I am sorry, but I could not get this cropped any better after I once posted it here.  There are two articles here about a highway between Mattoon and Charleston that I though you may find interesting.

The top of this article is blurry for some reason.  If you need me to, let me know and I can type the first two paragraphs below this article.

This article about the swimming pool must have been around about this time of year as the first thing mentioned is about changing the time and losing an hour of sleep.  I am pretty sure it is from 1954.

What I like about this article is the part where it states that P. B. Hutton, my grandfather, suggested an addition of a park and the grassy area west of the pool fenced in along with the pool.  In fact, I love that he did!  When I use to go to the pool, I thought that this was great because you could take your snack in that area and stay out of the sun for awhile to help prevent burn.  You could dry off and visit with friends and get rid of some of the shriveling due to being waterlogged.  Haha.

My very best memories and greatest times were when they booked bands to play in that area in the evenings.  You could go there with your friends, listen to music, dance, just talk or whatever.  It was a great opportunity for young people to hang out.  So, to me,  that makes it very neat that my grandfather suggested the idea for the grassy area! There was not much in town in the way of entertainment for the young people and music and dancing was my favorite thing.  I have shared those memories with my children when they were young and bored and my wishes that they had that same opportunity but the city did not offer much for the young people.

Wow.  I found this interesting.  All employees of Charleston received a 10% wage increase.  All except for the employees of the swimming pool. These employees felt they should receive an increase too so the pool was closed until further notice.

I also noticed in the article that employees is continually spelled as employes.  I had mentioned this in one prior article in a previous blog that the spelling of employee was incorrect.  They did spell it correctly in the title, however. I question why they keep spelling this incorrectly.

Do you think that perhaps this was the first strike in Charleston?  Haha.

I hope you enjoyed reading these articles.  Please feel free to post your memories of the swimming pool or whatever else you would like to!

I do not know about other people who have a gluten intolerance, but for me it is a real issue.  Not only do I have a gluten intolerance, there are other sensitivities as well and that makes it a real challenge.  There is not much that I can eat without feeling some sort of swelling and various other painful issues that I will not go into.  Even though they are coming out with tons of gluten free foods, that does not mean that I can eat them due to my other issues.  Sometimes, I think it would be nice to be gluten intolerant only, as there would be more that I could eat.

Eating in a restaurant is a real issue for me.   You also have to take care to not have cross contamination. You cannot have any fried foods, such as french fries because they fry them in grease with other foods that do contain gluten.  I cannot have salicylates or night shades which leaves about everything else out, even down to spices and sauces on foods.  One final complication is diverticulitis.  This means no seeds, nuts or items with skins.  I do not want this to sound complaining here, it has been this way for 6 years or more and I am use to it.  An even worse part is that I feel like sometimes just the smells or the particles in the air can cause a reaction for me as well as the dishes and silverware.  Some people may disagree with this, but everyone knows their own bodies.

However, I will complain about people.  Some say things like they think they have decided to go gluten free or that they are thinking about trying gluten free or they say they have tried that once.  Sadly, it is not a fad.  It is a REAL issue.  I feel like, at least in my opinion, that it is not taken seriously by some people, particularly the servers at restaurants.  I am not including everyone here as we have had some absolutely wonderful servers.  I was a server as well many times when I was younger and later in life, too, so I have great respect for servers.  I do understand that you do not know people’s situations and that they may have had a tragedy in their life or a bad day.  Any given circumstance could also affect your personality.  I understand that completely, so do not get me wrong, I know that it is hard. It is hard dealing with the public in any field. Mostly, the general public can change a server’s attitude as the public can be cruel at times as well.

You can, however, watch servers and see that their entire face and attitudes change when you have to ask questions.  I always apologize first for my issues and then ask questions so that I can order what is right for me.  I think I have come to realize that a person with allergies should just stay home but it is so hard when your family wants to go out for someone’s birthday or other reason.  You do not really want to say well you guys go on I will just stay here.  You can try to eat beforehand and then go with them and just sit there, which is hard to do.  Eating has more and more become a social event. I try to order the simplest of things so there will not be much of a problem for the server or anyone.  I need to add that there are so many servers who really care and go out of their way to  help you.  They even, at times, think of things you didn’t think of and make suggestions.  Mostly, though, there are the ones that just feel that you are a pain to them.

I will have to add here without sounding like boasting, but we consider ourselves nice customers.  (You are thinking the key words here are that “we consider ourselves” but we can tell when they reciprocate the kindness. Haha.  Believe it or not, people actually  do like us.) When the server comes to our table and gives his/her name, we make conversation with them and ask them questions about themselves. We actually have them laughing and smiling. We are friendly and when we leave, we always know things about our server as in where they are from, if they are in school and other tidbits.  We actually take the time to show that we care about them.

