Stealing Cars

By Molly Donnelly

Previously I have written about my trouble getting my license.  I had lots of practice before I took those horrible horrible tests.  Shortly after getting my permit my parents went away for a day and left my dads big red work truck at home. It had a dump on the back that was controlled by a push button cord in the cab.  Many times Dad would pile 3 or 4 of us kids in the front.  Sometimes the dump would mysteriously start to rise up in the back and Dad would shout, “Someone is sitting on the dump button!” Lots of scrambling would ensue and then we would pull over to use the metal lever in the back to lower the dump back down.  On this particular day when mom and dad were safely out of town I had my friend Crystal over and we decided to use the truck to drive 4 miles to her boyfriends house.  The truck was a stick shift.  Not a problem.  We decided to work together.  I did the steering and the pedals and she worked the stick.  I would tell her when to shift and we puttered along in 2^nd the whole way there.  It took us about and hour there and an hour back using only dirt roads but we did it and no one found out. 

Shortly after that adventure Crystal and I were spending the night at our friend Brieanne’s house.  Brieanne’s parents worked odd hours leaving us with a little freedom we like to take advantage of.  This one night we sat on the phone with a few boys from our grade who were all staying about 5 miles out of town at a sleepover.  They kept urging us to find a way to get out to them.  Someone, I’m not really sure which one of us it was, threw the idea out to drive out there in Brieanne’s mom’s car.  Around 1 am we had enough courage to try it.  Her mom’s car was a huge red manual that seemed much easier to drive than my dad’s work truck.  We all piled in and since I had a permit it was decided I would drive.  We backed out of the driveway and started down the road.  We made it 2 blocks before someone approached on the road from the opposite direction.  When we drove by I saw that it was a cop car.   I got really scared and turned at the next intersection to head back to the house.  The cop car turned around and started to follow us. Suddenly it flipped its lights on to pull us over.  Crap.  I pulled over and tried to act cool. 

The cop approached us and tapped on the window.  I had no idea where the automatic widow switches were so I just opened the door.  He asked me why he had pulled me over and I said I don’t know.  He said that I had passed him with my bright lights on.  I said, “Oh, ok, I’m sorry”.  I made no move to shut them off because I had no idea what bright lights were.  He said, would you shut them off?  I asked him to show me how.  He reached in and with a quick flip, flipped the brights off.  He then asked us all our names, we told him and he asked us where we were coming from.  I lied and told him that we had all been babysitting a few blocks over and were on our way home.  He asked Crystal what she was drinking and she held up her mountain dew.  Amazingly he told us to drive right home.  I couldn’t believe it.  He let us go.  We drove straight home then started to really freak out.  We had given our names so we were sure he was going to call all of our parents and tell them what had happened.  Maybe he would charge us with a crime.  We held a séance of sorts on the kitchen floor.  We lit candles and prayed that we wouldn’t get arrested.

For the next few weeks every time the phone rang I would jump.  This is it I would think, this is the police calling to tell my parents.  Thankfully, that call never came. I am forever thankful for the officer for realizing we were just young dumb kids trying to drive. 

Cemeteries

By Bridget

I have spent a lot of time in cemeteries.  Most of that time has been in the small rural ones in south central Minnesota, where my dad and maternal grandpa and uncles dug graves and some are now buried or scattered over.

Memorial Day was always spent visiting graveyards.  We would go first to Bath cemetery near Ellendale, MN where there would be an outdoor mass.   Bath, the cemetery for St. Aiden’s church, was close to where my grandma, Mary Ellen O’Leary nee Callahan was from and her parents were buried there.   It was a dark cemetery, surrounded by trees.  There was one tree with a small pool of water in one of its aboveground roots.  My mom called this skunkwater and said it would cure warts.  She said to put the wart in the water and chant “Skunkwater skunkwater oatmeal shorts Barleycorn Barleycorn swallow these warts."    

