The Jarginson Family Saga part 1

Here is a story I wrote probably around 7 years ago... It's really long, so I'll do it in parts, if you want to keep reading it!

THE JARGINSON SISTERS AND BROTHERS

        CHAPTER ONE-- MEET THE JARGINSON FAMILY
    Once upon a time, There lived a little girl whose name was Elizabeth. Nearly everyone called her 'Lizzie.' Her last name was Jarginson. Lizzie was sitting in the large flower garden of the 'Circle C' ranch. It was almost spring in the year of 1910.
Lizzie was resting after a long day of roping calves.
Suddenly, she felt a tug on her overalls. She looked down to see one of her younger sisters, Annie. Annie was 5. She had turned five 2 weeks ago.
    “Hey, Ann!” Lizzie said.
    “Lizzie, Ma wants you.” Annie said, pulling Lizzie to her feet.
    “Oh, all right!” Lizzie laughed as Annie pulled her along.
    “What is it, Ann?” Lizzie asked. Annie ignored her and trotted along the path towards the house, tugging Lizzie along.
Lizzie pried Annie's hand off her arm when they got to the house and charged inside to find Mama standing in the sun room inside the door, all dressed up in her best dress and sun bonnet.
    “Going to town, aye?” Lizzie asked as half a dozen children rounded the corner and came up.
    “Yes, Lizzie, dear. And, there's something else. Your aunt Eleaner is dreadfully sick, and your Papa and I arranged a quick train ride to the country. We are going to take care of her and her children until she is well. Of course, this means that you will have to take care of your younger siblings during the day, since Opal and Emma work.” Mama explained.
    “But, Mama! I'm only 12! And I have so many younger siblings!” Lizzie exclaimed.
    “Lizzie, dear, there's only 5! And, James and Sadie would help too, so that leaves 3 young ones and 3 of you to take care of them.” Mama said.
Opal was 16 and Emma was 14. They both worked part time at the general store about 2 miles from home.
Sadie was 11, James 10, and the younger three were, Nellie, 9, Archie, 6, and Annie, 5, whom you have already met. In all, including Lizzie, there were 8 children.
        CHAPTER TWO-- THE TRAIN WRECK
That day and the next passed without trouble, and Papa and Mama were still on the train.
    “Mary Ann?” Papa said.
    “Hmmm?” Mama asked, waking from her sleep.
    “How many children do John and Eleanor have now?” Papa wondered.
    “Um, five, with the new baby. There's Nora, who's 9, Cara, 7, Daisy, 5, and Candy, 3. And Johnny is the baby.” Mama said. Suddenly, the train jerked to a stop.
    “What was that?” Mama asked.
    “I'm not sure. I'll head to the first car and find out.” Papa said, rising from his seat.
    “All right.” Mama said. She continued her knitting then.
When Papa reached the front car, he questioned the engineer.
    “The tracks stopped suddenly, and it's a cliff. The train is about to topple. I've called through the radio for everyone to get out of the train. You'd best hurry out, too, sir.” The engineer sounded as if this happened every day.
    “Uh, sure.” Papa hurried back to Mama, and just as the first few people jumped out of the train, it rocked, and tumbled helplessly over the cliff. Mama screamed as Papa and she were swept out of the train car door opening and fell the rest of the way down the cliff.
    Meanwhile, the eight children were safe in the farm house. Suddenly, a galloping horse arrived and the man knocked at the door. It was a police officer.
    “Where is Opal?” Sadie whispered.
    “In her bedroom, uh, I'll answer the door.” Emma, trembling, opened the door.
    “Hello, sir, any thing you need?” Emma said.
    “Ah, yes. Mind if I come in? Are all of your siblings here?” The officer asked.
    “Come in, we're all here, except for our parents.” Emma said. The officer seemed to choke and he turned away for a moment.
    “Is there anything wrong, sir?” Emma wondered.
    “Ah, indeed, there is, Miss.” The officer said quietly.
    “Oh, dear.” Emma said.
    “What is wrong, may I ask?” Emma added.
    “Well, can all of your sisters and brothers be here?” The officer asked.
    “Yes, sir. Nellie, go get Opal. The rest of you sit down on the couch. Sir, you may sit down, too, if you would like.” Emma said. Nellie hurried down the hall towards Emma and Opal's bedroom.
Three minutes later, Nellie and Opal came in.
Once every one was seated, the officer spoke.
    “Children, I am sorry to say.........But.. Children, the train that your parents were riding on fell over a cliff. Everyone in the train was killed.” The officer said sadly. The younger ones burst into tears and Opal, Emma and Lizzie stared at the officer, stunned.