So ,,, our daughter wanted to take us out for her father’s upcoming birthday.  We went to a well known steakhouse in Champaign, Illinois, one that we have been to several times since we can get the specific foods for me.  Sadly, that restaurant is off of our list of favorites.  From the minute I told the server I had a gluten issue along with other problems, we never received another smile from her and her visits to our table were infrequent. I ordered a salad and a baked potato.  I told her I could only have lettuce and cheese for the salad and just a plain baked potato with sour cream and butter on the side.  The salad came out first with the appetizer the others ordered.

I guess I just sort of knew the minute that she sat the salad down that something was wrong.  I seem to be the one that no matter what I order, the order comes out wrong.  I just could tell by looking that something was not right with the salad. I did not want to say anything. I did ask the server when she came back around if there were croutons and other items (such as tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, etc) on the salad and that they just removed them.  She all too quickly made a strange face and said nervously, “NO!”  I had barely finished the sentence before she responded.  That, in itself, was concerning. Her disappearance was sudden. Sometimes I feel like I am a pain to my family as well, so I decided to keep quiet.  I know my family loves me and they probably feel just as concerned, but it seems to take away from the celebration so I kept quiet … but just for awhile.  It was becoming more obvious that there were croutons on the salad and that someone in the kitchen just “picked” picked them off.  There were crumbs and bits and pieces throughout the salad.  I had to stop eating it and was praying that what I had eaten would not cause a problem.  I gave it to my daughter’s fiance, Jerry, and he said they definitely were crouton bits.  They seemed to adhere mostly to the cheese so he wondered if the cheese was near the croutons and there was the cross contamination. We did actually feel pretty confident that they did in fact, just pick them off of the salad. Everyone at the table then wanted to look and we were all in agreement.  I do not think they realize the serious implications an allergy can cause a person or they would not have been so negligent.

Jerry explained the situation to the server and explained that if they did not in fact just remove the items off of the salad then the cheese must be cross-contaminated with the croutons.  She really had nothing to say in return and actually made faces.  We opted to just have her return it and not replace it.  I had only had a few bites anyway.   This only made her attitude worse even though we were all being as polite and kind as we could when we were not in the wrong.  The entrees were delivered much later along with my baked potato.  The entire top of the potato was covered with sour cream. In addition, there was a side of butter and a side of sour cream.  This is unbelievable, but in the middle of the scoop of butter was some cheese!

It was so very obviously situated in the middle of the scoop, that we all laughed and said it looked like it was purposely placed as to “get back at us”.  I know people say that that does not happen, but how in the world did that cheese get into the middle of a scoop of butter?  Maybe you have read the book, The Help, or have seen the movie…. There was a “special pie”.  Minny made the best chocolate-custard pies and everyone loved her cooking.  Miss Hilly jeopardized Minny’s chances of finding work so Minny made a chocolate pie including a “special ingredient” of her own.  Minny would only let Miss Hilly eat the pie.  After and only after Miss Hilly ate the pie, did Minny tell her what the secret ingredient was and what she had just consumed!   Anyway, it would be so easy to accidentally spit or something and it go totally unnoticed.  We all have heard stories and I have actually witnessed some things similar (dropping something on the floor and picking it up and using it, wiping a wrong ingredient off of a bun, taking pickles off of a sandwich and serving it, tasting from a spoon used to stir food and stirring again, people carrying items to your table with their thumb or finger in your food, so many other wrong and gross things). Therefore, it does make you wonder.

Jerry reached for the butter from me and waited for the server to come back.  There was quite awhile before she even came near so they started looking for her as the potato was getting cold.  Jerry very politely and thoroughly explained to her that we were initially concerned with the cheese to begin with and now it is in our butter.  She just angrily and sort of rudely snatched it away and came back with another.  There was never an, “I am sorry” or any type of acknowledgment to us of a mistake or anything.  A simple, “I am sorry” or “Oh no” or “Here, let me fix that” would have made things immensely better.  Instead, she was angry with us for the mistakes the restaurant made.  Shelby, incidentally, had ordered the loaded mashed potatoes but only received plain mashed potatoes.  She did not say anything either because she thought maybe she did not actually order it.  However, when the ticket came, we were charged for loaded mashed potatoes.  Shelby politely informed the server of this and she had happened to take a picture of her plate in case it was needed.  The server took the ticket rapidly from her and made a point to stand and crumble up/wad the ticket in front of us with great effect and stormed off.  We eventually received our corrected ticket, without comment from her, we paid and left.

We understand that she may have had a horrible day and may have been bothered by who knows what in her life.  We also noticed the kind and attentive service that she gave to her other booths right beside us and across from us.  I am in no means knocking servers, but her conduct was out of line, very out of line.   As I said, I have “been there done that” on her side of the table and I understand how hard her job is.  People on the other side, the customer, have hard jobs too. I should be able to go out and eat just like everyone else does.  I should not be mistreated because I have issues.

The result, we will not eat there again and just the thought of eating out makes me think twice.  I have repeatedly been rudely treated and there is just no point in trying any longer.  That is the part that is sad.

So, back to spending the night with Grandma!  Houses and perfumes and foods have certain smells and they remind you of things.  I have certain smells that remind me of Grandma … good ones… and I love it!  It brings back all of the memories.