After the mass was over and we had visited the graves and saw the statue of the Virgin Mary, we would pile into the cars and drive to Newry cemetery.  Newry was the cemetery for St. Mary’s Church, a short drive across the countryside to where my Grandpa O’Leary’s family and many other Irish immigrants settled. 

St. Mary’s church has stained glass windows proudly bearing the inscription that they were donated by O’Learys.  Newry always seemed sunnier and warmer than Bath.  There were more O’Leary’s buried there than Callahans at Bath, and this also made Newry more appealing.  When I was young, the names meant nothing to me, but now there are many more familiar O’Learys and with the arrival of my dad this past October, its first Donnelly.   

The O’Leary graves and O’Leary headstone were near the entrance of the cemetery.   The headstone was large and especially fun to climb, there are countless photos of O’Leary relatives piled on and around this stone.  After visiting the graves, we would run to the back of the cemetery where there was a large altar with statues of Jesus on the cross and the three mourning Marys.  This also needed to be climbed on, various photos taken and daringly jumped off.  Newry was also the best cemetery to find headstones with my name on them. 

Our Grandpa O’Leary began digging graves in 1977. His sons Steve, Tim and Kevin helped him when they were home from their travels and our dad, Tom, started helping  in 1987.  After my grandpa’s heart attack in 1988 Tom took over.  Throughout his 28 years of grave digging he had many helpers.  First there were still the uncles, whenever they were around, then our neighbor, John Grobner, who had also given my parents their farm, then our mom, then various friends and acquaintances who needed the work or happened to be around.  We all had boyfriends who helped out and our high school friend ended up taking over when Tom died.   My brother Danny would dig in the summers when he was off from school and my sisters and I helped fill in mainly, but also dug when that was needed.   I dug with my dad for about 2 months one winter and vowed never again.     

The digging would begin by a funeral home calling our house and whoever answered the phone frantically searching for a piece of paper and pen to write down the funeral home and the date the funeral would be, then making sure we told Dad that the funeral home had called.  There were many instances where that last part was not carried out.  Eventually, Dad would find out the time and cemetery from the funeral homes and what time the grave would be plotted out and the flags left to show where to dig.   

In winter, he would first have to burn the frost from the ground.  This was initially done with many bags of charcoal, but he eventually purchased a large grave-sized burner.  The grave-burning would happen the night before digging, and the digging itself was pleasant once you got deep enough to  have the warm burnt dirt on all sides.   

In the winter, the scorched earth showed the length and width, but in the summer there was a wooden frame that would be put down and spades would slice through the grass and dirt to start.  Large plywood boards were laid to one side of the grave, for the dirt to be thrown on. The sod was removed first in squares and placed discreetly behind the headstone and covered with AstroTurf.  This gave way to the dark heavy topsoil, then eventually the sand or clay.  Some of the topsoil could be thrown into the back of the truck, which was outfitted with a dump body, but most of the topsoil was saved to be thrown back into the grave.  The dirt beneath the topsoil was thrown into the dumpbed and because the grave had grown deeper, throwing the dirt onto the truck was hard.  I was never very good at it and preferred to throw the dirt onto the plywood. The dirt thrown onto the truck would be taken and usually dumped in a remote location at the cemetery or Tom would bring dirt home and fill in the potholes in our driveway.   

Tom (our Dad) digging a grave in St. Mary's cemetary very close to his final resting place. 

While digging you’d often see the vaults of the already deceased.  Our mom would tell us a story of one of our uncles and our grandpa hitting a wooden coffin, and it crumbling and dust tornadoing out from it.  I once hit an old well while digging, but mostly it was bottles and cans. After finishing the grave, the pile of dirt would be covered with AstroTurf and the area swept clean.     

The filling-in part was much easier.  We would arrive at the graveyard and find the vaultman.  He was always in his truck parked either down a dirt road close to the cemetery or in the cemetery off of the main drive.   

