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Sunday, October 22, 2006
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Suzanne returned to North Carolina on Monday after spending three weeks visiting in Minnesota. She will be spending a third year along the east coast of North Carolina ... maybe there is hope of our visiting the Outer Banks this year! I sure would like to see the lighthouses...

Her first week home we didn't see much of her as she was fighting a "bug." "The bug" let her out of her room long enough to eat and then it shooed her back to bed.

The second week of her visit she was up to Eagle Bend for convention. We were there as well ... and all of LTD's family got there to see her by the weekend. (And who IS that guy in the cap hanging around with Amy? Somebody better be checking into that! BTW, I hear he DOES drive a pickup ... and he followed her home from Nebraska...)

William Everett Dake was the first child of Bill and Amy (Mellon) Dake. He was born June 14, 1920. He was known as Billy. He and the rest of his siblings grew up on the home farm in Wright County and he went to elementary school in Smith Lake.

He attended High School in Howard Lake. I am not sure why, but in school he took typing and I really think he took bookkeeping, too. This later was very useful to him.

The Dake family: LeRoy, Blanche, Bill, Gert, Amy, Dorothy & Billy.

I am not sure how long he went to Dunwoody (a trade school) taking a course in mechanics, but during that time he stayed at Uncle Everett's. Soon after he returned home, he was hired as parts man at the Main's Allis Chalmers Dealership in Howard Lake. From there he was drafted into the Army to serve during World War II.

Bill Dake & Jim Miller in England.

After Billy moved to Texas he assumed the name Bill and was called that the rest of his life.

Bill and Lois (Gandy) Dake were married before Bill went overseas. When he returned, they moved to Cokato, Minnesota, where he worked for the Metcalf Chevrolet Garage, as parts man.

Carol Elaine Dake was born in the Watertown hospital on December 4, 1946, and William Stanley Dake was born in the Cokato hospital on September 2, 1949.

They moved to Abilene, Texas, and then to a ranch near Clifton. It was there that Bill and Lois established a feed store while they lived on the ranch. During the time they lived there, the rest of the family arrived: Kathleen June on December 14, 1954; James Thomas, on May 12, 1957; and Patricia Sue on July 19, 1965.

Click here to read what Lois wrote about Bill and their life in Texas in Bulletin 31.

Bill died August 11, 1966, after a long bout with cancer. LeRoy and Vonnie had gone to have a visit with him at his home where he was being cared for. He and LeRoy had a beautiful visit touching on all of the ones he wanted to hear about and in the night he died ... satisfied now, knowing how everyone fared.

Let's Play a Guessing Game: Whenever it is handy to do so, we will run a picture of someone of the subscribers or staff members of our e-magazine. Tell us who you think it is -- we will let you know who was the first to guess it right -- and the correct guess -- in the following week's Bulletin.

(Send us some to run; we will line them up in our staging area to take their turn. Thanks to Kristi Larson Indermark and The Matriarch for sending last week's mystery pictures.

Answers to last week's mystery pictures (click here to review them):

I recently read an ostentatious memoir, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, by author Erica Jong. In it she wrote, "I think writing influences my mood because it's a way of imposing order on chaos."

While working on the ranch in eastern Oregon, I found that imposing order on chaos helped me with my bouts of depression. For instance, one of the machine sheds and its adjacent bone-yard had, over the years, haphazardly accumulated a host of farm and ranch miscellanea. I took it upon myself to categorize, organize and straighten-up the mess.

I grouped all the different kinds of fence posts in one area, fence wire in another, tools in the shop area, culverts all together, irrigation hardware in one corner, and so on.

Then, within each group, of say, fence posts, I sorted by type: treated wood, iron pipe, T-posts, railroad ties, old telephone poles. Within these categories I sorted by size, and within each size, by condition.

Hence, I imposed order on the chaos of the machine shed and its bone-yard. It served to lift my spirits.

Erica Jong implies that writing imposes order on the chaos of life, and that imposing order tends to lift the writer's mood.

My mood could use lifting!

Perhaps I shall one day, again, attempt to write.

Paul McCartney was the first Beatle to grow a beard. The others followed suit, whether subconsciously or not, until they all looked like crazy mountain men. This strikes me as unusual, since the trend before this was for the the three younger Beatles to take the lead from George, the oldest, as to what outlandish thing to do next. One should consider that when they started growing beards the group was nearly extinct, sometime in late 1970. Perhaps at this time Paul had begun to exert dominance and start some trends of his own.

My little grade school clique had a hierarchy not unlike the one that must have existed inside the working mechanism of the Beatles. Since we were all roughly the same age, we took cues from the member of our group that looked the oldest. That individual in our group was unquestionably Ron Dalquist.

Ron Dalquist had sideburns in the first grade. More accurately, he grew the wisps of hair by his ears long and combed them down, thus creating the illusion of sideburns. Naturally, this became a popular "look" that would spread like prairie fire among the first and second grade boys in my school.