My grandma’s name was Dora Mae Elizabeth Pearcy Stites Hutton, “if you want to get technical” she said.  My grandma’s mother was Elizabeth Pearcy and I believe that she married Abner Edgar Stites.  Therefore, Grandma was Dora Mae Elizabeth Pearcy Stites Hutton. I am sure this was not her legal name, it was Dora Mae Elizabeth Hutton after she married.  Grandma was just being “technical”.  Grandma also went by the name of Dodie or DoDo.  All of us grandchildren were told to call her DoDo.  Somehow, that felt sort of disrespectful and insulting, but I guess it never reminded her of the bird.

Speaking of birds, she raised parakeets! I guess she had a lot of them.  I was told there was even a special place where she put the nesting ones and she allowed us to watch the eggs hatching, if we were around.  If I ever witnessed this, I do not remember.

To me, they were absolutely beautiful and I love the color! She had two or three that I can remember and eventually there was only one blue one.  She trained him to do a “wolf whistle” and to say, “Pretty Boy” and “Hello”.  There were more words he said and she kept a list by his cage, but these are what I remember.  He just went crazy when she talked to him.  He danced back and forth on his perch and just talked and talked back to her. He really loved her!  She had mirrors on the cage and he would look in there and talk to himself.  She had little toys for them to play with, little plastic balls with bells inside that they could spin and other stuff. When I spent the night I helped her clean the cages and she would let them come out and sit on her arm for awhile. Of course, I was always somewhat scared.  Okay, maybe a lot scared.  Haha.  She would have me go outside and find a special seeded type plant that grew wild in the grass and give one to the birds.  They loved it.  She said it would make them sing more. I do not remember what it was called and I could not find an image as there are so many.  When I see it in the yard this summer, I will post a picture.  Every time that I see it, I remember Grandma and her parakeet.

Grandma also had a little plastic tree on a stand with little branches that she put gumdrops on!  We were allowed only one or two and my favorites were the whitish ones.  They tasted like licorice.  One time, I got to fill the tree.  I thought it was the neatest thing ever. In thinking about it, I am not too crazy about the idea of eating candy that has been sticking on a tree collecting dust (among other things) for who knows how long.  Also, it did sit on the counter near the bird cage.  It was a nice memory, though!

Since we lived in the country, it was a real treat to hear the bells chiming on an ice cream truck!  Grandma always had her money ready and we would run out and have a treat.  What a cheerful noise that ice cream truck made, perhaps in part to knowing that the sound brought a treat!  We would sit on her front porch and eat it. Sometimes neighbors would come and sit on the porch as well.  When I finished my treat, she would let me walk up and down the street, but only as far as she could see me.

Some evenings we would walk out of her back yard and cross the street to the park – North Park. She would just sit on the stoop of what use to be her grocery store and watch me play.  Somehow I did not much enjoy it since Grandma was over there sitting by herself. I would swing or go down the slide and turn to wave at her.   I would rather play bunco or rummy with her or just sit and watch television with her.  I never played over there for long.

They had a house built on 310 North Sixth Street while they lived in the house to the north right beside their lot.  This is all in Charleston, Illinois. I do not know the number of that house, but it is still there as well. Grandpa’s blacksmith shop was at the back of the lot of 310 North Sixth and it had an address of 309 North Fifth.  To the south of the blacksmith shop was their store right beside the shop. I do not know the address of that either.  The store was torn down not too long ago and the blacksmith shop is still there. He had a blacksmith shop prior to that location but it burned.  I have photos of that to post later. The house at 310 North Sixth still has the same green shake shingles!  They owned another house a few streets over, maybe 7th or 10th?  I am not sure. They had a store there in the front or back of the house and some lady ran it for them.

Well, I certainly was mistaken!  There will have to be more than a part 1 and part 2 of Staying the Night With Grandma Hutton. There are just too many memories and stories to tell.  What great memories!!!  Stay tuned for part 3 on one of the next blogs!

This article was in my grandfather’s scrapbook as well.   I thought I would share it with you.

I am not certain why my grandfather had this photograph saved other than he liked it or knew the people.  Perhaps there is a relative here.  It is really neat, I think.  I like their uniforms.  Notice that they are wearing belts!  This was probably in the 1953 or 1954 paper as I am sure that Ben F. Anderson was not a judge while he was playing for the Charleston High School.  Haha.

I have heard of a lot of these names,  I wonder if any of you are related to any of these people and have a comment to make below?

Today, at my bird feeder, I had a male and female Eastern bluebird and what I call the true woodpecker, a red headed woodpecker.  It was totally black and white with the most brilliant red head.  I took a picture but it was through the window and screen and not so great, So I will post this picture that I googled.

