PrunePicker: June 2014

Monday, June 30, 2014

Rodeo Saturday Night!

I went to the Ruston Peach Festival Rodeo Saturday night. Saw the whole thing. I was there later than some of the regular rodeo fans. I was up until eleven. Saturday morning I walked at the park and then in the afternoon I walked the whole Peach Festival downtown. I walked 7500 steps. Twice my previous best of the year. Sorry about the photo quality. They do give the feeling of the rodeo.

This cowboy was riding the mechanical bull. He was off right after this photo.

Family singing in a pickup before the rodeo.

They sang good.

Color guard.

More opening ceremonies.

Wild horse riding.

Looks like a fun ride.

Have you ever heard of Skip Riussell?

Lots of kids chasing a little cow.

Barrel race.

Wild bull riding.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

2014 Ruston Peach Festival

Nice parade. No bands or horses however.

Hope they never need this swat car!

Corner of Alabama and Trenton.

Nice Tee shirt.

Sons of the Confederate Army still marching.

Drummers too.

They fired a volley. See the smoke?

Inside of City Hall.

Bless the Beta Sigma Phi

Crafts outside the City Hall

Gourmet food.

Classic Woody!

Car Show.

Free Concert at the Dixie.

My annual dish of peach ice cream. They put lots of fresh peach bites in it!

Saturday, June 28, 2014

(Widower 1) Being a widower was new to me.

I knew that I had to get busy. I had a strong feeling that when Jackie passed away that I was worthless and did not have a job or function. There did not seem to be any reason for my existence. I so missed the daily routine of caring for Jackie. I missed Jackie.

The first and easiest way to busyness was to become a sports fan. I went to Louisiana Tech and signed up for aqua-exercise classes. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for an hour. It cost $54 per quarter. I have not missed a quarter since the first class I went to in 2007. It is the best $54 that I spend. I get three units a quarter, I estimate that I will graduate in 17 years. I have a picture id student body card that gets me into all Tech sports events for free. The events; football, basketball (men and women). volleyball. baseball, softball, track, and soccer are all within 15 minutes of my home. It gives me access to a large room full of exercise machines. And an indoor track. I am still studying to be a sports fan but in the meantime I am having a fun time.

I got into genealogy. I wish that I had done this years ago. I have learned all sorts of things about my grandparents. Jackie and I drove our RV through New Haven, Connecticut several times. The grave of my 8th great grandfather is located there.

There were other spots that we were that figure in our ancestry. To me, it is very interesting and satisfying to know about your ancestors. I have slowed up on my genealogy study but it is there and is something that you can do sitting at a computer.

I have made many trips (a notable trip was to England and France, courtesy of my daughter Nancy)

I have made four driving trips to the West Coast and three to the East Coast. I have made many stops of interest on these trips. Such as; petrified forest, meteor crater in Arizona. Big Bend, TX, White Sands, Reagan Library, Nixon Library, Bush Library, and the Peabody Museum of Natural History to name a few.

I will cover some items in more detail in the next few blogs on my years (they are not over yet, some one will let you know when they are) as a widower.

Friday, June 27, 2014

(RV 42) The end of RVing for Jackie and I was when her health failed.

Jackie Ireton Monson. My wife lived 1925 to 2007. Her last three years was a battle with failing health. Jackie had good health for 78 years. Then a lot of things went wrong. She was so brave and suffered quietly. She was always that way. God Bless You, Honey. RIP.

We were in the middle of our 2003 four-month winter trip. We had been in Vegas for three weeks. We had plans to visit Nancy in Dana Point. But Jackie decided that she should go home. On January 1, 2004 we headed home. We were camped at the Thousand Trails Park in Morgan Hill when Jackie’s heart acted up. We went to the Gilroy Hospital. Jackie stayed there two days.

We made it home. Jackie's health and her kidneys failed and she was eventually forced to use a walker and a wheel chair. The night before her last trip to the hospital John and I built a ramp for her. She came out of the trailer and saw this sight.

