About the diary writer
- Barbara McDowell Whitt
- Kansas City, Missouri, Alexandria, Virginia, United States
- ~ About: A 1961-65 Park College Diary ~ As a high school girl and then a college coed in the first half of the 1960s, I wrote nightly entries on the pages of one-year diaries. In January 2010 I began transcribing the entries into a blog and gave each one a title. I grew up on three farms within 30 miles of Iowa City and the University of Iowa with its Iowa Writers' Workshop. As the oldest of four daughters, in my diaries I sometimes referred to my sisters as "the kids" or "the girls." We helped our parents, but we also had good, wholesome fun - a characteristic I took with me to Park. Park is 300 miles southwest of West Chester, Iowa, in Parkville, Missouri, on the Missouri River 10 miles northwest of Kansas City, Missouri, and across the river from Kansas City, Kansas. In 2000 Park College became Park University. Today Park's flagship campus is in Parkville and there are an additional 41 campus centers across the nation. Park was one of the first educational institutions in the United States to offer online learning. My last post was on May 22, 2018. I may be followed on Twitter @BarbaraMcDWhitt.
Eclipse of the Moon - Monday, September 5, 1960
We didn't have school since it was Labor Day. I spent practically the whole day getting my school work caught up. I carried a box of trash to the ditch and picked a chicken. Mom dressed the three that Kleinschmidts gave us and we've been feeding. We all got up at 3:30 and saw portions of the total eclipse of the moon. It was a perfect night.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I don't know why but one of the most vivid memories of my summers as a kid are those involving dressing chickens. My kids would never have stood for such a thing! And in fact, I doubt if they know the term "dressing a chicken." To be honest, I couldn't do it today.
I didn't mind picking the feathers off, but I usually didn't report for my job until the chicken had stopped "dancing around like a chicken with its head cut off"
Exactly! However,I have to say that the smell of dipped chicken feathers is still with me and not a good thing!
Neat about getting up to see the eclipse.
Oh gosh, Hilary. I totally missed the eclipse part after I got going on the chickens. I too thought that was so Louise to do something like make the effort to see the eclipse, for the kids. Barb, do you think it was your mom's idea or you kids'?
Getting up to see the eclipse was most likely my mom's project. You have reminded me of the time I got our family up on a pre-dawn school morning to drive south to the country to see Halley's Comet away from the city lights, but we still weren't successful. That was shortly after my mom died, and I liked to think that her view of the comet was awesome.
Post a Comment