When I was a little girl in school, the teacher would read us a book and then show us the pictures.  There was a story about an old lady who was bitter and mean and if I remember correctly, she was stingy.  She was, I think, what I would call an old bitty.  It has been a long time, maybe third grade, so my story may be inaccurate, but this is how I remember it. The little lady was short and round and had on a black dress with a white apron and a red scarf/hat covering her hair.  This woman was not kind and I guess she was warned to be nice and did not change.  Her punishment was that eventually, she was turned into a woodpecker.  That is about all that I remember other than the woodpecker was exactly the old woman.   Her black dress, white apron and red head made up the exact look of the woodpecker! I tried to find this book for the children when they were little and could not.  I told them about it, but they thought it was a crazy story.  Haha. I can still see the picture of the woman in my head so when I see a woodpecker I think of that woman spending her life pecking away.

When we lived in the country, we thought it would be a neat thing to try to feed the birds, especially the hummingbirds, squirrels and chipmunks.  We thought this would delight the children and we wanted to teach them the various animals/birds.  We bought a huge book about birds to help us identify them.  It was a very good book and showed male and female of each.

We had one of our feeders on the tree right outside of our sliding glass door off of the dining room.  This was filled with sunflower seeds and corn. One night, I was sure that I spotted a mouse in there!  We were all watching it and we all know that I absolutely hate mice!  I have to say that this was the cutest one I had ever seen!  He had such neat looking hair (he looked very soft) and his eyes were so big and dark.  His ears were really cute as well.  I told my husband to go get rid of it.  He said it was not a mouse.  We disagreed and he went out there to investigate.  He walked right up to it and it did not budge.  He poked at it and it still just sat there eating.  He said it had a really strange tail and that it definitely was not a mouse. He would not relocate it.   I was a bit angry and said if I had a mouse in the house, we were moving!

An evening or two later we had a large snow storm and my husband and brother were out clearing snow from his home and ours. Even though it had snowed quite a bit, it was actually really warm feeling outside.   I opened the sliding door and let the children play in the back yard.  As I was watching them, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this fluttering thing coming off of the garage and into the tree.  I quickly turned and that “mouse” was in my feeder! I called everyone over to the feeder! Of course, no one believed me about it “fluttering” into the feeder. We took several pictures and did some research.  We finally realized that we had a flying squirrel!  What an exciting time.  The kids were so excited!  I am glad that, at this one time, my husband did not listen to me and relocate this little cutie.

Another really neat bird that we had was an oriole.  What a beautiful bird all the way around!  Wonderful colors and what a voice!  The prettiest I have heard. He was at our hummingbird feeder.  We immediately went in and grabbed our book and read up on the oriole.  We went straight to town, to Rural King, to get the food that the book said the oriole would really love.  Sadly, that was the one and only time we saw the oriole as he was just passing through.

The hummingbirds were the other exciting birds.  We learned so much about them and they were our favorites.  We could watch them forever.  They were territorial and would stand guard and chase the others away.  Even if we had three feeders, that one would try to guard them all! We would have to bring the feeders in to refill them.  They were so use to us that when when we would carry it out, they would swarm all around us trying to get a drink while it was in our hands.  It was awesome!

The hummingbirds also remind me of our friend, Dorothy.  We purchased her home and when we were at the closing, Dorothy and I started talking about the house and our old house.  I mentioned that I was going to miss the birds we had in the country and especially the hummingbirds.  I asked her if she ever had hummingbirds.  She laughed and told me yes and that she even had a “hummingbird vine”!  Then we laughed and hugged.  She laughed even more and asked if it was ever heard of for two strangers to hug at a closing!  She said she knew that the right family was moving in to her house.  We became good friends immediately and remained so.  She was right, we did have hummingbirds and still do.

We even have the “true woodpecker” and eastern bluebirds. We have the morning doves with their beautiful song, the geese flying by and honking and all of the other colorful  birds.  I even have the crows outside when I leave for work yelling, “Caw, Caw.”  Silly birds, they do not know I have a van!  How fortunate can you be??!!

These clippings are in my grandfather’s scrapbook.  This article is about his mother-in-law’s brother.  These articles are from December 31, 1953.  Too bad the pictures are not better.  I googled McCormick-Deering Fodder Shredder.  It is quite a contraption. Eb Pearcy was my Great Grandmother’s brother. I remember my father took us to visit him often as well as Alvey.  They lived near where we lived in the country.

On a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, people actually went visiting and this was great fun. You never needed an invitation, you just showed up. Most times you sat in their yard and talked and sometimes you visited on the porch.  People just showed up to sit in our yard as well! I remember that some of our relatives who lived in town would come out and sit in our yard on a hot day. They always commented on how much cooler it was at our home.  There were no buildings blocking the nice breeze!  Visiting was wonderful!  We should do more of this today!

These articles are from 1953. I wonder what the County Jail Garage was and if it is still standing.

Just look at the names of the people below.  I know a lot of the last names but I do not know who they are related to that are here today.  Comment who your relatives are if you would like!

I have been posting items from my grandfather’s memories and that led me to thinking that I really was too young to have many memories of him at all.  I remember that he was sick and in bed when we visited.  I remember him being on the couch one time but leaning to one side trying to rest.  The lack of memories makes me sad.  However, it brought to mind the many memories I have of my grandmother.