We would sit in the car, drinking coffee, eating donuts, doing the crossword puzzle and listening to the public radio station.  Eventually the family would leave the grave site after the service ended.   First the vaultman drove up to the grave site, and then we would follow.  Tom, and I’m sure my grandpa and uncles before him, would help the vaultman lower the coffin into the large cement vault that had been placed in the grave the previous day.   

When my younger brother Timmy was about four, his snowsuit got caught on the coffin lowering pulley, and it wrenched his arm around and ended up with a broken arm.  About a week later, Timmy was in a pillowcase jumping around the house with a broken arm and fell and broke his nose.  I thought of this every time, thereafter, when I watched the vaultman lower the coffin.    

Tom would often fill in the graves by himself or take one of us with him.  One time, my sister Mary and I were filling in with him, and she stabbed me in the ankle with a shovel while trying to get a scoop of dirt to fill in the grave.  After filling in and stomping on the grave to settle the dirt, the sod would be returned in exactly the same place it was removed from.  Then we would water the grave, return the plywood and shovels to the truck, and clean the grave until it looked almost exactly as it had before.  

Most of the graveyards that Tom and our Grandpa dug in were in Freeborn County, where my grandparent’s farm was.  Often on the drive home from seeing my grandparents, we would stop to see how Tom was doing and how soon he’d be home.  In those instances, we’d slowly get out of the car, maybe help, maybe wander around the graveyard.  Once, the day after prom, when I had not slept all night, my Mom drove Timmy, my boyfriend (Jonathan), and I to the graveyard.  I found a shaded spot to sleep, while my uncle Kevin, in only his American flag boxers taught Jonathan how to juggle as he stood in the freshly dug grave.  

Whenever an O'Leary has died, the grave has been dug by many of family members.  My Grandpa died a few days after Christmas, and we all bundled up and visited Tom and the uncles as they dug the grave into the night.  They placed a bottle of Jameson near the bottom of the grave before filling it in to enjoy in the future when they buried my Grandma.  It was my Uncle John’s idea to bury the bottle, but he was unable to enjoy it as he passed away before my Grandma and never got the chance to imbibe. 

The biggest digging party was that for my Dad’s grave.  It was a beautiful, warm October day.  At least fifty family members, friends, and former grave-digging partners of Tom's showed up.  Everyone took a turn in the grave.  The next day at the funeral we had to limit the shovelfuls of dirt mourners threw in, so everyone could get their turn at honoring Dad.  When I tell people about the funeral, they remark that it had never occurred to them to dig their family member’s grave.  I can’t imagine not digging it.

 Our friend Jeff and his brother helping dig Tom's grave.

The Drivers Permit

Blooming Prairie is a pretty small town. Among things it doesn't have is a stop light.  During high school we took drivers ed.  We had classes on Saturdays and then we had behind the wheel after school.  One of the last behind the wheel classes we had was to drive to Rochester.  We drive on the highway the whole way there and we drove around Rochester getting to practice with stop lights.  I feel that having only one day being able to practice in a big city was a bit of a disadvantage for the blossoms.  I am trying to make excuses here but also I know that many people who took behind the wheel in Blooming were able to successfully pass their license test on the first try.  I was not one of them.

I successfully passed the written permit test.  Six months later I was allowed to attempt to get my license.  My mom drove a minivan and we decided that would be too hard to test in.  My grandma MaryEllen lived in Albert Lea at the time and agreed to let me use her car.  When I pulled up to the DMV in Albert Lea I was told that Grandma's car had a light out so I couldn't use her car.  My uncle Steve was with us, he said I could use his BMW, a car he was very proud of.  The instructor, I will call her The Beast due to her being about 7 feet tall with long dark hair and a snarl on her face at all times, asked me to turn on the lights in the BMW, I said I didn't know how.  I had never been in my uncles car before. Then she asked me to turn on the defrost, again I said I don't know how.  After failing both those questions we started.  The DMV in Albert Lea is surrounded by train tracks.  I did not know that I needed to yield at all train tracks and look out for trains. Needless to say I failed miserably.  After The Beast told me I failed she proceeded to tell me all the things I did wrong.  It was quite a long list.  I was disappointed but set up another test in two weeks.

