Ramona correspondent
Have you heard of the phenomenon known as “six degrees of separation”? It is a theory that there are only six people between us and anyone in the world — whether it is the pope or the president.
There was even a reality show built on that premise a few years back, where “wanna be” recording artists were given a challenge to connect with a famous country western singer and the person who did it first got a chance for a recording session in Nashville.
It was amazing to see the connections — a contestant’s cousin had a hairdresser who had a relative who was the accountant for the business manager to Tim McGraw. It’s a reminder that our worlds are quite intertwined, even though we may feel we’re spinning in our own universe.
I was reminded of all this when I got home from vacation and there was an e-mail from Karen Bridgewater of Newton. I didn’t know Karen, and I wondered how she knew me. When I called her, I was amazed, once more, how all of our little worlds are constantly touching, bumping, and colliding, even if we never feel it.
“I got your name from my friend Paul in Gypsum,” Karen said.
The moment I heard his name I knew who he was. Paul worked for a Salina medical equipment company and when Tony Meyer needed a hospital bed during the final month of his life, Paul delivered it and picked it up.
Paul and I didn’t even know each other’s name until he came to pick up the bed. I had the bed taken apart and resting by the door and Paul came to Tony’s house to collect it. But, there was a human need to connect somehow, because something sacred had happened between the delivery and the pick-up of that bed, and just a “hand off” wouldn’t do.
Paul and I began talking about Tony, and then Ramona, and what happens in and around a town with five streets. I told him a brief version of why Pat and I came to Ramona, and then Paul shared one of his life passions — collecting and restoring old vehicles. Suddenly, Paul dashed out to his truck and returned with a notebook. Page after page of pictures showcased his antique trucks and cars — many of them with zany and funny hillbilly signs on them.
“My property in Gypsum is called Poverty Flats,” Paul said. “My wife and I, along with our kids, love dressing up like hillbillies and riding in our cars and trucks in parades.”
“You need to come and be in Ramona’s Fourth of July parade,” I said with enthusiasm, telling him all about Redneck in Ramona.
Paul and I traded Fourth of July info by e-mail and though it turned out Paul and his family weren’t able to attend this year’s parade, we’d nevertheless done some “networking,” as they call it in the business world.
About a month ago, Karen Bridgewater told her friend, Paul, about some Ramona kids who “saved the day,” and she wondered how to get a story written about them. Paul said he knew two sisters in Ramona who did that sort of thing. He gave her our e-mail address, and thus begins the story.
“You often hear about the bad things that kids do these days,” Karen said in her e-mail, “and I thought it would be wonderful to hear about good things for a change.”
Karen had no way of knowing, of course, that when I began writing my news column for the Marion County Record in 2000, I vowed to focus on the good news. So, when I read her e-mail, I was hooked.
“My husband, Dick, and I sold antique trucks and parts at car shows,” began her letter. “It was a mom and pop kind of business — one way to supplement our modest income when we retired. On Feb. 19, Dick was admitted into ICU at a Wichita hospital, where he stayed for 27 days until his death on March 17.”
Years earlier Dick had been diagnosed with heart failure, and this, along with other complications, ended his life.
When I called Karen she began describing feelings that several Ramona families know all about when you lose a loved one —devastation, grieving, life turned inside out. Karen and Dick had been married 53 years and lived in the country. They have a Goessel phone number and a Newton address, which makes them out on their own, and sort of between towns.
So when Dick died, Karen felt like she was on an island of car parts, with a boatload of grief.
“After Dick’s death it seemed that everything started going wrong — the loader wouldn’t start, the mower went on the blink and the pick-up wasn’t working.”
Even as Karen told the story, I could hear the burden in her voice.
“The financial aspects were devastating, too,” Karen continued. “Our income was modest to begin with, and here I was — alone, with one retirement check now, a parts business I couldn’t run alone, money going out and little coming in, and what to do with all of the fenders, doors, wheels, and mountains of metal?”
The emotional aspect to the work that lay before her made the burdens seem too heavy to bear.
“I’d go out and try to organize or clean things up and I’d see his tools, where he’d left them, and it just tore me up. I’d just lose it. The tears just don’t seem to end.”
While friends and family suggested she hold an auction to sell all the car parts that Dick had collected since the 1950s, she couldn’t see how to get it organized.
“I have four children and only one lives near me. Missy lives in Inman and she can make lunch for helpers, make signs for the auction and things like that, but doing the heavy lifting and moving which an auction requires was not possible. All four of my children have very serious health issues of their own,” Karen said.
One of Dick’s friends, George Emery, came to the rescue.
“You can’t do this by yourself,” he said. “I’m going to ask some of the guys at work to come and help get everything ready for auction.”
And that’s where Jayme Brunner, with a passel of kids, enters the story.
“One of the guys I work with asked people to help a friend of his whose husband had died,” Jayme said. “Agco was going to be shut down for three weeks, so for two weeks I took the kids and went to help. Solomon, 14, and Kaitlin, 10, went with me, along with Dallen, 15, and Terren,14.”
(Dallen and Terren are Jim Thompson’s sons.)
While extending a helping hand, Jayme also saw a “teaching moment.”
“I wanted to show the kids the old antique cars so they could see how things used to be — like no air conditioning,” Jayme said, with a smile, describing 40 or more 1940s and 1950s cabs all sitting in a row.
Jayme and his entourage were joined by six to eight people, who came off and on during those two weeks.
“The first day was the hardest,” Jayme said. “We rolled 200-plus tires — with rims. It was more than 100 degrees, and the roll was up hill. I couldn’t believe it when the kids wanted to go back the next day and do it again!”
When I asked Kaitlin Brunner why she wanted to do this, she smiled and shrugged, giving the answer most 10-year-olds would.
“Dad told me to.”
And then she added, “The lady was really nice, and she made good brownies.”
“It was dirty, hot, nasty work,” concurred Karen. “Not only was it uphill work, it was muddy, too!”
Seems a big pile of brush had been piled over some old tires, and Karen didn’t know it. They started a fire to clean up the brush, and when black smoke suddenly began to billow, they had to call the fire department to put out the fire so the old tires could be removed. There was mud everywhere.
“Those kids also moved doors and fenders, lining them up for exhibit, and consolidated things for viewing. They did the work a grown person would do,” Karen said.
Karen wanted the kids to get recognition for their hard work.
“I want them to know there’s value in helping others. Obviously Jayme knew this, and that’s why he volunteered. Now he’s teaching this to his children. I never could have gotten ready for this September auction by myself. I’m so proud of these kids.”
I know there are many moments where Ramona folks reach out a helping hand and assist somebody in the hour of need. Most of those kind gestures never get written about, they’re just one-on-one moments where the hearts of the giver and the receiver are brightened or made lighter.
What I love about Karen’s determination to get these young people recognized is that I got blessed in hearing and writing about what they did. And I think the whole town is blessed in some little way, because five members of “The Ramona Clan” were goodwill ambassadors, and deep down that makes the rest of us all stand a little taller, too.
And that’s the news from Ramona, where a dad and four hard-working kids put Ramona on the map, and a traffic jam is two parked cars and a dog in the road.
Oh, and a parental tip from Jayme: There’s nothing like rolling tires all day in 100-degree heat to make kids so tired they have no interest in even arguing with one another on the way home.