Some “Pensamentos e Histórias” As We Approach the Celebration of Mom Louise Katherine (Kneuper) Martin’s 94th-Birthday-/Mothers Day-Celebration (5/12/2018) by paul bain martin
1.SUSTAINABILITY. Genetically and environmentally St. Louise Katherine (Kneuper) Martin was probably the most influential factor in the development of my personal concepts and actions … of Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology*, and within paulpeaceparables.com and a work in progress–“Games We Play: More Than 200,000 Years of Living Truthfully & of Searching for Truth”.
* http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2016/09/24/summary-reportphotos-of-my-2400-mile-ride-for-regeneratingconserving-resilient-sustainable-community/ http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2015/12/15/simple-solution/ http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2015/12/01/live-like-the-poor-pact-of-the-catacombs-the-meaning-of-human-existence-technology-frosts-the-road-not-taken-and-truth/
2.HIGHER EDUCATION. My grades in Catholic & public school in Devine were fairly good, and I was competitive, but I had little savvy about higher education as I approached high school graduation. I intended to attend Texas A&I simply because many others from Devine went there. Then when my high school counselor, Mrs. Whitfield suggested Texas A&M would be a better school, I applied, and I received a scholarship award from TAMU which was $50/semester higher than A&I was awarding me. Therefore, I attended A&M. … However, during all of my fish year, even though there were many good times, I was mostly pretty miserable with the regimented/disciplined, virtually all-male-university, … i.e., I wasn’t particularly fond of (“Hut, two, three, four, … I [don’t] love”) the Cadet Corps!
I DID regularly get scrumptious cinnamon rolls–with plenty of pecans, raisins, vegetable oil, and icing–through the mail wrapped in cellophane and aluminum foil from St. Louise. … I suppose this is largely what carried me through my fish year at Aggieland!
[In her lovely subtle ways, Mom–who had a formal education of to the eighth-grade, encouraged many others to further their formal education to the extent possible.]
3.A WHITE SPORT COAT. When I first had plans to go to the high school prom and didn’t have a dress coat/suit to wear, I wanted so much to buy a white sports coat like some of my classmates had. Instead Mom said she’d make one. I must confess that I was sort of embarrassed and ashamed that I was going to have to wear a homemade coat.
What a young idiot! … St. Louise took some white LINEN!! cloth, an old Singer sewing machine, her super brain, and her sewing skills, and made the most perfect and beautiful sports coat seen in any prom! (Here’s Marty’s hit of that period, released about a week and a half after my little sister was born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C_RWToGrCw .)
Mom WAS quite the seamstress! When my brother Dr. John Russell Martin announced his intention to apply to various medical school in Texas, Mom made him a very professional-looking, sharp double-breasted suit. … Of course over the years she sewed many different types of clothing, curtains, grocery bags, and quilts for her kids, grandkids, and others! Recently she sewed a heavy-duty bag for an old seed spreader I have.
4.SWIMMING AND SEX! Mom taught me to swim and about sex by reading to me from books. She doesn’t swim, but read instructions to me and my siblings of how to kick and do arm-strokes from outside of Uncle Peggy’s small concrete irrigation tank up on what was a hill from west of where the Triple-C Restaurant near I-35 now exists.
Mom and Dad had six kids, … but Mom READ to me about sex from some little Catholic pamphlets. As I previously mentioned, I did well in school … However, I AM a slow learner! It took classmate Jimmy Weber and others, to explain to me the connection of all the business of male-fish depositing sperm over eggs and other animal-sex behavioral information Mom read me, what I saw regularly on our on place & environs occurring with the cattle, hogs, chickens, birds, insects, etc.–and human sexual behavior.
5.SANTA LOUISE CLAUS. Dad always took us to see Christmas lights on Christmas Eve, and when we got back, Santa Claus left some wonderful Christmas presents each Christmas Eve. However, my Christmas education was more complete one Christmas when I was less than 10 years of age. I was quite sick and stayed back home while the rest of the crew went to see Devine’s beautiful holiday-decor. I learned to my delight that Santa Claus’s more complete name was Santa Louise Claus!