For as long as I can remember, I spent Saturday nights at my grandmother’s house.  I do not think any of the other siblings did, just me.  There is a recollection of my little brother attempting to spend the night once, but then our great grandmother came to visit grandma and he scooted right home with dad!  Haha.  He was a bit frightened.  He visited on Saturdays too, but would go home for bedtime. People would have a hard time believing this, but we are both shy.  It may be more unbelievable about me, but even though I talk through a situation and seem to be outgoing, inside I am dying.  Anyway, I have such great memories of these times!  I will have to write later about the times together as families with taffy pulls and other great gatherings.

I always wanted to be there in time for supper because she gave the choice of some of the foods.  Without fail, I chose fried potatoes as a side dish.  She, too, had a garden in the back yard as well as a cherry tree! While the meat was cooking, we would go out and pick the salad ingredients.  Everything, of course, was made in cast iron skillets and pans that I call guardian ware. They were pans with sort of bumps on the outside.  I still cook with both, cast iron and guardian ware.  She made the very best wilted lettuce ever! The smells of the food were also good, it was like you could taste the food! She would have a 6 pack of Coke, which only came in bottles, and she would split one with me. My mother was a fantastic cook too but I loved the attention at grandma’s as well.

She had the neatest kitchen and I would love to have that today!  There was the huge double sink with side drainboards, is I guess how I would describe it.  That is called porcelain or cast iron ceramic I think.  The counters went clear across the wall except for where the stove was.  There were no cabinets.  She had floor to ceiling cabinets on the opposite wall to store everything in, the dishes and the pantry were both on that side.  We would eat and clean up the dishes in time for Lawrence Welk.  That was her very favorite show.   I remember the bubbles from the show and Bobby and Cissy!  I remember other stuff on the show but those two things come to mind first. Sometimes we would go to the table and play bunco or rummy after the show and other times we would just sit and watch the next shows that were on.  Grandma was crocheting every time she was sitting.  She made the most beautiful doilies for table tops and backs and arms of chairs.  She made those hangings that looked like bunches of grapes. They were crocheted over pop bottle caps.  Her crocheted items were so dainty and beautiful. I crochet, but there is no way I could crochet with that tiny needle and thin yarn!  I have tried but by now I probably could not even see the stitches! I would love for my house to look like my grandmother’s! Again, I searched for a photo of what she made and hers was smaller and much nicer looking in my opinion, but below is a photo. She used the thread stuff to make hers with, not yarn, so it was finer.

Here are some photos of the types of doilies she made.

Sometimes, in the evenings, her friends would stop by and visit.  That was always fun to me.  They would just sit in the chairs and talk and laugh about their stories.  My great grandmother, her mother, would visit and she had the longest white hair.  She always wore it braided and then wrapped those braids around her head.  I have always said I would have long white hair and wrap it around my head in braids when I was old.  I am growing it now! She lived to be 99!

At bedtime, we would pray together and then just lay and talk.  She would tell stories about her life or just talk about what happened the week before.  Those were the best times.  The next morning, she would fix me breakfast and then we would wait for her friend.  She had a friend that lived the next street over and every morning she would walk across the street and down the alley to grandma’s house.  Grandma could see out the window from her kitchen table and see when she was coming.  She would jump up and pour her a cup of coffee.  I loved sitting at the table and listening to them talk! My grandmother had a diary that she kept at the table and wrote in.  I asked her once to say that I spent the night.  Guess what?  I have those diaries and one time it says that I spent the night! What a treasure to have!

Dad would pick me up mid-morning.  One time, the minute, I got into the car I told him I was starving.  He said, “What? Are you saying Mom did not feed you?”  I told him that she offered but I did not want it.  I went on to tell him that she asked me if I wanted french toast and I told her that I did not like it!  Dad quickly turned and looked at me and asked, “You did not want it?”  I told him No!  I told her I do not like french toast.  He laughed and I was sort of starting to get angry at him for laughing but he quickly went on to ask if I knew what french toast was.  Of course, I did not, I told him no.  He laughed even harder and I was getting angry.  He told me in between laughs that french toast was what we called “egg bread”.  He said, “It is your favorite! Why didn’t you ask her what it was?”  I have no idea why I did not ask her and just told her no and that I did not like it.  I was no longer angry at dad for laughing, I was very angry at me!!!  I really missed out!

My grandmother had the most amazing bathroom! Off of the kitchen was a bathroom that was like a really small hallway.  There was a door from the kitchen and on the other side was a door to her bedroom.  It was really, really tiny.  To the right was the toilet.  That was practically all there was room for with a toilet paper holder on the wall.  At the other end was some sort of closet type thing.  It was weird looking though.  I assume the toilet paper and supplies were in there. I could be mistaken but I think this was a shelf with a curtain in front of it, but not sure.  I really did not like the looks of it and did not feel comfortable opening that curtain because it was so odd looking to me.