After studying hard and practicing I attempted again.  This time I used my Grandma's car and I knew how to use the lights.  I tried so hard to pass.  I was so anxious as The Beast and I finished the test.  The Beast said I had failed.  I started to cry.  I was so mad.  I opened the car door to run away.  The Beast yelled, "Sit down, I'm not done." I said, " I don't care, I know I failed you told me it all before just let me leave."  She said, "No you have to hear this."  She then told me all the mistakes I had made while I balled my eyes out in the drivers seat.  I went into the DMV to meet my mom.  The Beast followed me and told me that I needed to renew my permit because it was about to expire.  She also told me that due to my actions I had to wait a month to retake my license, instead of just two weeks.  I continued to ball.  I got in line to renew my permit.

A smiling lady told me that Minnesota just changed its policies and that instead of paper permits they were now issuing picture permits similar to a license.  She said I would need to have my picture taken.

Still crying I got in line.  I refused to smile.  I continued to cry the entire time.  Hence the picture.

After my month suspension my mom allowed me to try in a different town. On Christmas Eve 1998 I passed my license test in Owattona, driving my moms minivan.

Danny for President

We went to a very small Catholic school. I had 6 people in my grade. My best friend was the only other girl in my grade, Kristin. There were 9 grades in the school, K thru 8. After 8th grade you either went to Owattona or Blooming Prairie. 9 grades with an average of 6 people meant around 54 people.

Each year Lytomysl, the school we went to, held an election for president. The eighth graders were the only ones that got to run for election. Danny, my older brother, decided to run for president his eighth grade year.

His platform was that he was going to switch the water in the drinking fountain to soda. Not suprisingly he had the election in the bag. I quizzed my whole grade and they all promised to vote for my brother.

The Sunday before election Monday I was all dressed up to go to town with my mom. She was going grocery shopping at Jack and Jill's. I had two kinds of clothes when I was little-my farm clothes and my leaving the farm clothes, aka my town clothes. For grocery shopping I put on my town clothes. I walked outside being really careful not to walk in any goose poop or let the dogs touch my clothes.

Danny came up behind me right before I was ready to leave and threw me in our kiddie pool. My town clothes were ruined. I started to cry. I ran inside to change into my farm clothes and I had to rush to town wearing those. I was so embarrassed.

The morning of the election I went to school and told Kristin what had happened. She was just as shocked as I was. We made a pact to not vote for Danny in the election. The election came and went. Danny was announced the winner.

That night at dinner Danny told my parents the results. "I won the election, everyone in the school voted for me, except for three people, the guy running against me, Molly and her best friend Kristin."

I could not believe someone had told him. I was embarrassed that he found out, but still mad about my town clothes. Throw me in the pool all you want, just check what clothes I have on.

Journal Entry about the Pony Incident

By Molly

This is my journal article from January 12, 1990. I wrote this in my journal after Mom broke her arm riding one of the new ponies. It says, "Last Monday my mom got on are horse and the horse reed (*reared) up and then it fell back on the left side of her then the horse bibe (*died) and my moms rom (*arm) got drockyd (*broke.)"

My Little Ponies

By Mary

Until I was about ten or so, we always had anywhere from four to six draft horses on the farm, percherons. They were big. We used them for farming. I was able to help harness them as young as four. Dad would have me drive them as we picked up hay or spread manure on the fields. Now and then we would get on their backs and ride them around the pasture, but the rides were short. These were not horses you took for long rides. I always wanted my own horse to ride. We had a horse named Buster for a couple of years, but we were warned to not ride him. He would throw us if he did. My cousin, Annie did ride him once; she was thrown, he went away soon after that.