When Ron showed up at school brandishing a Duncan yo-yo, it wasn't very long before we all had one. This was a rough trend for me, and if you have ever seen me try to work a yo-yo, you know why. While others were "walking the dog" or "rocking the baby," I was hiding behind the library steps trying to get the wretched thing to come back up after it went down.

"Where's your yo-yo, Anderson?" someone would ask.

"I left it on the bus."

This kind of quick thinking would save me from a lot of abuse throughout my elementary school career. I personally believe that sometimes a small lie is excusable if it can spare the liar from physical pain and undue humiliation.

Another trend that Ron Dalquist started was the wearing of Grand Prix jackets. These were simply garish silver windbreakers with emblems of high-performance European sports cars and/or related accessories on them. Essentially, these jackets turned us into unwitting pint-sized poseurs who were happy to serve as walking billboards for products that most of us would never be able to afford. We thought we looked urbane and sophisticated with our faux sideburns and shiny, pretentious jackets. It seems that fashion changes often but the attitude behind fashion never does.

If you lived in a large city near the coasts in 1970, bellbottom trousers were common and considered fashionable. If you lived in a rural midwestern area, they were somewhat less popular and even regarded with suspicion by some. You must understand that when I say "bellbottom," I mean a trouser leg that is conspicuously flared, not merely a "boot-cut," which is a trouser leg that is only somewhat flared at the end.

"Look at these!" I said to myself, pulling a pair of blue jeans from a large cardboard box marked "rummage sale." They were typical blue jeans in every sense except that the bottoms of the pant legs were flared like two Liberty Bells.

"Where did these come from?" I wondered aloud. I'd never seen anyone in our family wearing them. I folded them and stuffed them under my shirt.

I smuggled the bellbottom jeans into my room and tried them on. A perfect fit, give or take a few inches. Okay, so they were two sizes too large, but I could feel them growing on me just the same.

The next day I stuffed the bellbottom jeans under my Grand Prix jacket and brought them with me to school. I changed into them in the boys' room at recess and stowed my regular jeans in my locker.

Now I will set some trends of my own, I probably thought as I walked out onto the playground like James Brown strutting onstage at The Apollo.

I was a little disappointed when no one seemed to notice.

I spent the rest of the day in the bellbottom jeans without incident and eventually forgot I was even wearing them ... until I was waiting in line for the bus at the end of the day.

"Hey, Anderson! Can I try on your pants?"

I turned around and found a sneering Duane Kohl, the most feared boy in first grade. He put both hands on his ample belly and let go a machine gun burst of derisive laughter.

"Umm..." I said, stunned. "I gotta go."

"But I wanna try on your groovy pants!" he sneered.

I sprinted away and lurched into Bus Number Seven with great force as the doors closed behind me. How could I have been so stupid as to forget to change my pants back? I selected a seat and slid down in it.

I watched out the window as Duane continued to taunt me from the sidewalk. The only thing I could make out was "Anderson" this and "Anderson" that, but I could imagine the gist of what he was saying.

Then something wonderful happened: my older sister Patty appeared directly behind Duane, as if out of a cloud, and tapped him aggressively on the shoulder. It is hard to imagine a third grade girl being intimidating, but Duane Kohl seemed plenty intimidated as he backed away from my sister and finally took off running the other direction.

All eyes in the bus then fell on me and I moved my books across my lap.

Patty climbed onto the bus and sat down beside me, something she would not have normally done, for everyone knows that it is social suicide to mix with first graders when you are in third grade. She leaned forward and looked down at my ridiculously flared pants legs. A smile spread slowly across her face. I smiled back.

"Where'd you get those?" she asked as the bus pulled away from the curb.

"Found 'em downstairs in a box," I said. There didn't seem to be any reason to lie.

We rode the rest of the way home in a comfortable silence, listening to KDWB on the bus radio and humming along with the top forty hits that were so dear to us. My sister didn't press for any details and we never spoke of my bellbottom school day again.

After that, I resolved to leave the trendsetting to the trendsetters. I would never own a pair of bellbottom pants of my own, nor would I own a mood ring, lava lamp, black light poster or a pet rock. I guess I decided that the "cutting edge" was not for me.

The mystery of the origin of the bellbottom pants was never solved. I imagine whoever owned them first had an experience similar to mine and decided they didn't want to talk about it. As to whatever became of those "groovy" pants, I'm sure that they ended up with my Grand Prix jacket back in the box marked "rummage sale." I believe this was for the best. I always thought Paul McCartney looked stupid with a beard, anyway.

Travelogue t

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This Week's Birthdays
October 22---Rich Johnson (from MN)
October 24---Eric Shockey
October 24---Ken Kitto
October 26---Ardis Sigman Quick
October 27---Marlene Anderson Johnson
October 28---Derrick McNeill
Happy Birthday!