She was impressed and said "oh my".

We pushed her in her wheel chair down the ramp. She did not come home again and did not get to ride the ramp going up. For Jackie it was a one way ramp.

Date	Action	Where	Remarks
1/2/04	Emerg. Rm, Admit	Gilroy Hospital. (2 days)	A-fib.
1/24/04	Emerg. Rm	Jefferson Hosp	Heart plus ?
2/20/04	Emerg. Rm	Jefferson Hosp	Heart plus ?
12/13/04	Emerg. Rm. Admit	Harrison Hosp. (4 days)	Kidney biopsy
12/18/04	Emerg. Rm Admit	Harrison (4 days)	Blood creatine was 3.3. Normal is 1.
1/7/05	Emerg. Rm	Jefferson Hosp	?
1/24/05	Emerg. Rm Admit	Harrison (2 days)	Weak
3/22/05	Emerg. Rm Admit	ILM Hosp (2 days)	?
10/5/05`	Admit	Harrison (8 days)	Start dialysis on Oct 9, 2005. First of 219 dialysis treatments before Jackie passed away.
12/29/05	Emerg. Rm	Jefferson	?
1/1/06	Emerg. Rm	Jefferson to Harrison (7 days)	X rays, scans, install a catheter in artery.
2/20/06	Fell. Broke left hip	Amb to Harrison (3 days) plus (12 days) in Port Orchard rehab.	Repair hip
3/9/06	Admit	Amb to Harrison (11 days) plus (10 days) in rehab	Pnuemonia
4/2//06	Fell	Broke T-9 vertebrae.
4/23/06	Bleeding	Harrison emergency
10/1/06`	Fly to Ruston, LA
11/8/06	Heart cauterization	Green Surgery, Dr Billy Smith
11/14//06	Emerg Rm (My notes say this was the 4^th Emerg Rm trip to Lincoln)	Lincoln Gen Hosp	Short of breath. Pain in left side
11/24/06	Emerg. Rm	Lincoln Gen Hosp
11/25/06	Emerg.	Lincoln Gen Hosp	Weak
1/13/07	Emerg. Rm	Lincoln Gen Hosp
1/24/07		Lincoln Gen Hosp	Bone scan
1/11/07	Samstown Casino	Shreveport	Jackie got Royal Flush. Last casino trip.
2/14/07	Emerg Rm Admit	Lincoln Gen Hosp. (17 days)	Found lungs are bleeding!
3/9/07	Amb to Emerg	Lincoln Gen Hosp	Weak, impacted bowel.
3/10/07	Jackie checked herself in after dialysis.	Jackie thought she should be in the hospital. She did not come home again.	There was no obvious emergency.
3/14/07	Called me in the middle of night	In great pain	Nurse could not help.
3/17/07	Pass away at 00:26. The doctor reported the cause of her death was Acute myoc infarction. (Heart failure)

My niche in the Blogosphere.

My blog is about me, my family, my interests, my opinions, and my daily activities. My name is Chuck Monson. I am a native born Californian. I worked in the oil exploration and production business and am now retired and living in Ruston, Louisiana. I am a 91 year old widower. I blog because I really enjoy it. Posting gives me a schedule and is a wonderful make work project. I like pictures, both the taking and looking at them. I really like old historic pictures. I enjoy a good photograph. I like putting pictures and text together in a way that is hopefully interesting to others and that will be interesting to me in the future. I like to be silly now and then. It is also putting my memories down on paper. My blog serves as a diary. I have used it for a reference quite a few times.

I do mix it up. Some of my blogs are “what I had for breakfast”, some are just pictures, some are items of genealogical nature, and there are items from my family history. I have a history of the Munson/Monsons in America. The study of this history has led me to the discovery of much American history that had previously been unknown by me.

I have had a lifelong interest in history, archeology, philosophy, religion, politics, architecture, technical subjects, music, food, and sports. I spend time every day reading blogs and posting to my blog. I do not pontificate on religion or politics because I do not consider myself wise enough to try to persuade others to my beliefs. My beliefs are quite nebulous anyway.