The Words "National Disaster"

I'm sorry I haven't been posting. I have been very busy and out of ideas. Finally, in desperation I turned once again to some of my old journals. Interestingly I found a void. It's where this story takes place.Oh and Grace, I'd be interested in hearing your perspective on this--especially if you think I was accurate. After all, I'm not the only one who's lived through a National Disaster! :)

What do you think of when you hear the words “National Disaster”? Big, scarred eyes, houses thrown all over the place, FEMA performing dangerous rescue missions? Something that happens to those people, way over there?  So did I until one knocked on my back door.

I was ten at the time and living on farm attached to the side of a hill in Southeastern Kansas. A hill? Yes, I said that right, there are hills in Kansas. In fact my town had a whopping two hills.

I didn’t think much farther than that I was glad the drought was over when one afternoon the sky opened up and started drenching everything within sight. After delightedly splashing in a few mud puddles, life went on. I still had baby and grown goats to feed and milk plus eggs to hunt for, there was nothing new. The next morning things were a little more exciting. We had gotten so much rain that our creek and the creek between us and town a mile away, had both flooded and covered the road that ran by our house. That happened every spring though and after a few days it would go down and we could once again get to town. There was one unusual difference, my Dad was out of town and due back that day—could he make it through the water in our 4-wheel-drive pickup?

Being ten I didn’t worry much about my all powerful Dad until later that night when I climbed, dripping, out of a hot shower and looked out the window. It was still raining dogs and cats and there was water pouring off our hill in torrents. I had never seen that before and obviously my older siblings hadn’t either because they were standing outside in rain coats watching it with frowns on their faces. I put on my pajamas and went back to the window. Water was pouring off the hill as fast as ever, in fact, it was filling up the creek so much that our entire field was flooded and the wet brown line was creeping towards the machine shed. Now that was a lot of water.

My siblings came in shedding water droplets with their rain clothing and discussing whether or not they should move or ancient tractor “Alice” (an antique and cantankerous Alice Chalmers)and other machinery out of the machine shed and into the rain or leave them be and hope the water didn’t get as high as the machine shed. If they took the tractor out it would have to be left unprotected on our driveway where it could rust even more than it already was. Besides, the water was still three or four feet away from the base of the shed, it was extremely unlikely that it would get high enough to do any damage to Alice. They wished my Dad were home to make the difficult decision for them but that could not be helped. He wasn’t expected home until pitch dark, ten. Then they informed me they had moved the baby goats, which were largely my responsibility, out of the field to higher ground. I thanked them and said good night.

I climbed into bed that night happy to hear the rain on the roof; such a wonderful way to be lulled to sleep! Pitter, patter. Pitter, patter. The thought suddenly ran through my mind “Great Scot! Is it ever going to stop?”

Granted the rain stopped eventually. Sometime in the night even, but there are more than a hundred people who would have appreciated it stopping sooner. Five of those were my family.

I woke up first the next morning which was unusual. 6 A.M. was not my sunshine time especially on a Saturday morning when I was allowed to sleep to the unheard of 7 A.M. but something told me I should wake up and check on things. I looked out my window and gulped. I must be having one of those dreams where dreamed up woke up and began my day and then I really woke up to find myself still in bed. Oh well, there was always the old pinch test. I applied it to my thy and yelped. I was awake after all.

My heart started beating, were my eyes telling me the truth and was I really the first to discover this or had the rest of my family all seen and simply gone back to bed. I tiptoed down stairs and peeked out our large glass doors.  Uh-huh. Not cool. I went back up stairs across from my bedroom to my parents. My Dad ( who I forgot to mention, I called “Papa”. ) had made it through in the night and there he was sleeping peacefully. He didn’t know, I was sure of that.

“Uh, Papa?” My voice cracked as it’s still liable to do in tense moments. I cleared my throat as he rolled over and slowly opened his blue eyes that matched mine. “The machine shed is—ehem—er—flooded.”

He flew out of the bed and before I new it was hoping around with one leg in his pants.

My Mom sat up. She was a light sleeper and had heard it all.

“What do you think you’re going to do Lane? She said it’s flooded. Isn’t it too late?”

“Well, maybe I can still get the tractor out, you know it’s a long ways off the ground.”

“Uh—“ my voice cracked again. “I can barely see the roof; I don’t think you can get the machine shed out.”

He stared at me. I was ten but not prone to exaggerate…well, not too much.

“Show me.”

I obeyed.

“She’s right Marcia.” Was all he said.

So what do you do when half of your land is under water and as far as you can see so everything beyond that? My family had a rule which said, “If you’re not working on Saturday then you need to be doing school.” There isn’t much work you can do if 9 of your acres are under ten foot of water—we did school. No big scarred eyes from this disaster.