6.BOA COMIDA!!! Oh how I loved Santa Louise Claus’s Christmas goodies, especially the date-nut loaf and the homemade eggnog!
(Some related “Christmas stories”: http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2015/12/13/some-alton-and-louise-martin-christmas-stories-ca-1946-66-and-beyond-by-paul-b-martin-69-yrs-young-oldest-of-6-brothers-sister/ )
7.BOM CIDADÃO. Mom was/is always a good neighbor and friend of all. She was/is the epitome of “Positively Ethical Ethical Applied COMMUNITY Ecology”! … When I visit her, she loves to go to the Devine senior citizens home and visit old friends. … One of my very first memories of being with Mom and neighbors was going down the road to visit and have a meal with Mrs. Steenken and her adult son near our 140-acre family farm three-miles NE of Stockdale when I was less than ca. 4 years of age. (The visit stuck I think because Mrs. Steenken’s son placed about 10 green English peas on a knife, and then let them roll down the long surface of the knife into his mouth.)
Family-story-laden cousin Wanda Jo has often said that if Mom caught Dad flirting with another woman, Mom quickly made this woman her best friend. Mom was/is truly a POSITIVELY ETHICAL applied community ecologist and astute family-/community-politician!
8.PROTECTOR/DOCTOR. Once in late elementary school years, brother Lawrence, good friend Greg Jasik, and I were sling-shooting pebbles from a pile near the roadside of Highway 173 where Triple-C Restaurant is now. I decided to aim for a car, hit it squarely in the side, and to our consternation the car pulled off the side of the road, stopped, and the driver got out and hurried toward us. We ran to the back of the house, and met the driver at the front door behind St. Louise’s skirts. She fielded the driver’s complaint, cooled him down, and scolded us. (But as usual, it was mischievous-looking Gregory who got most of the blame.)
(A related piece is at: http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2018/04/30/confessions-and-changes-in-values-and-socio-ecological-actions/ … Also, some Lawrence stories are at: http://bannedbookscafe.blogspot.com/2010/06/lawrence-devine-warhorse-aggie-clark.html )
………………..
Mom often had to doctor our injuries resulting from carelessly running loose in our early youth in Mr. Gutierrez’s, Schroeter’s, Uncle Peggy’s, and Mr. Bowman’s pastures, and from working and playing around our own ca. 5 acres covered with trees, sheds, pens and animals. Many wounds got merthiolate and mercurochrome applied by Mom. Nail and mesquite-thorn punctures were soaked in kerosene and/or had raw salt-pork applied via a bandage wrap. When we were seriously congested, Mom would slather Vicks-Vaporub (laden with menthol) on a thick cloth, and place it on our chest use below our nose. Also, I remember the big larger than silver dollar-sized sulfur tablets Mom used to give us when we were sick while living at The Farm near Stockdale. I actually liked them, and would sneak some to eat out of the medicine chest from time to time. These gave my gas such a great aroma!! (Once when Lawrence, Ray Navarro, and Dooner, and I were playing chase up high on big horizontal live oak tree branches over at the Keilman’s, I slipped and fell and my thigh caught and was gashed by a picket fence below. This time Mom by-passed the home remedies and took me straight to Dr. Peter’s.)
I could add some stories about times I got into some fights, and Mom’s saintly way of dealing with such. But I think it is best if I spare you some of the details of my sinful ways.
9.FOOD PROCESSOR-/COOK-EXTRAORDINAIRE. Mom would quick-fry and then steam-/simmer-cook in good gravy the cotton-tails, squirrel, and dove, & quail we would bring in after hunts in the pastures around us at what is now the Triple-C Restaurant location of our home. She (and Dad) were good cooks, and Mom made cottage cheese and butter (or we did under her supervision) from the cow’s milk we brought in mornings and evenings (from which, by the way, she mostly strained cow hairs and manure). Mom also made wonderful dewberry and grape jellies (and of course great dewberry and pear cobblers and pies, and great homemade bread, bread pudding, and rice pudding).
