Ryder News for Oct. 22, 2020
It seems everyone knew who the Karna boys were in that sort of a Mystery Photo I had in my column last week! Shelly Otteson Sherven said she used to babysit for them! I neglected to mention in last week's news that Caleb Karna was the groom in the picture and he married Trina Howell. I just found out that they have bought the Elmer Wolff farm west of Ryder and that’s where they will be living.
I’m still in the process of moving and throwing lots of things away and putting some in boxes for a rummage sale next year. I can’t believe all the stuff that I have accumulated in the last 44 years at my farm home...wow! I had quite a bit of help again this last weekend with John, Staci and Johnny McGrath helping and my new neighbors across the alley, Ethan and Kayla Hill. Wes Ford, my neighbor across the street and 2 of his crew moved my freezer over and even unpacked it and brought the food over too. With all this wonderful help, we got a lot of the furniture moved and tentatively put into place, that is until I change my mind about the placement of things!!
Janice Eick sent me a message saying, “Sue. Loved the museum’s. We were there on Sunday. My son enjoyed the blacksmith display of his great grandfather’s. John (Warner) was very helpful. Thanks to all for keeping history alive.”
Calvary Outdoor Church service preached from a deer stand.
My son Rick Sprinkle had this to say about the Calvary Church service last Sunday, “Drive in church service, Pastor Jonathan Starks preaches the good word out of a DEER STAND!!! This is awesome!!!”
An amazing spooktacular display at the old Ryder school.
Jennifer and Greg Andreachi are going to be passing out Halloween candy at the Ryder school on Halloween starting at 5:30 p.m. I said I’d be sure to stop and get some for myself! Be sure to take your kids over for a Halloween treat! Jennifer has done an amazing job of decorating the old Ryder school with all kinds of spooky things!
There will not be a Halloween party this year in Makoti as in the past. The kids can just go trick or treating door to door. The people will have their lights on and be ready to pass out the treats.
Another writing from the mind of Gus Mueller. You can find his musings on Facebook under Gus’s Things and Stuff.
Gus Mueller’s leaves
LEAF ME ALONE!
It’s fall. The leaves are falling. 3,508,180! I’ll get back to that number shortly. Trees have always been a precious commodity in North Dakota. Just ask all the early settlers who built their houses out of sod. You readers who live in or near Ryder might take note of the large evergreen tree located in the yard just north of the Ryder gym—my mom’s old place. It was about 3 feet tall when she planted it in the spring of 1975, the year after my dad died. No, it was not in memory of my dad—for the first time ever, my mom had her hands on the checkbook and had always wanted a tree in the front yard! My dad would have never paid money for a tree.
As a child in Ryder, a pile of dry leaves translated to something to roll in, or to bury your dog in. And if you had to identify one single “smell of fall,” it certainly would be burning leaves. As a teenager, fallen leaves also were a source of income. It was common for the older ladies in Ryder to pay some young guy to come by and rake her yard (I know, I know, it easily could have been a young girl, but it wasn’t). My main annual employer was Tillie Lundahl, who lived in the house just west of the Ryder Tennis Court. She paid $2.00/raking. Doesn’t sound like much for an afternoon’s work, but to put $2.00 into perspective, in 1961 that would have bought 8 hamburgers at Nick’s café, or 400 root beer barrels at Butch’s Drug Store!
Today I live on Fox Island, along the Missouri River on the west side of Bismarck. Prior to the Garrison dam, most of Fox Island was undeveloped and was more or less a large sandbar, as it flooded regularly—a perfect growing area for cottonwoods. Most of the lots still have several giant cottonwoods on them. To be exact, ours has 42! Keeping up with the falling leaves is too big of a job for my wife and I, so we hire a professional lawn service. After having a beautiful leaf-free lawn five days ago when they left, I looked out today and saw that the yard is totally covered with leaves—a lot of leaves. How many you might ask? So did I.
I went out to several different places in the yard and sampled how many leaves were in one square foot—It varied from 62 to 138, with an average of 103/sq.ft. Our lot is nearly an acre (40,916 sq.ft.), and from this I subtracted the footprint of the house, garage, deck, and the ground covered by the driveway, leaving 34,060 of ground for leaf accumulation. So let’s do the math: 34,060 x 103 (leaves/sq.ft.) = 3,508,180. Yes, that’s correct, I’d predict that today there are over 3 million leaves in my yard.
As you probably know, with cottonwoods, when the leaves fall the stem stays attached, and the average length of a leaf + stem is 6 inches. If we were to take all the leaves (+ stems) in the yard and put them end-to-end using the 6-inch average, it would total 21,049,080 inches, or 1,754,090 feet. To give you a visual on this, if you were to take the leaves (with stems) in my yard, and placed them end-to-end on I-94 heading east from the Montana border, you would end up 8 miles short of the Minnesota state line!
All this probably sounds like I’m not too fond of fallen leaves, but I do have to acknowledge one thing—they always get prettier when they age, something that most of us can’t claim!
The Ryder Food Pantry is looking for farm eggs. chicken or duck eggs. we CAN accept these and we are very low on eggs. If you are cleaning out your freezers for fresh meat, think of us for donating your old meat (not too old). They also would LOVE honey, if you have older honey you haven't used.
There was a real good turnout for the flu shots at the Ryder Senior Center last Saturday. I was one of the first ones along with Harvey and Denise Johnson.
Upcoming Events:
Oct. 25...10:30 a.m. Ryder’s Calvary church will continue to hold Parking Lot Drive-In Church services at 10:30 every Sunday morning until further notice. Tune to 107.5 on your FM radio station to listen to the service.
Oct. 25...9 a.m. Worship Service at Hope Lutheran Church of Makoti.
Oct. 25...10:30 a.m. Worship Service with communion at Immanuel Lutheran Church of Roseglen.
Oct. 27...10 a.m. Bible Study at St. John’s Lutheran Church. Everyone is welcome.
