I read recently that a tornado touched down in Aurora, Nebraska. That was the home of my maternal grandparents who lived on a farm outside Aurora. My family visited them in the summer and we experienced many joys of rural happenings. We saw those dark clouds gather in the sky with funnel shapes carrying a lot of wind. They called them cyclones.

These disastrous winds, would whip through Midwestern Nebraska lashing corn and wheat plantings already ripening. After such a storm there was speculation about whether the crops could recover enough to harvest even a meager crop.

When such a storm threatened we were hurried into the cellar below their farmhouse to wait until the storm had passed. Scary times for our young lives to experience.

My grandfather was a small-tract farmer, almost blind but he farmed as if he had no handicap. He would hitch up the one-seated buggy he used for transportation to go into town; we wondered how he managed to harness the horse, but he knew every bit of gear and tackle by rote.

A railroad track ran near their farm and we counted the endless freight cars pulled behind those old time locomotives. There was a lot of dust in that dry Midwestern Nebraska that made good mud pies. We placed them in our make-believe bakery assortment of old Mason jar lids.

Another thing I remember about visiting that farm was the doughnuts my grandmother made. Even though it was summer and required using the old cookstove to heat the fat in the old iron kettle she

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used for the doughnuts, she willingly made them for us. We particularly liked the doughnut holes that came out of the fat first.

My grandmother had to have something beautiful around, and it was an old-fashioned yellow rose bush planted in the front yard. It was one of the most fragrant roses I ever smelled. The house was a two-story square type and it had a pump in the back entryway that supplied the water from a deep well. Upstairs in the bedrooms there were iron bedsteads with wooden slats to support the straw mattresses and featherbeds. In the parlor there was an old pump organ which I'm sure my mother played by ear as a young woman. It was probably the most ornate piece of furniture in the house and we loved to pump those pedals (covered with carpeting) and get wheezing sounds from that old-fashioned instrument.

Those were carefree days of childhood that often drift back to me in a bit of bittersweet longing.

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Sometimes the loyalty and caring of friends leaves me with such profound disbelief that I'm often given to tears. When I recently celebrated another milestone, on one of my many cards was the statement that this dear friend had my card ready for over a week but didn't mail it as she was saving up energy to do it on another day. She can only do one thing at a time, she told me.

To think that she was saving up the energy to send me a card and later mail it brings me almost to tears. Such caring people. As I grow older I seem to feel that these special efforts by family and friends is beyond belief. To have such hearts and minds attuned to my special day is causing tears. Blessings on that individual who shared a bit of her precious life to wish me a happy birthday.

Harriette Leidich, a retired journalist, lives in North Bennington.