Old Friends

The prairie rose is a lovely but remarkably hardy bush that blooms throughout the Midwestern plains where Margaret McDonald spent most of her life. My mother belonged to the prairie, but hard times forced her family from the land. Like many of her generation, she would spend decades searching for another way to live.

As a kitten, Mourek never walked, he just hopped from place to place, like a wind-up toy! But once he learned to walk and grew into his ears and his feet, he was a big, good-looking dude who tipped the scales at 22 pounds and struck terror in the hearts of the neighborhood dogs.

My father's most prized posession was a cherry red 1980 Dodge Sportsman B-100. She was fully equipped with every possible gadget from a television set to a portable toilet. The interior was as red as the exterior, right down to Margaret's handmade red-and-white striped sheets. In fact, Floyd bought so many trinkets for that van that Jan nicknamed her "Consuela."