BUT!!!!!, the bathtub!!!  The bathtub was off of the bedroom and was all that was in the room, a bathing room! I would LOVE to have this room and I remember so many details about it!  The bathtub was a clawfoot tub.  Totally wonderful!  I had to have a bath every time that I was there!  The towels were on a shelf and you could pick your own fluffy towel in whatever color.   She had a slender shelf that went along the walls that  contained bath salts and bubble baths of every type.  You could open the jars and smell each one and take your pick and they came in different colors. They looked so pretty lining the shelves!  There was a window with the cutest curtains with a view of her side yard and you could see her cherry tree.  There was a nice chair to sit in and some cabinets and counter top to put your stuff on. I felt like a princess being able to have this luxurious bath in the special bathing room.  The back of the tub was sloped so that you had an awesome back rest. I absolutely loved it.  I am not certain on the flooring, but it was just off of her bedroom and her bedroom had a beautiful linoleum with roses on it and I think the bathing room was the same.  I loved everything about it.  Sometimes when we were just visiting, we would go into the room just to look at it.  The baths lasted much longer than they needed to because it was just that enjoyable! With your imaginations and dreams, you could spend so much time in there. I searched images but could find none exactly like it, but it was something like this. The feet were white as well, though.

I was telling my husband about this room that just had a tub in it and he said, oh, like ours?  I said no, ours is a tub first and then the toilet.  See, with ours you walk in a door that has a tub and then there is another door and the toilet.  The room where the toilet is has a small sink and a window and then a door to our bedroom.  Uh Oh!  He should not have told me this.  I processed that awhile and called him back and told him, you know, we need to remodel our bathroom, get a clawfoot tub and flip flop the room and put the toilet first.  He said he did not think so! I may work on him and see.

I just realized that I am going on and on and have so much more to tell!  I am going to write a Part 2!  Join me Thursday for that!

This article is the very first page of my grandfather’s scrapbook.  In fact, it is glued to the front cover on the inside.  I think this must have been in 1954 as there is also a receipt on this page dated March 4, 1954 from my grandfather.  It is for receipt of money from him to the Hospital Building Fund and it is signed by a Laura L. Winter, Sec’y.

As you can see, these are from 1954 so I am pretty positive that the above articles are, in fact, from 1954.

Above and below the following articles in the scrapbook are lots of notes made by Grandpa.  He may have just been sharing his opinions. I will not share them as I do not know the situation.  Nothing bad is written, I just decided not to share, but I have no problem sharing the articles. The water situation was of a great importance to him and to the city as I have so, so many items on this, including an entire book, green in color, that has map after map and many more things.  Well, the water situation was of great importance to everyone.

I have heard of a Bob Black, but I am pretty certain it is not this Bob Black as the age would not match.  Perhaps, his father?

I remember when I worked at EIU in 1974 a story was told of Eastern looking for a place to settle.  They had a few towns to consider. I remember the story that water was an issue.  When the people determining just where to build Eastern, the committee or whatever, were to come through town, even though there was a water issue, they wanted everyone in town to stand outside along the route and water their lawns or wash their cars and smile and wave to the committee as they passed through.  This was to show that we had plenty of water!  I think the offer made to the committee was free water and they would not be billed for 50 years or something like that.  I am not stating this as a fact.  It is just what I remember being told.  In fact, we repeated it to students and their parents visiting EIU.  If you would like, you are welcome to make your own comments correcting me.  I did not go into all of the detail that I was told regarding this story, but it is a shortened version of what I was told. I thought it was a delightful story and it made me smile to hear it.  I loved how they planned this to “win” the home of EIU.

I wonder what the dissension and controversy was over? Does anyone know?

This afternoon I will post the lake articles concerning the silt.  Look for it this evening.  Thank you!

My grandfather, Phillip B. Hutton, was commissioner of the City of Charleston.  At the time of his service, there must have been some issues with the lake and the water supply.  There is a huge book with plats and maps that he has and he kept a scrapbook of articles concerning the water/lake and other matters.   He also kept a diary and there are some notes in there concerning the lake and reservoir.  I thought that I would start to post some of these articles for anyone interested in the City of Charleston.

A

I will be posting more articles from this scrapbook soon.   There are several newspaper articles regarding the lake and worries of silt.   I will post them soon.

Sorry that the pictures are not that good, but they are old articles.

I have some more work to do on the blog that I was going to publish today.  I know that I have been posting more than I said I would, but I do want to remain consistent with the Thursday and Sunday posts, so here I go.  I received a comment on one of my prior blogs from my sweet, little cousin, who happens to share my birthday! To clear that up, she is much younger than me. Her comment led me to write this one which will not require as much work as the one I was working on, as I am still looking for photos for that one.  She commented on the amazing fudge that her Grandmother made as well as the church windows that she made. There were three sisters, Wanda, Alta and my mother.  They all were the best cooks ever!  I replied to her comment, that I think they got it from their mother, Lena.

This prompted me to look up the recipe for church windows.  I made them one time, or should I say I attempted them one time.  I have said before that desserts were not my specialty.  Haha.  I guess I did not do what the recipe said and my church windows all melted.  I did explain to the children how pretty they looked when they were done right, but… I don’t think they were pleased with me as I had went on and on about how neat these church windows were going to be.  Let me just say that they were not impressed.

