This past weekend an old friend and classmate from my old home town, Scott City Kansas, passed away. Eleanor “Nellie” Rockwell Odom came into this world in February of 1930 and left our world in February 2009 a few days short of her 79 birthday.

Eleanor’s Dad was a barber and he cut my hair from the first time I can remember until the day he passed away, I think in 1947. It was prior to our senior year in high school.

Its hard to explain about the time so many years ago. You were at school, out for sports or working in those years, so there wasn’t a lot of times so socializing. You know they didn’t believe in dancing in those days and only the farm kids had cars. It was a bike or walking world. So we didn’t have a lot of time hanging around. We did attend the same church and were in a lot of school activities but that was about all.

Nellie, as we called Eleanor, left town after her father passed away.  She and her mother went to Hays. I think it was in the summer of 1947. She did return to Scott City for our graduation in 1948. She received her degree from Fort Hays State. She married Kenneth Odom in 1951. He passed away in May 2000. She was a high school teacher for many years in Stafford Kansas.

The only times I really got to see Nellie since graduation was at the different reunions our class holds every 5 or so years. Since I was never able to attend a reunion until 1998 I’ve seen Eleanor only three or four times since our graduation. But as big time Internet user, Nellie and I had many conversations over the past 10 years. I even did a special MUG for her in 2006. Her son Rodney and daughter-in-law Ellen had their first child Jennifer. The cup included a number of pictures of the three of them.

Eleanor was a quiet and studious girl. I really only learned in these past 10 years what a fun gal she was. A great gal who will be missed by a lot of people.

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Last December a friend from my second job with American Airlines, Walter Grimes, passed away. He was the guy who hired me as an Analyst for IdeAAs In Action, a part of the American Airlines  group that was formed to handled the savings of monies as part of American employees provided ideas. There were many millions of dollars saved. Anyway, Walter was the Tulsa Representative for Tulsa to the Computer people at HDQ as well as the lead man for IdeAAs. He helped me get out of the Analyst position and allowed me to spend my time generally doing computer work until 9/11, when the group was disbanded. He was a true friend. He was hard working and tough. He was also a helper many groups outside of work, and overall nice guy.

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This past weekend we lost an old friend and neighbor, Mary Mooney. Mary has been a neighbor for a very long time. She was a mother of four daughters, which were as old or a little older than our kids. Her youngest, Lori, was the same age as Mark, our oldest.

She was a flower garden person of no equal. She cherished every flower around. As I have mowed her yard for the last 10 – 12 years I had to be extremely careful of where I mowed and trimmed. She even watered and nurtured the flowers that grew in the cracks of her driveway and patio.

She also had a lemon tree that she used to produce the lemons she used in her lemon pies. Now this tree (or tree”s” I should say – her daughter Lori had a second tree cloned by Oklahoma State) was a annual thing as it had to be moved inside the garage every fall and then back out in the spring. Why move it inside? Well, the roots were in a pot and frozen roots wouldn’t live. But also the tree produced fruit during the garage time. Anyway, Marie and I have eaten a lot of pies that originated from this tree over the many years.

We’ve even had a gate between our place and Mary’s. It makes it a lot easier for Marie to get over to Mary’s on the many trips each day.

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The picture below is one taken last year of Mary and the first lemon tree.

A lovely lady who we will miss.

Not a lot going on around here. We went to a couple of Dustin’s baseball games this week. This is a tourney to end the baseball season. Well, they had lost the first game and are in the losers bracket now but they won last night so they have another game tomorrow.

Got the first part of the mowing completed today. Have to start early as this coming Friday through Sunday we’ll be at the lake with Marie’s family for the annual family reunion. Anyway I’ll get the best part of the balance done tomorrow.

We’ve had 4 days without any rain which is almost a record for this year. Even the tomatoes are looking better. But after the small reprieve, we had another 6/10 inches of rain. I guess it may be time to remove some of the plants that haven’t even bloomed yet. I will probably remove about half of the plants after I get back Sunday.

Well, as if we haven’t had enough rain, we got another 1/2 inch of rain this AM here at the house. But much heavier rain to our west and south (2 1/3 inches). We didn’t have the wind that was up to 65 MPH. If we would have had the wind it might bring down the three limbs still hanging by a thread in two of our tree’s. And we are to have rain again the next two days. I guess we start to work on our building of our ARK.

We’re now 35 inches of rain for the year. That’s 15 inches above normal.

The day starts out cold and breezy (its a lot worse than that) but it is a day back with a lot of people I really spent more time with than I spent with my family. These were the people form the late 1950′s through the 1980′s. This morning was the monthly breakfast of the SCS-Sabre retirement group from American Airline Data Processing Group. 35 “people” or more were in attendance.  I forgot to take my camera again as I was running late. Maybe next month.

Its nice to see these “people” again but they are really looking old. Maybe they need to get more sleep.

After all the talk by the “Weather Guys” we had wind, a little freezing drizzle and 1.5 inches of rain over the last two days. The sun has just come out and the temperature is up to 50 degrees. No flooding or ice around. From what Jim and Jane have has said Topeka has had ice, snow and rain.

Finally yesterday, the tree people showed up to clean-up the trees and to get rid of all the extra “tree trash” not previously picked up by the city. Now we are ready for spring and the leafing out of the trees to see what might be left. We still have gutter and fence damage to get repaired. Plus the gutters are over 20 years old, so we may have to take down all the gutter. This would allow for some repair of some of the wood backing plus allow for painting which really needs to be done. Lot of work around the homestead.

The weather this early February has been unbelievable. The 3rd it got up to 75 to be followed the next day by 81. The 81 was a record for the date beating the 76 set in 1962. But things are to get back to normal on the 6st with rain and maybe snow over night today.

Believe it or not, I finally got “the tree people” over today and they gave me an estimate on addressing the trees damaged by the ice storm. I don’t know when they will get around to the effort, but I approved what they are to do and the cost. Now if we can get the trees trimmed and all the new “stuff” hauled away, all this before the end of February, we’ll be in good shape for spring.