Dad taking a group for a hay ride with the team of draft horse.
I was always asking Mom for a riding horse. When I was thirteen, the cattle man showed up one day. He bought several cows from us. The cows were to be sold right away. He had two horses in his trailer that weren’t going to be sold right away so he left the horses with us and took the cows.

The horses he left were riding horses, I don’t know what type, but they looked like quarter horses. I wanted to ride them so bad. I would go to the pasture and talk to them. One was red and other white. The white one ignored me, but the red would come up to me. I found an old bridle in the barn and I got it on him. He was tall and I couldn’t get on him bareback in the pasture. We had an old couch sitting in the yard so I brought him up to the yard. I got on one end of the couch and was able to take a run down the end of the couch and leap on his back at the last second.

He was wonderful to ride. I would ride him everyday. He would go really fast. Sometimes he got a little squirrelly, and I got scared but we always managed to make it back to the yard. I wanted him to be mine so bad, I wanted Mom to buy him. I would hurry home from school everyday to ride him. The last time I rode him Bridget and my cousin Erin wanted to ride him too. The three of us got on and it was going fine until I decided he should canter. We all fell off and landed under him. He just stopped and looked at us. We couldn’t get back on him because we weren’t in the yard by the couch anymore so we all walked him up to the yard and decided that was enough for one day and put him away. The next day when I came home from school he was gone. Mom said the cattleman wanted too much for him and that we couldn’t afford him. I was so sad. My time having a horse I could ride had come to end.

Mom knew I was sad. The neighbor, Shirley, said we could have their two ponies for cheap. I was fourteen at the time, too big for these little ponies, but they were horses. I went over to Shirley’s with Mom to see the ponies. Mom thought I should try to ride one before we took them home. Shirley said Red needed a lot of work but Bucky wasn’t so bad. Bucky? Seemed like an ominous name for a horse. I gingerly boarded Bucky as he skidded around and tried to prevent me. My feet hung just inches off the ground. We started at a slow walk which quickly turned into a full on run for the buildings; Bucky whipped around right before we hit the barn, bucking as he did and heading off in the other direction without me. I landed on a pile of sharp gravel rocks. I was wearing shorts and my legs were all cut and scraped up.

I imagine the conversation between Mom and Shirley went something like this:

Shirley, “That girl shouldn’t have been wearing shorts.”

Mom, “I know I told her that before we came over, she never listens.”

Shirley, “They’ve never done that to me. You can’t be afraid, if you are they’ll sense it, that’s why he took off.”

Mom, “It’s okay, I’ll just have to break them in. We’ll take them.”

A couple of days later Shirley walked both ponies over to our farm. They were put into the front pasture by the house. A couple of weeks after the cuts in my legs heeled, I got up the courage to ride again. This time I decided to give Red a go. It had to go better. These were my horses. I was determined to ride them. I hopped on Red’s back, and he promptly took off as fast he could down the driveway, rolled over a barb wire fence. (Yes, rolled, he was too small to jump, and he knew it). I ended up tangled in the barb wire as he rolled over me. That was it for me. I was done with both of the ponies. I caught Red and put him back in the pen but not before giving him a stealth look. Sure we horses now, two that were trying to kill me; I wasn’t so keen on these new horses.

No one else attempted to ride them that fall. Mom would say, “They’re fine, they just need to be broken,” but she didn’t attempt to ride them until the winter when our whole yard was a sheet of ice. It was so icy that I could strap on skates and ice skate around the entire yard.

Danny, Bridget, and I came home from school one winter day. The house was dark. Mom was leaning against the wood stove in the kitchen cradling her arm. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table. Neither of them said anything at first, and then my mom quietly said, “We have to tell you something. I tried to ride Bucky today, to break him. I got on him; he reared up right away, slipped on the ice, and fell on his neck on top of me. He died right away, and I think my arm is broken.”

Silence.