I was so fortunate.  When these sisters got together and cooked a huge meal, no one could outcook them.  There was a sister-in-law too, Aunt Eileen. These meals were frequent. In the good old days, families got together often.  It is true that our first and best friends were our cousins.  How well I remember those days and the fantastic food!  How nice it would be to still have those days!  Not only the food, but the fun times with them all!  Yes, I was so very fortunate.

Anyway, I am going to post the church window recipe below.  When I went to get my mother’s cookbook, I was thinking about the comment that I made to my cousin about them getting it from their mother and I remembered my mother’s dedication in the front of the book.  I will quote part of it…. “I dedicate this cookbook to my mother, Lena Calhoun.  Her cooking inspired my recipes, but I will never be the cook that she was.”  There is more printed in the dedication, but she ends it with this, “With Love To Mom, Rene Hutton. ”  Typing that almost made me cry.

Michele, I do not know if this was the recipe that your grandmother, my Aunt Wanda, used, but here is the one in my mother’s cookbook.  You are right, Michele, they were so pretty with the colored marshmallows.  My children will never know since I melted mine.  Haha.

My daughter called me this morning on the way to work and asked me if I had Alexa plugged in.  I told her no and she said if you tell her Good Morning, she says that it is Hoodie-Hoo day or something like that.  She said she could not remember exactly the day. She told me that Alexa said to yell and she suggested that you wave your arms like you just don’t care!  I explained the day to Shelby.

I reminded Shelby that Judy Frazier of Channel 3 news always made a big deal about that.  Shelby did not remember, but I always had to go outside with Shelby and Cody on this day at noon and raise our arms and yell Hoodie Hoo!  Judy Frazier said that this was to scare winter away.  I am a tad bit sad that Shelby does not remember because they were always so excited and watched the clock until noon and then we had to run out and yell!  At least now, she knows that she did, though.  Maybe Shelby can pause at work today and run out and yell!  Haha. This day means that Spring is exactly one month away.

When I mentioned Judy Frazier to Shelby I said that I missed her.  She was funny.  She made up words for the weather by combining them.  If I am not mistaken, one day she said it was muggid.  Then she laughed and laughed at herself and said that was muggy and humid.  I thought my brother, Pete, and I were going to die laughing.  Anyway, as soon as I said the name, Judy Frazier, Shelby said, “I am who you think I am.”  We both laughed.  Shelby said she remembered Judy but not Hoodie Hoo day.

Later, as I was talking to Wes and telling him this story, he said, “I am who you think I am.”  Haha.  We were all at Sam’s Club in Champaign one Saturday.  As we were leaving, a lady was standing right outside of the door, just standing there.  She said hello to everyone.  I was the last to leave and she said hello to me.  I turned to see her and said, “Hey!” Her response….. she said, “I am who you think I am.”  We all laughed about that as well, too.  We thought it was funny she said that.  Haha.  We miss her on the news. She was a fun woman. We all loved her!

Anyway, at noon….. go outside, wave your arms and yell loudly, HOODIE HOO!!!!

I hope it works!!!!!

My father was a conductor for the New York Central Railroad.  We lived in the country in Charleston, Illinois on 10 acres.  Dad was gone a lot of the time due to his job.  We looked so forward to when he would come home.  Of course, we loved seeing him, but we also looked forward to going places with him.

When he was home, on payday, we always went to the neighboring town, Mattoon and picked up his paycheck from the “yard”.  The Big Four railroad yard was in Mattoon and that is where he worked out of.  We sometimes would shop at Warehouse Sales.  It was like the Walmart of today and we would have such fun exploring the toys.  I remember that we always got our tennis shoes from there.  It is where Kull Lumber is today.  We would stop at the original “Burger King” in town and get a bag of tomato burgers – I remember when they were 6 for $1.00 so they may have been even less then!  Yummy!  What a treat.  To this day, they still have the best hamburgers.

We would visit our cousins who lived in Mattoon and get to play with them as well.  We use to all live on the same street and one family lived across the street until we moved to Charleston.  When we were at our cousin’s house, we would play under a great big weeping willow tree.  It was so full that we could get underneath it and sit and talk and not be seen by others, or so we thought. They also had a garage filled with toys that we would play with! We always played some sort of action game that my cousins would think up.  They were both boys and my little brother made up three boys that I had to play with. There was a show on television, Route 66.  My cousins each would play the part of one of them, Buz Murdock and Tod Stiles.  I do not remember what part my brother and I would play, but that was their role.  I say I had to play with them but I did not “have” to.  It was either that or the older girl cousins would play with my hair as they played hairdresser. My uncle would tell us that if we picked up the cigarette butts out of the yard, we could have a penny for each one we found and threw away. Of course, we did this!