About two that afternoon the water was still rising somehow though the rain had mostly stopped. We had checked on all our neighbors who shared our island hill and looked curiously in the direction of town but there wasn’t much else to do so we just sat in our dark house reading. After a while we saw a boat with some black clad guys go zipping past our hill and slow way down. Across their backs were the letters F-E-M-A.  They seemed to be hesitating and after a little bit turned around and went back towards town. Interesting. FEMA is here. That means this is pretty bad…I wonder if anyone is in danger… We could see the others were all thinking the same thing and I got up and went to the glass doors gazing Westward across the expanse of brown water. A small movement on the brown surface caught my eye and I called my brother over to look at it. He shook his head and went to get the binoculars. It was a jet ski pulling a row boat with some people in it. It was coming from the direction of a house hidden behind some trees. We looked at each other. That would be the *Breaders. They would rig up something like that and go rescuing their neighbors. Good for them!

My brother and sister were soon bored with the inside life and began brain storming who on our hill had a canoe. They located on and paddled to town.

“What are you kids doing!!” they heard the angry voice of a man great them as they stepped on to dry land at the edge of town.

They looked up startled to see several FEMA guys and a television crew.

“Um—“

“What are you kids doing back there? Don’t go back there you hear me? You don’t know what’s back there! That’s no place for kids.” It was a FEMA guy.

“Um—“ they looked at each other uncertainly. “We live back there.”

All eyes turned on them.

“You live back there? You mean there are still people back there?”

“Uh—yes.”

“Why didn’t you evacuate?”

“We didn’t know we were supposed to and besides, our houses are all safe. There’s probably thirty of us back there including the people who live in that—“ pointing to a completely submerged house “—family. They are in their camper on our neighbors land.”

“Ah. Were glad to know that they got out safely. We didn’t want to go back there and risk hitting a barbwire fence and scratching the bottom of the boat.”

“The bottom of your boat…—Yes well we’re all safe. Thanks for asking.” They hopped back in the canoe and began rowing away. No dangerous FEMA rescues here. Nope, it was a neighbor who rigged up something to get an older couple off their roof.

“Hey! You kids seen on your TV this has been declared a National Disaster?”

My siblings looked at each other. Our power lines were under water and we were very much out of power. No, they hadn’t seen it on TV.

To make a long story short, no houses were thrown around; they just all got free remodeling jobs. Brown carpets, brown walls, brown stripes on their outsides, ect. Everything was brown except for some very delighted trees and plants. And guess what? It didn’t happen to those people over there. It happened to me, normal everyday me.

*Some names have been changed to preserve the privacy of these individuals.

Since No One Else Is Posting...

Here are just a few little poems I wrote a long time ago when I first started my writing venture. Some of them are really dumb, but here they are anyways...


There was an old man,
Who lived in a pan.
A giant came,
Who had no name,
And took the pan,
Then dumped the man,
And the poor old man,
Who lived in the pan,
Was never heard from again.

There once was a frog named Wuddle,
Who lived in a very big puddle.
A dog named Cuddle,
Jumped in the puddle,
And carried poor Wuddle away.

It is not theirs or his or hers.
It is not mine because it's yours.

The world is full of dangers.
The world is full of fun;
And since it's full of strangers,
Be careful, Everyone.

Miss Kaytlin loves to read her books.
She also draws and writes and cooks.
Though if she tried to sew a dress,
I'm sure she'd have an awful mess!

I just really don't understand why,
Uncombed hair always makes my mom sigh,
Oh but maybe someday,
When my hair has turned gray,
Perhaps then I will just let it fly.

First Snow

This isn't the best, but I though you might enjoy it.

Two angels lay on their bellies in the clouds, peeking down at human life below. The first angel, Mike, was thick and broad shouldered. He had a very serious look upon his face. His golden eyes pierced the cloud cover below, searching. The second angel, Gabe, was smaller but shared the same twinkling eyes. A yawn escaped his mouth; and he stood, stretching his arms and wings. His gaze turned to a sleeping cherub, her golden head resting on a pillow of cloud. Chuckling to himself, Gabe grasped his own pillow and tiptoed toward the dozing Goldilocks. He raised it high before launching it at the mound of curls. The cherub let out a yelp and withdrew a tiny sword. Upon seeing Gabe, she let her flashing sword slide back into it's sheath and grasped her own pillow, a determined grin on her face. Gabe's eyes widened, and he let out a whoop, starting heaven's pillow war. Unfurling his wings, he lept into the air, the cherub at his heels. Other angels, cherubs, and seraphs joined the fray, giggles and laughter echoed off the clouds. Someone's pillow burst, releasing a puff of white. More giggles erupted and soon all heaven lay beneath a powdered mess.

