And there were people in the world who thought all farmers were bewhiskered gents forever chewing on a succession of straws, and their wives drab creatures always standing forlornly at the doorways of shanties. Neal was having the experience of a puncture a half-mile from home with the exasperating knowledge that he had taken the jack out to use for his father’s car and failed to put it back. With a few choice epithets directed exclusively toward himself, he started down the highway toward home,–a paved highway now. And although he gave no thought to that fact, so used was he to it, if he had done so, he could have called the roll of the various periods through which that highway had progressed. Dirt road from which all sign of green had vanished.
The trees along the river banks were not visible,–only a great solid white wall traced the way of the stream. All day and all night with the snow blowing under the door and seeping in through every crack, Amalia tried to make her supply of wood last. In the afternoon of the second day she went to bed with Emil clasped in her arms, both fully dressed, and with the quilts wrapped about them. If only they could have foreseen how bad it was to be, Fritz would have stayed here with them for safety and for company. Many times she thought of her father and Herman, thankful that the blizzard must have come on before they started home. To Herman there was no need to speak ever of the prettiness of things.
Sometimes Amalia was wishing with all her might that Fritz were here to talk the queer situation over with her. Then, remembering Fritz’s hard time with the English and the things some of the neighbors were saying, she was glad he was not here to be hurt. It had seemed unbelievable that war could touch her again.
With hands that trembled with their eighty-six years, she lifted a tray and took out two quilt blocks. Strangely enough in the dark of its shelter, the pink had not faded,–only the white was yellowed. A needle in one of the blocks was brown with rust so that it crumbled to the touch. This she removed and replaced with a bright one from the cushion on her bureau. Then from the box she took a darkly tarnished thimble and fitted it to her tiny finger. She opened the bottom drawer of her dresser and removed an unwieldly-looking bundle wrapped in very old muslin, yellowed and worn.
In 1987, the original owners sold the Starbucks chain to their former director of marketing Howard Schultz, who rebranded his Il Giornale coffee outlets as Starbucks and quickly began to expand the company. Also in 1987, Starbucks opened its first locations outside of Seattle, in Waterfront Station in Vancouver, British Columbia, and in Chicago, Illinois. By 1989, there were 46 Starbucks stores located across the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, and the company was roasting more than 2,000,000 pounds of coffee annually. Maryland white-tailed deer begin breeding in October and continue to breed through mid December. The shortening of day length triggers the breeding season. Most does become pregnant during the first half of November.
When Herman came, he looked sober, but tried to make light of it, explaining the difference between these Pawnees and the Cheyennes who were well worth being feared. From the bedroom one emerged with a pillow which they handed back and forth to examine, tearing a long slit in it to see the inside. Apparently they were highly amused at finding feathers which now floated forth into roofsmith roofing the room in a fine snowstorm of goose-down. As molasses still lingered on their fingers and lips, they could not rid themselves of the feathers which clung tenaciously to both. From that time they began a systematic search of the cabin, handling a dish or pan, uncovering articles at will, drinking from the jug of precious molasses which was the only sweetening Amalia possessed.
It was only in the light of after years that they looked fussy, like old ladies bewigged and rouged and loaded with jewelry. So now Matthias and Ida were to have their new home. It was of red brick and sat far back from the wooden sidewalk of a popular residential street, where it seemed to draw its red skirts away from the splashing of mud all spring and the clouds of fine dust rolling in through the hot midwestern corn-curing weather. It was rather awe-inspiring in its massiveness, dwarfing as it did the modest homes on both sides of it. There were ornate trimmings over the long, narrow windows, and a tower high above the second floor could have served as an excellent Indian lookout if there were need, for from its lofty interior one might gaze over the undulating prairie as far as man’s vision could function.