Once Mr. Peña, a close neighbor from across Highway 173 who was a sort of renaissance man, gave Mom several gallons of horse-mint honey. She tried to get us to put it on biscuits and pancakes for breakfast, and rolls, white bread, & cornbread at other meals, … but it was really nasty! … So Mom began to make batches of cookies with this horsey-smelly/”tasty”. Amazingly the horse-mint taste was transformed into deliciousness when baked in the cookie doughs, and we six kids made short work of what become truly tasty honey!
10.BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY. After we boys began to take off to places distant from Warhorse town, and to get married–and weren’t available to castrate pigs, brother Charlie taught Mom to castrate, and from then on it was Dad “a-holding”, and Mom doing the surgery. (I NEVER saw softy-Dad Alton castrate a pig!)
Also, when deemed necessary Mom would take a load of hogs for sale up to the Swift & Co. or the SA Stockyards in the old 55-Chevy Bobtail. (She tells the story of cleaning the bed of the truck over at one of her old girl-friends from SA, washing the poop onto her friend’s yard in the SA neighborhood, and that her old girl-friend’s neighbors weren’t too appreciative!)
At times Dad would bring home salespeople from the Mill to have dinner (noon; supper was the evening meal) with us, without giving Mom a heads up. And if anyone were working for him or stopped by to visit … and were around at dinner, he would invite them in for a meal. Moreover, he didn’t discriminate regardless of ethnicity or creed, social standing, etc., etc. And Mom would always have something good for these guests to enjoy!
………………………………….
After I got my driver’s license and felt I had to go out on some dates, I would always ask Mom–never Dad–for the keys to the car, and she almost always came through. Once I had a date with Kathy Wilkinson on a Saturday for a track meet in which I was running quarter miles and sprint relays. (I/we always got into the finals.) Dad was out working the hogs in back and Mom said he didn’t want me to use the car. I asked her for the keys to the bobtail truck, she gave them to me, and I headed to town in that hog-hauler (which we kept “clean”) to pick up Kathy and perform at the meet.
11.FAZENDO COMPRAS. During my time growing up in the Alton & Louise Martin family (or rather LOUISE & Alton Martin family), the areas we frequented most were close to Devine and Stockdale (with a few necessary travels for county livestock shows & driver’s licenses, etc. in our county seat of Hondo; FFA Officer training in Utopia, computer learning at St. Mary’s; and some fun school & family trips to the SA Rodeo, Landa Park, & Garner Park area). However, Mom would take us with her maybe once or twice per year to do some school shopping on the south side of SA at FedMart and Solo Serve.
12.TRUE ANGELS! REAL SAINTS!! Finally, my Dad Alton was a good man and a great father! Despite his Marine Master Sergeant-veneer and sometimes loud, cussing and demanding voice and infrequent use of corporal punishment (more on Lawrence than me), he had a soft heart and on occasions in arguments, I brought him to tears. … But despite the fact that Dad was such an example of how to truly live “sabiamente, simply, smally, slowly, sharingly through a relatively sustainable livelihood”, he wasn’t always one who made you feel warm and fuzzy.
(Once in an argument over my management of The Farm which I had purchased from him and Mom—or his perception of my lack of management, Dad brought me to tears with his piercing criticisms. This was just before Fathers Day one year, and Betsy and I left Devine for Seguin with the situation very much unresolved. … The next day Dad was miserable over the situation–and of course so was I. Mom told Dad, “You know what you have to do.” Rarely did they ever come to visit us in Seguin, but that day they traveled over to see us, and Dad apologized! Of course I really felt like a heel for not doing so first. … But the moral of the story is they don’t make them better than St. Louise. Moreover, they don’t make them better than St. Alton; he chose wisely to marry St. Louise!)
…………………….
When I visit Mom I feel a peace and tranquility, perhaps as if I were back in her womb!
(Sister Linda & brother-in-law Tim have, by moving in with and caring for her, allowed Mom to remain in her convenient, secure, & comfortable home on 5 acres under the live oaks in Devine; Tim & Linda are SUPER-SAINTS TIM & LINDA!) )
[There are probably additional St. Louise-stories from the “history” I put together for the family when Mom and Dad had their 50th Wedding anniversary. I’ve misplaced my copies; however, Linda, cousin Patricia Fanning, and others say they do still have copies.]