Mike lay motionless, ignoring the play around him. Not a single feather on his wing twitched. His eyes were fixed on the life below the clouds. Temporarily dropping out of the game, Gabe hovered to his friends side. “Why don't you come play, Mike?”

Mike barely turned his head to look up at his friend. “We have all eternity to do things like that” He motioned towards the pillow fight. “But this...” he said, pointing towards the earth. “...is temporary. Besides, see what damage you have caused below?”

Gabe peeked through the cloud cover, eyes colliding with a world of white. The tiny flakes from their pillows frosted the ground. More flakes tumbled from the clouds, dusting the trees. “It's not so bad,” Gabe insisted. “I think it's kind of pretty!”

“Yeah, but what will they think?” This time Mike pointed towards white-covered tents where tiny faces peeked out. One bold human stepped from the safety of his home to examine. He gathered a bit of the stuff in his hands and watched it shrink in size, a pool of water in its place. His eyes widened, and he frantically waved his arms, motioning for the others to join him. Laughing, the children burst from their tents, leaving a trail of footprints wherever they went.

“See, Mike, they like -” Gabe's words were cut short when something smacked him from the clouds. Pillow in hand, Mike chuckled, watching his friend's hollering form tumble towards the earth. White flakes flew back into the air when Gabe's flailing form plopped into a snowdrift. Laughing, he shook the flakes from his wings and lept into the air.

Meanwhile, a young girl spotted a blur of white drop from the sky and bounce back into the air. Curious, she plodded over to investigate. Stumbling across an oddly shaped canyon in the snow, she shrieked for her father to come see. “Papa, Papa!” she giggled. “Come see what I have found!” Her father dashed to his daughter's side. “Look,” she said, grasping his hand. “A snow angel!”

You Gotta Shake It!

Last night as I was laying on my bed trying to think of something to write, my eye fell on one of my very old journals and I picked it up and began skimming it. I ran across this story and decided I would type it up for the blog even though it is really short. And yes, this really did happen to me.

You Gotta Shake It!

Tap, tap. I felt the light application of a finger on my shoulder and surprised I turned from examining Wal-Mart’s supply of cottage cheese. An old lady was towering over me and bending down so her face was very close to mine. She smiled pleasantly.

“You gotta shake it!”

“Uh, shake it?” I was totally lost.

“Yeah! When you are picking out what type of cottage cheese you want, shake it.” She picked one up enthusiastically and shook it in her ear.

“O-k-a-y. Thanks.” I snatched a carton of cottage cheese and tried to edge away.

“You gotta shake it. Make sure that it’s not dry. You wouldn’t want to make it home to your kiddies with a dry carton of cottage cheese would you?”

I blinked hard. I was thirteen and looked thirteen. Did she really think I was shopping for my kids? Dry cottage cheese? What! Who had ever heard of such a thing? This lady was nuts! Sweet, but nuts!

“Uh- yeah thanks!” I was almost a foot away now.

She reached out and grabbed my arm. “No! You haven’t shaken it yet! That might be dry!”

I looked at the carton in my hand, strongly doubting it.

“Now, let me see you shake it!”

I obliged.

“Did it sound wet?”

“M-hm.”

“Oh good, now your kiddies can have some yummy cottage cheese when you get home to them.”

“Yeah! Thanks!” I gasped and vanished into another isle.

P.S...This is also our 100th post! Yay for L.A.R.K.!

New Page!!

You may have seen that we added a  new page--thus adding a new element to our blog! I'm excited about it but I likely shot myself in the foot (seems like I do that a lot these days!). I don't have time to write stories and read books much less add write reviews about the books I read! Anyway, hopefully the other authors will do a good job and I can ride along on their coat tails. Feel free to go check out our new page and leave feedback!

Book Review Page Coming Up and Helpful Links!!

Forgive me for not having written anything recently. I have been very busy doing some leg work for this blog. Hopefully the results will be that we soon will have a new page containing book reviews!

In the meantime I thought I would share a few links that has been very helpful to me. The first one is from Go Teen Writers, a blog that I greatly appreciate in general.

http://goteenwriters.blogspot.com/2013/03/its-release-dayfree-gift-gtw-self.html#comment-form

These are links to baby name sites. I know Grace and I both have used them to come up with character names.

http://www.babynames.com/

http://www.babycenter.com/baby-names

This is my personal favorite.

http://www.behindthename.com/

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, just simply offering you some options! Sorry for all the baby stuff on the sides of the sites. Sometimes you have to deal with annoying things to get a good result.

And last but not least, a translator. Yes I said that correctly, "translator". I love to throw bits of other languages into my stories so this site has become indispensable. Sometimes, I also use it to come up with names by simply typing in what I want the word to mean and then choosing from my options.

http://translate.google.com/

Hope you can find these useful! I hope to get back to writing on here soon but no promises!