And then was all started laughing, “Yeah, right, you killed, the horse.”

“I’m serious, look out the kitchen window.”

We did. There lay Bucky, not moving. We all turned back around and looked back at Mom.

“We need to go the hospital to get my arm checked out.”

Stunned, nothing. “Okay.”

She came back hours later, her arm in a caste. The rendering man came to get Bucky a week later. No one ever rode Red again. We ended up selling him a couple of years later. I never did get a horse again.

Why Watching Jaws is Uncomfortable

By Bridget

When I was very little, hay for the hay barn was gathered loose. It wasn't packed into rectangular bales or big round bales. It was thrown into a wagon by pitchforks. The wagon had high sides all around to keep the hay in and this was pulled by the horses. One person had to drive the horses while one or more people would walk alongside, with pitchforks, tossing the dried and mown hay into the wagon. The hay would then get transferred to the hayloft by a clawlike contraption that would lower from a pulley at the top of the barn. This pulley was powered down below by a conveyor belt attached to the horses. The horses would pull on the belt, walking away from the barn, the claw would be lifted into the barn, then someone would pull the claw into the hayloft through the hayloft door. The hay would be released, then the horses would back up, lowering the claw down to the hay wagon again. The person in the hayloft would disperse the hay around the hayloft while the person down below would get the claw ready for another load. I loved the loose hay as it was perfect to slide down in the winter while bundled up in a snowsuit. We also had a rope string in the hayloft. We could climb onto a small ledge and swing from the rope into the mounds of hay.

Waiting for baled hay to come through the large barn doors. Pictured (I think) John Grobner, Danny, Mary Beth, and Uncle Steve.
One summer evening, right before dusk, my parents and Uncle Tim went out to gather hay. I didn't go with them at first. Maybe because it wasn't fun until the hay had started to pile up, and you could sit on top of it all or maybe because by staying behind I was able to watch Jaws on TV. After watching Jaws for awhile with my feet tucked underneath me so they wouldn't be bit off by some shark on the floor, I ran barefoot out to the field where they were gathering hay.

I was always barefoot, especially when I was running through a field of cut grass as some man had once told me that nothing was harder to run on than freshly cut grass. Personally, I felt that it was harder to run through the field once the cut grass had time to dry up and harden; regardless, I wanted to have tough soles.

I met the wagon and happily climbed up the sideboards to the top of the hay. Soon the wagon was full of hay, and Dad was driving the horses back to the barn. The ride back was the best part as the horses were allowed to trot and on top of the hay I was gently rocked by the creaking wagon.

Dad parked the wagon beside the barn, and we all started to get off the top of the hay. There was a pile of hay in between the wagon and the barn where I decided to jump. I jumped and landed on the tine of a pitchfork. I started screaming and screaming for someone to help me, and Uncle Tim came first and lifted me off. I was carried into the house and had my foot rinsed in the sink in the bathroom. I'm not sure how deep the tine had gone, but I must have jumped onto a pitchfork that was lying on the ground tine-up as it didn't go all the way through my foot.

Mom applied a scalding mixture of a slice of bread dunked in boiling milk. This was apparently her cure-all at the time as years later both Danny and Mary remember having this administered to them as well around the same time period. I believe the mixture was supposed to draw out impurities so we would not get infected, which I guess worked, but I mainly remember getting burnt by it.

After the mixture was taken off, my foot was wrapped up and I stayed off it for awhile. A few days later, I hopped on my good foot outside to the kiddy pool. Mom had told me it would feel good on my foot if I walked around in there. Our roving band of geese enjoyed the kiddy pool as much as we did, and they were always clouding it up with their poop, this time being no exception. I jumped right in anyways, and it did feel really nice to swish my foot around and even walk on it. My foot never got infected, and I never contracted tetanus, even though none of us had any of our shots as children. However, I can't watch Jaws without thinking of the pitchfork in my foot and I get sharp pains shooting up into my foot.