Your MaMa's worse nightmare...

Here she is... your MaMa's worst nightmare...

That little red haired neighbor girl.

I was 2 when Daddy got out of the service. We moved back to Grand Island and lived at 2521 W Koenig Street for 2 or 3 years... That summer, playing with the hose was a favorite pastime of mine. Anyone who came outside, within reach of the hose would probably get wet.

The little neighbor boy, Jimmy, was a favorite target of mine.

Mother says, "you were fast as a puppy... we had a night lock on the door which we kept locked or you'd be outside... you were such a little joy."

There are 2 stories involving Jimmy... thankfully only that first one has pictures to support it.

The second story would take place the following winter...

One afternoon my Mother answered a knock on the back door. Jimmy's Mother was standing there holding Jimmy's snowsuit, the inside of the hood all covered with blood. All she said was, "I'm afraid I can't allow Jodi to play with Jimmy any longer. She's too aggressive!" It seems I had hit him over the head with my little rake...

I wonder... what he had done to me first?? Did anyone even ask?

Look at this sweet face... do you believe she could be so ornery??

I've heard those stories all my life... yet could hardly believe I would be so mean. I was writing about them here last week when I got a card from my cousin Sandy which she had made for me from an old photograph... a photo I had never seen before. Although I maybe should have cried... I about died laughing... for there was another picture proving that I was not the nicest little girl in the neighborhood.

That's me at the center bottom looking left. While the other children are more or less posing for the picture, I'm hitting the little girl next to me with my balloon, or stick. Obviously, we are all at someone's birthday party because we all have balloons on sticks (was this before helium??)
(Beverly & Jackie are cousins... I don't know the rest of the kids.)

(clicking on any picture will make it larger for you)

My story... How I came to be...

My mother had three ornery brothers who tormented
and teased her relentlessly.

They would hold up a toothpick or a piece of string
and taunt her.
"Juleen!!" they'd whine indicating this was how she looked.
She was always quite thin and was tall for her age.
Because of these brothers,
she thought she was unattractive, ugly.
She could have been a model
had she been born in a different place or age...
she was beautiful.
This is the reason she never wanted any ornery boys
of her own...
because of these three ornery brothers.

My father & mother met at a dance
at the Glovera Ballroom in Grand Island.
Two weeks after they met
he went to California with a girlfreind he had already,
but he wrote to mother and soon came back
because he couldn't stop thinking about her.
They started dating and sometime later
when my father asked my mother to marry him, she said,
"on one condition... I don't want any boys...
I want 2 girls, 2 years apart!"
He said, "I can do that!"
I don't know where that confidence came from
since his own parents had six sons
before they got their first daughter.

So they were married... October 19, 1941



And two years later...


I was born...


And two years after me...

came my baby sister...

My sister and I are 2 years and 22 days apart.
My father had indeed done it as he said he could.

This is Mother & me on her first Mother's Day
when I was 11 months old.
See how beautiful she was...
she still is...


When I got pregnant,
my mother wanted me to have a little girl...
no ornery boys!!
But, of course, I had Matt...
and she loved him so much.
My mother learned that all little boys were not like
her ornery brothers...
when later Wade and then Phillip joined Matt, Marci & Jill
in the list of grandchildren.
She loved them all.
She also loved her brothers...
they were quite close in later life.

Mother: Phyllis Juleen Sipple
born June 10, 1919 in Grand Island, NE
Father: Bernhardt Ferdinand "Barney" Reher
born March 7, 1912 in Hall County, NE
Me: Joyann "Jodi" Reher
born June 11, 1944 in Urbana, Illinois
My sister: Jerrilynn Reher
born July 3, 1946 in Grand Island, NE