Archive for the ‘Sharing Memories 2012’ Category

by Sherry Stocking Kline
February 4, 2012

Many thanks to Lorine McGinnis Schultz for her “Sharing Memories” 52 Week Challenge!

And this is the Week 2 Challenge so now I’m only two (2) posts behind!

I went for my first airplane ride when I was just twenty years old.

I was terrified.  Terrified of heights, terrified of airplane crashes, terrified of flying through the air in something that felt no more substantial and not much bigger than a flying beer can with four people in it.

It all began during wheat harvest of 1969.  Bill, my husband Norman’s cousin, was just home from Vietnam and came to Kansas to help my in-laws with wheat harvest.

Bill was also still very much in the middle of Post Traumatic Stress syndrome, though no one knew it by that name then, and that’s how we ended up in a pint-sized plane after harvest flying over the Kansas wheat fields.

Bill was a medic in Vietnam. He had just come back from hopping in and out of helicopters to go to the battlefront to pick up and treat wounded and he told us one story, or maybe it’s the only one that sticks with me to this day, about going out to pick up and treat some wounded soldiers.

Bill climbed down the rope ladder on a mountain top in Vietnam to help treat and pick up wounded soldiers.  While he was climbing back up the ladder to the chopper the enemy fired on them, and the chopper took off, with Bill hanging on for dear life, dangling off the rope ladder.

Bill said that one minute he was just a few feet off the ground, then the chopper took off and suddenly he was dangling thousands of feet off the ground. Bill said that was scary enough, but even scarier than that was the knowledge that if they continued to receive enemy fire the men on the chopper would cut the ladder and let him drop to his death, sacrificing him to save the people on board.

That experience haunted him.  Retelling it haunts me.  I can see him hanging there, and I know that he’s terrified and praying they won’t cut the line and let him go.  There were many other experiences he wouldn’t even talk about.

Bill wanted to see if he could handle just going for an ordinary plane ride.  So when harvest was over, Bill rented a small plane, I’m pretty sure it was a Cessna 172 or 182, just big enough for four people to ride in, invited us along, and my husband and I found ourselves in the back seat watching the runway fly past and then suddenly watching the ground drop away.

Yikes!  I wanted to shout “I’ve changed my mind!  Stop! I want to get out!”

But by the time all those thoughts raced through my mind, the ground was far below us and I was trying to look ahead, look up, look to the side, look anywhere but down!

We flew around the county looking down at the farm fields multi-colored patchwork quilts of golden harvested and unharvested wheat, dark green milo, and the lighter green of pastures, all bordered by tan dusty roads and cut into crazy quilt patterns by creeks and rivers.

We flew over the small town we lived in, saw a birds-eye view of our home, and got close enough to Wichita, Kansas to see the planes going up and going down at the airport.

It was fun! It was scary!  I don’t know, or don’t remember, if the flight helped Bill to heal any of the bad memories or not, but I know that he seemed to enjoy the flight as much or even more than we did.

To date, I have taken three small plane flights and one helicopter flight and have yet to board a big jet to go anywhere!

by Sherry Stocking Kline
February 2, 2012

Many thanks to Lorine McGinnis Schultz for her “Sharing Memories” 52 Week Challenge!

Yes, I know that this is the Week 1 Challenge and yes, I know that makes me four (4) weeks behind!  Situation Normal for me!

I have four memories that have to be age 2 1/2 or prior.  While I’m not sure which one is the earliest, I think it is this one, as it ‘feels’ earlier than the other three. It’s certainly a  funny memory, though I was kind of scared at the time!

Memory #1.

I’m standing outside, just about 10 feet south of our farm home, barefoot, with my toes curling in the soft grass. I’m about 15 feet north of the outdoor water hydrant, and about forty feet north of the sand pile!

And honestly, I’m just a bit scared.  I’m watching my two (much) older teen age brothers who are chasing each other around and around the yard. (They are 14 1/2 and 16 1/2 years older than I, you see.)

In one hand, they hold water guns, each one shooting a steady and deadly stream of water! In the other hand they carry gallon cans (maybe coffee cans) of water for fast refills.   They are shouting and laughing and calling threats to one another as they shoot, dodge and refill their weapons of water annihilation.  They are loud, they are rambunctious, and they running around the yard and around me as they jump around to try to miss the other shooter’s stream of water.

I remember being terrified that they might ‘shoot’ me, too,  and yet I remember wishing that I had a water gun so that I could join in the fun.  I don’t remember any more than that tiny little vignette.  Our mom is not in my mind picture at all, so I don’t know if she was in the house or watching nearby, and I don’t remember how it began, or when it ended, or what any of us did next.  I wish I did.

2.  Another early memory I have is my mother and I stopping at my great-uncle’s home near Wellington and visiting with my great-grandfather, Roderick Remine Stocking, who passed away shortly before I turned three.  He was the only grandfather still alive when I was born.

Great-Grandpa Roderick was very tall, white haired, and very distinguished looking.  I think it was this combination that put this memory into my mind and also the reason it ‘stuck’ there.  I recall that we visited him twice, and then I remember going to his funeral, or perhaps the funeral home shortly before I turned three and seeing him there in the casket.  My parent’s had great respect for him and my mother was very fond of him and perhaps that is another reason that his memory has remained with me to this day.

My Gr-grandfather, Roderick R. Stocking

3. One of my favorite early memories is going to the hospital to see my brand-new little nephew, Daryl,  my oldest brother’s son!  He was born in February, when I was 2 1/2 years old and he soon became my best bud and partner in crime!  His little brother came along two years later, and by that time they had decided that children of our age were a danger for contagious illnesses and we were no longer allowed to visit hospitals and so we were not allowed to go see his little brother Brad, or his little brother Marlon, nor either of his little sisters, Tammy & Kris.

4.  Looking back over these memories, I remember one more that had to be when I was in the two-year-old range when Gary, the youngest of my two brothers had surgery on his hip in a Wichita hospital and Mama took me along to visit him in the hospital with her.  To bribe me, and to convince me to sit still, be quiet, and be good and patient, (not qualities I was long on as a two-year-old toddler) she bought tiny little toys for him to give me to play with while we were there.

Even so, I remember being bored quickly with the ‘be quiet’ and ‘sit still’ required in hospitals and I remember asking Mama “Can we go now?”