I was started on blogging by my late son, Christopher David Monson. Chris wrote the blog "snaggletoothie of the Loyal Opposition" There is a link to his blog above. I look at Chris's blog often. I have read most of his posts.

My adult years.

I married Jackie Lois Ireton in 1944 in San Luis Obispo, California. I met her on a blind date when I was taking amphibious training at Moro Bay. We have been blessed with four children, nine grand children, and nine great grandchildren. They are an exceptional group. I love them and I am proud of them.

I was an army combat engineer (infantry with shovels) during World War II. I served in the Pacific. I was wounded on Peleliu Island helping the marines on Bloody Nose Ridge. I was shot in both legs just above the knees. The wound locations indicate that I was not running away.

I received a BSME in 1950 from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. Jackie received a PHT. (pushing husband through.) I retired from oilfield work in 1985. Jackie and I moved into a fifth wheel trailer and enjoyed the RV lifestyle until Jackie's health failed. We traveled across the continent 3 1/2 times. We spent a summer as volunteers at Acadia National Park. For 17 years we helped build an Escapee RV park in Chimacum, Washington. Jackie passed away in 2007. We had been married 63 years. We were married on June 3, 1944. I still live in our fifth wheel trailer. It is parked in the yard of my daughter Kerry's home in Ruston, Louisiana. It is by far the nicest RV park that I have ever lived in.

My teen age years.

I was born in 1925 in Pomona, California. Pomona is on the east edge of Los Angeles County. It is halfway between Los Angeles and San Bernardino and halfway between the mountains and the beach. I thought that it was great to be an hour from snow covered mountains and an hour from the ocean surf.

In my days of growing up, Pomona was completely surrounded by orchards and truck farms. Oranges, lemons, grapefruit, peaches, apricots, olives, persimmons, and walnuts. Watermelons and strawberries. During the depression I had many meals from the orchards.

They say that you cannot go back home. That is true of the Pomona Valley of my youth. Because it is no longer there. Most of it is now covered with asphalt and stucco buildings.

My ancestors.

I am getting more and more into genealogy. I have a trove of information on the Munsons/Monsons. My father is buried in California. His father by adoption (He was an uncle.) is buried in Kansas. His natural father is buried in Kentucky. So I have two grandfathers. I have a grandfather and four great grandfathers buried in Kentucky, one great buried in New Jersey, and three greats buried in Connecticut. I have two greats buried in Rattlesden, Suffolk, England. I have been led to believe that my ancestors before that came from Denmark and Normandy.

Captain Thomas Munson was the first Munson to move to America. He was baptized in Rattlesden, England in 1612. The baptismal font is still in use. He served in the militia in the Pequot Indian Wars in 1637. He served in the militia all his life and reached the status of Captain. His signature is on the founding document for New Haven, Connecticut.

In 2011 I visited New Haven and took pictures of his gravestone. In May 2012 my oldest daughter Nancy Ann escorted me to England and France. We visited Rattlesden and I took some pictures of the Captain's baptismal font.

Why is the old prune picker living in Ruston, Louisiana?

In 2006 my wife Jackie was in poor health. Jackie had kidney failure and was on dialysis. She had heart problems for some time with A-fib. She had fallen and broken her hip. She had broken ribs and vertebra just moving around normally. My family thought that I needed help caring for Jackie. My daughter Kerry and her husband John offered to park our trailer in their backyard in Ruston and help. Jackie and I accepted their kind offer. My daughter Nancy accompanied Jackie in an airplane flight from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington to Ruston. My son Mike took time off to help me pull our trailer for five long days to our new home. We were and are grateful. We enjoyed our new home very much.

Unfortunately and sadly, Jackie passed away in six months. I had sold our truck and was permanently parked. I was ready to give up full time RVing anyway. It is very pleasant in Ruston and I am close to family. So that is why I have been living in Ruston, Louisiana since October 2006.