Recipes for Living Chris Robins

I was born May 23, 1961 to Gary and Delores Welker Robins, in Decatur County Hospital, Leon, Iowa. I had three brothers - two older: Martin Gayle (Marty), and Ricky Gene (Ricky). I was the third child. My full name is Christie Renae, and my younger brother is Raydean Keith (Dean). We were raised on a farm south of Murray. I remember moving there in 1968 and living there until I graduated from high school.

There is good news/bad news being the only girl with three brothers. We had a lot of fun. I played a lot of sports with them and I loved that. On the other hand, I had to fight for everything, and I did that quite well. So I'd say they are responsible for the fact that I'm pretty independent.

I started to kindergarten in 1966 in Murray, Iowa. At that time Murray was - and still is just one school, a town and rural school system within itself. I was always told when I was younger, that I would never graduate from Murray High School, because the small school systems would have been phased out before then. But I think my grandparents, Milan and Marie Welker graduated from there, as did my parents. My siblings and I went all through school there and graduated. Now their children are there as well. So that school has educated four generations of our family, all of us agreeing that we received a good education, and, in fact, had advantages because of the size.

I don't remember how many kids were in my class, when I started, but when I graduated in 1979, there were 25 seniors. I loved the Murray School! I was known! The teachers knew me personally. I wasn't a number. I was actually a name and a face. If I needed extra help, I could ask the teachers and they would be more than glad to stay after school to help me. I also was a real sports nut, a true athlete. I loved basketball then and still do. I could play every sport there that I wanted to - softball, basketball - you name it. I was a little too early age-wise for Little League. My brothers got to play and that hacked me off. We had a coach who would have let me play, but there was a rule against girls playing at that time. The bottom line in general was
that anything I could get involved in, I was probably going to do, and I'm still that way.

We weren't angels. We had a tendency to get into trouble - my brothers more than I, but if we did do something wrong at school, as the saying goes, "they knew where we lived," and our parents received a phone call. They knew what happened before we even got off the bus. So if we were disciplined at school, we also were disciplined at home. That is a difference I notice today. At the time I was in school, teachers were allowed to discipline us, and our parents would back them. As I see it, discipline is no longer allowed in the schools, and likewise from parents, which I don't think is a good thing. I am a true believer that people in general, and kids in particular, like to be disciplined. We might not like the discipline itself, or agree with the way it is handled, but the older I've become, the clearer the reason for it has become. Rules to live by give us a sense of security. Knowing where the boundaries are is a good thing. I learned that early in life.

I wasn't a real trouble-maker in school, and I had a lot of fun - a real social buff, and that is the way I am now. If I can be somewhere doing something, that is where I am, involved in lots of things. The teachers liked me, and I liked and respected them. I think we got along by compromising. There may have been a couple I didn't care for as much as others, but it was probably because I wasn't as involved with them as with some of the others. I remember one time a bunch of sophomores (me included) egged a-teacher's house. She found out who did it and that I was part of it. She wasn't very happy with the whole incident but was really disappointed in me. She'd had lots of respect for me before that. I guess I learned a lesson in life right there - that when someone regards you highly, you surely don't want to do something that will jeopardize that. I remember getting caught, and it wasn't good.

Marty had an episode when he was a junior, and a friend of his was a senior. They were going to a band festival in Prescott, Iowa. They were supposed to take cars and one of the mothers with them to chaperone. Randy Callison had volunteered his mother but after the concert, the band instructor realized he hadn't seen Randy's mother. He asked Randy, "Where's your Mom?"and Randy answered evasively, "She's around here somewhere." But the truth came out they had driven over with no chaperone and were in trouble. I think they may have gotten a day's suspension. Mom and Dad found out about it, so Marty was in trouble at home as well as at school. Usually for us farm kids, our punishment was doing some extra farm work, so that is probably what happened to him.

Something that was a lot of fun during my childhood was that my brothers, Marty and Rick, had a couple Honda 100 motorcycles. It was when I was about seven years old. I'm only five foot three now, so I couldn't have been very big then. Two motorcycles, two little siblings - Marty and Rick decided to put us on the motorcycles and teach us to ride. They did. We learned how to ride. The boys would put it in first gear, pop the clutch, tell us to run the gas, and we'd ride around the house and down in the lot. We rode around in what I called "Granny gear," kind of like riding a bicycle.