This Week's Anniversaries
October 27---Don and Gert Dake Pettit (16 years)

More October Birthdays
' 
October 1---Brooklynn Ann Johnson (2 years)
October 1---Carolyn Amy Horne (2 years)
October 4---Wesley Sigman
October 5---Leona Anderson
October 5---Steven Miller
October 7---Steven Anderson
October 10---Hannah Aydelotte (5 years)
October 10---Cody Printz
October 11---Jay Smith
October 12---Muriel Wold Rodriguez
October 12---Tami Anderson Hunt
October 14---Douglas Anderson
October 18---Lori Anderson
October 18---Adriana Stahlecker Brown
October 18---Diana Mellon Martin
October 18---Dan Mellon
Octber 20---Wade Morgan Printz (7 years)

October 29---Sami Larson (12 years)
October 29---Tom Miller
October 30---Anne Mellon Montford

More October Anniversaries
Z

Miss Hetty's Mailbox:

Dear Miss Hetty,

Thanks for the birthday card. I think the kids will be around on Sunday. Turning 57 in the middle of the week does not inspire much thought of celebration. Thanks for thinking of me. I'm sure you know, but today is Diana's birthday also. I'm about to give her a call.

Dan Mellon
Alta Loma, CA

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Thank-you for the lovely message and birthday wish. It means a great deal to have people "in your corner" at times like these. I hope this finds you and yours well. Love....Diana

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Keep Us Posted!

Please drop Miss Hetty a line and tell us who, and what, we've missed. And how about a report (photos welcome) of YOUR special celebration?

'Many Thankse
Everyone!

Miss Hetty

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WOW!!!

A picture with fall leaves will likely be on the next Bulletin; at least that is all we see out our window right now. I love how seasonal that first picture usually is. It sets the tone for the whole Bulletin. Very clever photo editor, I'd say.

Little baby Jaxson looks a lot older than one week old in that cute photo. He looks kind of weary of it all already. Am sure his older bother and sister really love him -- "my Baby."

Adrianna, do you have any idea how thrilled we were to see that picture of Sully? Those blue eyes are too beautiful. I'm glad he's finally out of his body cast. We were very glad for your update, Kathleen, which included feelings right out of your heart regarding those you envy. We have the same feelings. What a remarkable family this Bulletin family is, each one in their own way. I was so shocked to hear that my sister in Arizona knows Sully.

Donna Mae, thank you for those unusual pictures of the blind cat playing so friendly with Max, a new puppy that would have been strange to him.

Did anyone else think Patty looked like Dorothy, our Editor, in that first picture? She was sitting down and at first glance I thought -- Oh, Dorothy and Patty have the same colors on, but I see it was Grandma Patty on both pictures.

I realize Larry puts everything he has into his stories and needs time and inspiration to write. I saw Sherry at Eagle Bend and she said likely this winter he may have time to do some writing. So, we will continue to wait -- patiently. When I saw that familiar LTD Storybrooke I was thinking it was a story, but it was a ewe picture instead.

What a great Travelogue we have going this time! I loved that picture with the inset of the three waders in the ice cold mountain stream in Montana. Thanks, Marlene, for the details of your travels and plans as of now. Please know we are following closely. That two "boys" have gone to work with Rich proves what a special kind of manager he is. I can identify with you becoming very attached to the people in so short a time. That's the way it is. I still have some lifelong, close friends from my privileges of meeting them during my years in their areas.

The Muddin' can be left to those who like it! Imagine the dirty vehicle! No thanks.

Well, what a nice letter from the Netherlands. I don't remember such a nice, long, detailed one from there since I came aboard The Bulletin. Thank you, Ary, for everything you took time to share with us. Especially about the climate -- that was most interesting!

Then the one by Frans de Been was equally welcome. Long time since he has had time and inspiration for such a long one with pictures from the Netherlands. I wonder if whoever got the coins realized all it took to prepare that original gift.

The Sergeant David S. Johnson story was especially of interest, being I did know him. He is such a scribe that you are compelled to read every single word and enter into every single experience. A treasured picture of Beaver and his sons. I remember when a new baby came on the scene, and his name was WYATT. Hadn't heard that name before, and then seeing this little boy, Wyatt, in the stroller was a long ways from the Wyatt he has become on this picture. Makes me realize how old I am to know a lot of The Bulletin subscribers as children.

Remembering the wedding pictures, it was interesting to see Keith and Lori again, and this time on their very first anniversary. They look even happier (if that's possible). Time flies too fast.

Thank you for including an update on Diana. One certainly doesn't like to see winter come with the ice and snow to get around in when you don't feel well in the first place. We think of you, Diana, and any little update will be appreciated as time passes. We had hoped to stop in to see you but decided against it for now. We can see you just are not able for the extra strength it would take.

The Chuckles was truly a Foto-funnies with those cute Hill kids in the packing box.

Once again we came to the final page, 31 this time, of The Bulletin, and no matter how long they are, they keep getting better and better every time. It is so amazing that you have been able to publish this every single week. Takes some dedication on the part of the Editor and Photo Editor, plus the other helpers that produce it, and how would you know we appreciate it like we do if we didn't send an LTTE?

Thank you again,

Betty Droel

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