworthy with a sharp instruments and Dad got me a jack knife down in town at the hardware store. The next step up in the arms department was guns whittled out of cedar shingles. A coping saw helped a lot also, for cutting around the curves of the handle. Shingles were straight grained and easy to whittle and when finished, they didn't break too easy, With a shingle nail for a trigger it made a passable sidearm. You hadda carry it stuck in your belt but a quick draw was still possible.

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