It was pretty easy for me to learn to ride the motorcycle. The only problem was that I was seven, not very big, and my feet wouldn't touch the ground. The solution Dean and I came up with, when we were tired of riding, we'd just start laying on the horn as we rode around the house. What we did then was pull up to the picnic table - we were barely strong enough to pull the clutch - but we would clutch it and brake it and put our foot on the bench of the picnic table. If the boys wanted to be really nice to me, they would come out and get me off the motorcycle, but if they wanted to be nasty, they'd leave me out there for awhile. But my brothers did me a favor, putting me on the motorcycle and letting me learn to ride, because I have always enjoyed riding motorcycles, even to this day. I have one now. I don't go very far, I don't go out on the highway because of semis and stuff, but I get on and putt around Murray.

Another story about my brothers is that they always wanted me to play football with them. Or we would play whiffleball. That was a ball with holes in it so that when you hit it, it didn't go very far. We had a diamond set up on our farm and we had tons of kids come out every day after school and we'd play whiffleball. We had teams and made up the rules that if you hit the barn, or over the fence, it was an automatic home run. We played football in the front yard that was the football area. On the garage was a basketball hoop, and on farther in that lot was our baseball diamond. We literally had no grass in our yard for years because kids were always there playing.

In football, our teams were Marty and I playing against Rick and Dean. We had a quarterback and receiver so basically, you just had to run out and catch the ball and see how far you could get. I made a deal with the boys that if I played football with them, they had to play basketball with me, because I loved basketball. Guess what always happened. We played the football game first and when that was done, the boys were way too tired to play basketball. So they'd go in the house to get something to drink, and I would shoot baskets. Once in awhile I would get one of them to come out, but not often. Lots of times I'd go out after dark - it might be 10:00 or 10:30 and I'd be shooting baskets by myself under the yard light.

During high school, I became involved in a journalism class. I was on the staff for the school newsletter, for which there was a lot of taking pictures and writing short stories. I guess I have always liked photography and I remember, probably about sixth grade, when I wanted a camera really bad. For Christmas that year my folks got me a little 35 mm camera that I could put to my eye, point, shoot, and take pictures. I went through a lot of film taking pictures of my brothers until they were sick and tired of me being in their face. I wasted a lot of film but I enjoyed doing it. The other part of that is, I enjoy being around people! Even through my high school years, I wanted to be involved in people's lives. And I really love kids! I don't have any, of course, and really should have had about 20. I have two nephews and a niece whom I spoil rotten, and they know it. My niece told me the other day, "Aunt Chris, you really spoil us."

When I was in high school, my love for kids led me to think I would like to teach. I also loved sports, so I thought of combining the two - I'd teach and coach. What kept me from it was that I didn't think I wanted to go to school four more years, and I also didn't want to leave the little town of Murray. I was pretty attached to it. I knew everybody, everybody knew me, and besides, I don't like change a lot. If it comes, I face it and deal with it, but if I'm in the path I like, and I'm doing fine, I stay right there. That's a part of who I am.

So, right after I graduated, I enrolled in Southwestern Community College in Creston on a basketball scholarship. I had already played a year for them. As it turned out, I played only during my freshman year in college. I lived at home, and drove back and forth every day. Many times, after a morning of classes, we'd get on a bus, maybe at 1:00 p.m., drive to the Minnesota border, play a basketball game, and we might not get home until midnight or after. Then I'd have to drive back to Murray, and get up the next morning really early to get back to Creston for practice at 6:30 a.m.

In college, I had to learn how to play five on five basketball, whereas in my junior high and high school years, we played six on six - three forwards and three guards on the team. I had been a forward in high school In five on five, I learned to play defense as a guard, which I didn't learn in high school Another change came along, probably about 1986, after I'd graduated in '79. This was the three-point arch shot, which was making a shot behind a designated line. That was where I shot from, and in high school, it was only a two-point basket. My high school coach, Bill Carper, said he looked back at my "stats," and if that rule had been in effect when I was playing, I'd have averaged about 100 points per season more than with the two point rule. So I missed two things in my sports career: I mentioned missing Little League, and I missed the three-point arch in basketball

I give a lot of credit in my development as a basketball player and as a person to Bill Carper. I respected him as a coach on the floor and off the floor. I always felt that he respected us girls who played for him, which made me want to play and play hard. I learned several important life-lessons from sports, which make me think to this day, sports are very important. On the floor and off the floor, they teach character, participation as a team - you're not an "I." You are part of a team, and I think Bill Carper taught me that, which holds true in everyday living. There are a lot of times when it is not an "I' world, and it shouldn't be. There are people we need to care for and tend to.

In my freshman year of college, I was the second leading scorer, and the coach tried his hardest to persuade me to go out for my sophomore year, but I just wouldn't do it. I knew what was involved and that it made me pretty tired and miserable. I'd have probably given him a different answer if I'd lived in Creston instead of commuting, but in either case, I knew I wasn't going to be a professional basketball player, so I decided to put my priorities elsewhere and finish my schooling.

