Lucas Countyan a Frank Myers post

 

Friday, September 23, 2005

That old empty feeling ...

 Subtitle this, good neighbors are among the greatest gifts.

I've been thinking a lot this morning about Marie Linville, who died Tuesday at 73 in Chariton and who will be buried on Saturday in the Confidence Cemetery down in Wayne County.

My goodness, Marie and her husband, Richard, have been a part of my life since forever. I grew up south of Russell on the Wayne County line, and just a mile down the county line road east were Richard and Marie --- down the hill beyond Cousin Glenn and Pansy Chapman's place on the corner.
They had been married 50 years 7 August, I see --- and I remember that because suddenly later that fall the old house they had remodeled into a home was filled with light as we rattled past before dawn aboard the school bus headed into Russell.

And after that they were always there. My dad helped Richard and his son, Bruce, wrangle cattle time and time again. If we went on vacation, they did the chores and fed the dogs (my dad always called the Linvilles from wherever we happened to be to check on the dogs. God forbid they should miss us and not eat).

Time and time again, the Linvilles went up the road, then back, to-and-froming another of their farms. Time and time again, they stopped to visit.

Marie had a tough life. Rheumatoid arthritis left her twisted and in pain --- but undeterred. Pleasures were simple --- children and grandchildren, old-time country music, some travel, a piece of pie at Swan's Cafe in Promise City. A great and brave and gentle soul, hers.
 

I saw them last, I think, at lunch last fall down at Hardees in Chariton. Richard carried a little stool in the back of the battered old pickup so that Marie could step up as he helped her ever-so-carefully inside.

Grief is a funny thing. This is not the gut-wrenching accompaniment to the loss of a spouse, a child, a parent, someone intimately dear. It's an emptiness, a sense that there's another hole in life now. Blessed be ...

Here's Marie's obituary:

Marie Elizabeth Scheitel Linville, 73, died Tuesday September 20, 2005 at the Chariton Nursing & Rehab Center. Services will be Saturday, September 24, 2005 at 1 p.m. at the Pierschbacher Funeral Home in Chariton. Burial will be in the Confidence Cemetery. Family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at the funeral home. Memorials may be made to Circle of Friends Home Care in Chariton.

Marie was born on October 20, 1931 in Potsdam, MN, and graduated from Rochester High School in 1949. After graduation, she was employed as a radio-iodine secretary at the Mayo Clinic from 1949 to 1955. She married Richard Ford Linville of Russell, IA on August 7, 1955 in Milroy, MN. Marie and Richard recently celebrated 50 years of marriage.

Those left to honor her memory include her husband, Richard of Russell; two sons, Bruce Linville of Ottumwa and Dennis Linville of Chariton; two daughters, Marceline (Dennis) Slack of Mediapolis, and Rhonda (Mark) White of Chariton; twelve grandchildren and five great-grandchildren; a sister, Eunice Hadel of Blaine, MN; a brother, Marvin Scheitel of Rochester, MN and several nieces and nephews.

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Lucas Countyan Blog - Frank Myers Jan. 27, 2013

 From the LucascountyanBlog Frank Myers

Sunday, January 27, 2013

The sporting life 

 Rain is banging against the window this morning, but whether or not it will start start to freeze and turn the south of Iowa into a skating rink remains to be seen. I'm betting "no" since it's 34 degrees at 5 a.m. --- but we'll see.

 The forecast --- a day or two of rain --- motivited me to do something I've been threatening to do for a while late yesterday: Drive down south of Russell to take a look at the new Sportsman's Cabin.

This is a project of the Russell Sportsman's Club, an organization that's been around longer than I have, and replaces the original cabin --- a long, low wooden structure that had deteriorated beyond the point of redemption.

The original cabin had what I remember as a huge (it most likely wasn't that huge; 55 or so years ago I was considerably smaller) brick fireplace in its north wall. Since the cabin always was available for public use, I have many memories of gatherings there, especially of those in the fall when leaves had turned in the surrounding timber and a blazing fire looked and felt good.

So it's nice to know that there's still a Sportsmen's Cabin, even though this incarnation is considerably spiffier than the one I remember.

 

The club, always a strong supporter of boy scouting, still owns a long finger of timbered land along the south bluff of the Chariton River Valley. This was modestly developed for scouting activities, including popular winter encampments. There was even a "ski slope," more accurately described as a big sledding hill since it takes a good deal of optimism to propose that downhill skiing is an Iowa sport.

Anyhow, a lot of work has been done recently, the shooting range was in use when I drove in late Saturday afternoon --- and I like continuity (some of the time).

                                                                                     

                                                                                   

I also drove into both the west and east units of the adjoining DNR-managed Colyn Area, somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 acres that now form part of the Chariton River Greenbelt, but didn't linger long because it was threatening to get dark and there was a "this gate is locked at 3 p.m." sign on the entrance gate to the west unit --- probably an idle threat, since it still was wide open, but who knows?

This pretty area was developed when I was a kid, swallowing the farm of Isaac and Minnie Colyn --- hence the name. Draconian shifts in the landscape that probably wouldn't be used today were buldozed through the area then, and the old wildly meandering Chariton River was ditched between dikes, cutting off a couple of miles of northerly meanders to create two artificial marshes, one north of the river and the other south. We used to skate on the south marsh in the winter (I grew up just south of it), when there actually was water there.

Erosion infill and drought have dried the marshes now and the whole prospect is a little unsettling if you think about how it used to be. But I'll go back another day --- when the sun's shining and there's no possibility of getting locked in --- and do more looking around.