Even though I enjoyed my basketball "career," short as it was, once I had come to the realization that I'd not be playing basketball the rest of my life, I went into the media department, wanting to do photography. I anticipated working with and getting to meet a lot of different people, and I thought of photography as being about happy times - family gatherings, weddings, new-born babies, all those happy times, and I thought photography would be fun.

I went through the two-year media course, graduated in May 1981, with a BS degree in Media Education, with a wide range of opportunities. I could work with TV, run a TV camera, or write articles for a newspaper. I took graphics design which would give me another capability for newspapers or window displays. I enjoy that, too. But what I discovered only reaffirmed my choice of photography as my first love.

Giesla Deal had a studio in Osceola, located in the Banta house. Her husband was in school with me, and I knew he had been hurt while employed by the railroad, and they were paying for his education. When he graduated, he was going back to work for them in Kansas City, and his wife was going with him. That meant Osceola wasn't going to have a photographer in town, and it seemed to be my chance to get my foot in the door. I started my own studio. I look back on that and realize I was only 20 at the time.

My intentions were to open it in June, July, or the first part of August, and it occurred to me that I could take the summer off before I started to work. As it turned out, I actually didn’t get my studio started until October of that year. My dad went with me to the bank, and co-signed on a loan so I could get my photography equipment. What I first rented, I remember the building located at 216 South Main being the old Snowdon's Lingerie building, but a year prior to that is where Bill Myers, from Des Moines, had a Ford dealership. My grandpa Robins told me that on the spot where my office was located, he had bought a black Ford 1949 car off the showroom floor. I rented that space for two years and in 1983, Eddy Saylor and Bob Cooley bought it, so I rented from them for the remainder of my lease. Eddy bought Bob out and I rented from Eddy and Helen until June 18; 2004 when the building burned.

The reason for the delay in my plans was the worst thing I ever went through in my life in July 1981, my oldest brother, Marty, was killed in a car accident. My brother Rick was 22, Marty was 24. When I was a kid, I could never understand why my parents had curfews, why they always wanted to know where we were. We kids thought we were responsible. We knew where we were, and that we weren't getting into trouble, but after that happened, I understood. I remember seeing such accidents on TV news, and thought it was something that would never happen around little Murray, Iowa. In particular, it would never hit our home, and I discovered I was wrong because it does knock on your door and come to rest on your doorstep.

I said earlier that I don't like change but I do deal with it. That was something I had to deal with. It was not an easy thing. Maybe it gets easier in time, but watching my parents go through it was the toughest part - trying to understand what it would mean to lose a son. As a kid, there was no way to understand that. It still tears me up to talk about it, but it does get easier.

I've always felt like Mom and Dad have a very good marriage. As an example, as a kid growing up I don't remember my parents ever fighting. Never! I asked Mom one time, "Don't you ever get mad at Dad?" and her answer was, "We just deal with it in different ways. Dad might go outside awhile and I stay in the house. He comes back in and everything's fine." But they never fought in front of us. We sat down as a family at mealtime. We always ate dinner together, and probably supper together. In this generation, I don't think a lot of kids get that.

Another thing I think kids miss is their mothers being at home. My mom was at home, my dad farmed. Mom was a housewife and I realize now that is a 24-hour a day job. I remember Mom always had cookies for us when we got off the school bus, and probably not many kids now get homemade cookies.

My parents helped each other get through my brother’s accident and death. In my opinion, Dad probably had the toughest time. Mom had to be the strong backbone, which I felt she always was for all our family. From what I've observed in seeing my parents deal with the loss of a child, I would advise people to talk and communicate with each other. Now when I go to a funeral, I try to make a point of sharing with parents that it is important to keep communication open. It hurts, I know it does; but I still think it is important to talk about the situation rather than keeping it inside. Mention the person who has gone. At least that is the way I've dealt with the loss of my brother. If I want to mention him, I mention him; if I don't want to, I don't. My friends have been a help. They have been sensitive to my needs. They let me talk if I feel like it, or if I want to sit quietly or talk about something else, they let me do that.

When I was starting my business at the age of 20, there were lots of things I didn't know. I don't suppose I knew it was possible to fail. I certainly didn't think I was going to fail. Someone told me when I started that I needed to give it at least five years. I probably thought I'd try if for that long and if it works, it works; if it doesn't, I'll go get another job. Now it is 23 1/2 years later and I'm still in Osceola, Iowa. I've made my business grow and enjoyed it. I don't know what might have happened if I hadn't had family and friends to help me get started. They gave me the opportunity to do their families’ pictures. I look back now and can't believe I actually had them pay me for the kind of work I did, but they did and I wouldn't be where I am today without their help. So I attribute my success in large measure to the help of my family and friends, who gave me the chance.

My involvement in sports has also carried over, so I'm doing everything I wanted to do when I was in high school. In addition to photography, I wanted to teach and coach. Now I'm doing all three. Thirteen years after I had opened my business, Iowa was short of coaches, and they changed a ruling. Formerly, those qualified to teach, also could coach. At this time, anyone who chose could meet requirements and coach. I took 50 hours of schooling to earn my coaching certificate, and this is my 9th year of being Murray girls' assistant volleyball coach, and 10th year as basketball assistant. This has been a joy! Having no children of my own, I consider my nephews and nieces as well as the kids I coach to be my kids. I care about them as much as if I had my own. I care because I don't want them to get in trouble, I want them to be good kids, and I think being involved in sports is an excellent influence. It seems to me priorities in school and in life is a little different when they are involved in sports. They have responsibilities for (1) showing up for practice, (2) showing up at games, (3) learning how to win and how to lose. The Murray kids in the programs I work with have grade points averaging about 3.6. What that says is these kids are willing to learn, and they're willing to listen. As I learned all those years ago, when you are part of a team, you're not an ''I' because there is no ''I' in TEAM. And rightly directed, the team can become like a family.

These kids are involved in different activities and give 100% all the time. They may not have the greatest talent but if they are willing to work, we work with them and try to make little athletes of them. In the years Jerry and I have coached, we've only had one year when we haven't been above 500, that is, we've won more games than we've lost. Our record is something like 146 to 52.

On June 18, 2004, something happened that, like my brother's accident, I didn't dream I would ever have to face. I happened to be in my studio that Friday afternoon about 2:00, when I heard the fire siren. It is kind of ironic because usually when that happened, I would get up and look toward the "four comers" to see which way the truck went. But that day I was intent on getting some Little League baseball pictures done, so even though I heard the whistle, I didn't get up to look out. It wasn't until I heard the siren stop that I thought, "That must be kind of close. Maybe I'd better look." Here came a gal from Boyt Harness Company, running down the sidewalk, screaming and yelling at me, but I couldn't tell what she was saying. My thought was that somebody had been in an accident, maybe somebody in my family had been hit by a car.

When she came closer, she told me there was a small fire in the factory and I might want to get out of the building for a little bit. I said, "Okay. I can do that." I quickly looked over what to take grabbed a couple of my cameras and took them over to my Blazer. A crowd was beginning to gather, and I went down to join them on the lawn of the Christian Church. I fell into a conversation with Tony Caliguri, owner of Boyt's. He was as calm as I was, saying, "We have a small fire. We know where it is and they should soon put it out and we'll all go back to work." I said, "Sounds good to me." It was a beautiful afternoon, about 80°, and we stood and talked maybe a half hour when one of the Boyt employees came up and asked me, "Are you sure you don't want to get stuff out?" I said, ''No, it'll be okay."

What I finally figured out was that it was going north, around the comer of the alley, while I was standing on the south side of the building, thinking it was coming my direction. It finally dawned on me, when they told me they'd been calling in a lot of other fire departments, “They're not going to get this under control. I'd better do something." I went around to my studio door and met one of the deputies, Shane Blakely, and asked if by chance I could get back in the building. My main concern was, I had done a wedding the previous weekend and had both the negatives and prints in my studio. If I didn't have one set of those, there was no way the couple would get their wedding pictures.

They finally let me in and about 15 people helped me go in and out of the building, carrying what they could. In about a half-hour, we saved almost everything except supplies. They were in the west room, and when I opened the door, black smoke rolled out. One of the firemen asked if there was something in there I really needed and I said, ''No, I'm not going to fight that smoke." His response was "Then let's get out of here." So we left.

A friend from Arizona was staying with me. She had been in a conversation with Betty Wells, who had told her that if I wanted to, I could take some of my stuff to her building located on the north side of the square. I said, "I could possibly do that." We had been taking things out and setting them on highway 69. From there, people with pickups loaded it all on their trucks, and after I accepted Betty's offer, these fellows just hauled it away. Some of it we put in Joan Taylor's storage shed. My dad said afterward, "If you had been in a big city, you'd never have seen any of that again." I knew he was right, but this is the way the community is. There is a close-knit-ness hard to match in a larger city.

I wondered all weekend what I was going to do and drove around looking for different spots where I could possibly locate. One thing I was sure of. After being in business 22 1/2 years I knew I didn't want to do anything different. I love what I do. I like working with people. On Monday I talked to Betty and she said, "If you are interested, I think you and I can get something worked out," and I told her I sure would appreciate it. So almost the same afternoon, I moved my stuff up there and a couple days later I knew where I was going to be, and here I am at 115 West Washington. I was closed for two weeks, and again, family and friends helped me. We dug through what we had salvaged, which was quite a job because we had just thrown stuff in boxes.
It all had to be sorted.

I can't understand, though, what it must be like for people who lose everything in house fires. Mine was bad enough, but I knew that night as I was going back to Murray, I still had clothes, and I still had a bed I could sleep in. My biggest concern was my people not knowing what I was going to do. A close friend said, "Don't worry about that. You are well enough established, they will find you." She was right. I've been here since Oct. '81, and my clients have been loyal to me.

It has now been a year since the fire. I made the move, I've changed what had to be changed, and came through it. I lost a year but I've worked really hard to get it where it is today. In the fire, I lost negatives from 1981 through about 1990, but I reason that if the people had wanted the negatives, they had 15 or 20 years to get them. I lost wedding albums, picture frames, supplies, stuff, a lot of bookwork. There are times I think, "I have that...no, I don't have that. It was in my storage room, so I'm still hunting and digging but I've weathered the storm. There have been a couple things in my 43 years that I didn't think I would ever have to face, but I did. I weathered them and got through it.

I have wonderful memories. Some of my photography experiences would be material for a book. I've had couples who came in to get pre-wedding pictures taken, and in three instances when I'd taken the actual wedding pictures, before I could get their proofs back, they had split. Some came as a real surprise because when I was taking their pictures, they acted like everything was peachy-keen, lovey-dovey. I took one set of wedding pictures where the couple never returned the proofs. I don't know what happened. I think they are still married but I never saw my proofs or any money. One was kind of like a soap opera. The groom cried through almost the entire ceremony instead of the bride. I know nerves take hold of people differently, but I did wonder why he was crying. As it turned out, they went on their honeymoon and returned, at which time he told his bride he was having a baby with someone else, and he needed to be out of the marriage. One bride's nerves took hold and she giggled through the entire ceremony.

Maybe because of my age when I started 23 years ago, I noticed young people 18 to 20 being married. Lots were like my parents, getting married a year or two out of high school. Now I've noticed people getting married in their late 20s to early 30s. Probably a lot of them are deciding to go to school, get their careers established, and then get married. I've also noticed that when I started a lot of parents were married couples, now I'm finding that I'm not working just with two different families but I might be working with four different families. One time a gal wanted a family picture. I said, "Fine, we'll do that." When they were all lined up, I placed the father beside the mother, but he was standing off to the side a little bit. So I said, ''Move over here and act like you like her." He did it but when the girl came back for her pictures, she said, "There was something I forgot to tell you. My folks are divorced." I said, ''You've got to be kidding. I just told your dad to move over and act like he liked your mom, and he did it."

There is one situation that isn't pleasant, and that is being asked to photograph the body of a deceased person in their casket, but occasionally it happens. Usually it is a call from out of state. A relative has died and the body is at Kales Funeral Home. For one reason or another, the family members can't make it back for the funeral and ask me to take a picture. I call ahead to make sure I can go when I will not be intruding, and go do what I am asked. I don't necessarily like to do it, but if it has been requested I've done it.

That is my life to the spring of 2005. Both my brothers live in Murray - we've never left, and our relationship is very close. My youngest brother and his wife, Janet, have two boys and a girl - Trevor, Ryan, and Kelsey. Rick's fiancée Diana has two daughters, Ashley and Christy. I live in the town of Murray, in a house I rent from my brother - a two bedroom house, north of the tracks, which is just great for one little ol' gal. What I like about it is that everybody knows everybody. If I leave home, I know my neighbors will watch my house.

I have not mentioned what may be the most important aspect of my life - the part that has helped me through the good times and bad. It is the way Mom and Dad raised us kids in the church with the understanding that we are part of God's family. Without that I'm not sure I would have overcome my brother's accident and his death. I know it is faith in God that eases us. I always remember that God tells us he won't ever put more things before us than we can handle. So I look at life knowing that if God thinks we can handle it, it is probably going to come our way. I am so thankful that Mom and Dad took us (didn't send us) to church and Sunday school and raised us in that environment. Family, friends, and faith are very important to me. My dad has always said that I haven't ever met a stranger and quotes, "A stranger is a friend whom you haven't yet gotten to know." I agree and that is the way I live.