There was a little grocery store right beside their back yard there named  Llewellyn’s. We would take our hard earned money and go get some candy!  We could get a small bag of candy each.  My favorites candies were sixlets and the hot dog gum, it was red and shaped like a little hot dog.  I loved the flavor of that gum!  I also liked the sheets of paper with colored candy dots on it.  Sometimes I would get the six pack of paraffin pop bottles with flavored kool-aid inside.  The bottles could serve as flavorless chewing gum later.  Of course, my all time favorite candy, and still to this day, was tootsie rolls.  We would all get different candies and then share.  There was lik-m-aid which was like a kool-aid powder that you ate with a stick or a plastic spoon.  Today, the spoon to dip with is edible too!  Share below in the comments what your favorite candy was.  I had several but this was just a few to name.  Peanut butter bars were delicious too, they were a hard candy with a sort of softer filling inside and bit-o-honey came in close after that.

I guess that the store was owned by two sisters, Florence and Katherine.  I do not know which one was which, but one of the sisters was always behind the counter and one was on a stool in the corner when you walked in.  They both would smile and say hello.  They were so nice that it was such fun to go there. That is my memory, some may differ with their opinion, but that is what I remember.  Later in life, I heard about a story about The Mad Gasser, their brother, Farley.  He was “gassing” people in Mattoon.

On the way home from our day out, Dad would stop and get some beverages.  Us three children were allowed our choice of soda.  The sodas came in glass bottles then.  I always got a chocolate soda, Chocola.  The bottom of the bottle was darker brown from the settlement of the chocolate and you had to shake it up before you drank it.  I think I always got this due to the fun in shaking the bottle.  Haha!

The road we took home from Mattoon to Charleston had a very small hill.  Dad would say hold your bottles and we all would stick our fingers in our bottles to plug them up and he would speed up a bit over the hill.  It always took our stomachs away!  We could not wait to get to this part in the road.  I can so vividly remember the three of us with our fingers in our bottles, laughing and saying “Wheeeeee!!!!”  What fun times we had!

These postcards are all addressed to my grandfather except for one.  The one not addressed to him is from my grandmother to her uncle.  The addresses for my grandfather are while he was stationed apparently.  Some are addressed to the USS Washington, %P.M, New York City, NY.  There are no zip codes on any of these.  Some are addressed to the USS Washington, %Postmaster, via Pacific Station, San Francisco, California.  The one to my Grandmother’s uncle is addressed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I wonder if he were stationed somewhere as well?  It is %C.M.E.R.R. Co.

I wonder what the side spillway thing is that looks like stairs?  Anyone know? Also, wouldn’t the person at the top be sitting in water?  I could google it, but it is more fun to ask and read your comments! I am not sure a search would result with “side spillway thing that looks like stairs” anyway.  Haha.

Just thought you may want to see some of these postcards.  I may have shared these on the You Know You Are From Charleston, Illinois page already.

There were so, so many nice, funny, clean, television shows when we were children.  There were weekly variety shows, comedy, drama, westerns, cartoons and more.

I remember being so fascinated with the television.  It was a huge box on legs and others were in a console.  My little brother and I, as many others probably did, wondered how the people were inside of there and how the salesman knew what people to put in there.  We wondered if the actors had to stay in that box all week or if people came to the house and changed them.  We worried about how they ate and everything else. We finally questioned our mother about it.  Rather than ruining our fantasy, she told us they came weekly.  This was a mistake because then my brother and I were going to take the back off and take out those people and play with them.  Who would not want to have The Lone Ranger ride around in your living room!?

We were really excited about this, we were going to get them out and play with them!  Well, my mother figured out what we were trying to do before we even got started.  She told us that if we messed with the television and a screwdriver, we may cause an explosion or a fire.  This would not only harm or kill the people inside, we would probably be injured as well. We decided to just let the people come get them when it was time to change them and be content with just watching them when they were on.

We can start with Westerns I guess, the others will be discussed at a different time.  First off I will mention Gunsmoke.  When I knew this was going to be on, I had to run and get my six shooters and strap them on!  Matt Dillon, the star,  always walked out and came up to the screen and shot  at us.  I always had to fight back.  He never got me and I never got him, so we continued this weekly.

There were so many good ones.  My sister loved Sugarfoot.  There was Roy Rogers who had the neatest horse, Trigger.  Trigger was so good and did so many tricks. He also had a jeep he called Nellybelle.  My little brother had a fire truck that was metal, some called them kiddie cars, or maybe a pedal car.  It had pedals to make it go. It was red, sleek, had a shiny bell on it and a little white ladder.  He sped all around in that thing.  He affectionately named it Nellybelle.

The Rifleman was another good one featuring Lucas McCain and his son, Mark.  The Rifleman always came down the road, rifle at his hip and  firing his rifle repeatedly.  For some reason, I never felt the need to shoot back at him.  Perhaps I did not think six shooters should shoot back at a rifle.  I imagine that if I had a rifle, I would have fought back.

My mother’s favorite was Rawhide.  This featured Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates.  Rowdy Yates was a very young Clint Eastwood.  This show was about cattle drivers and situations would arise along the trail that they had to deal with.

Hopalong Cassidy was another favorite.  We had this show for our movie projector too.  Dad had several of these on reels and we would watch them from time to time.  Dad would set up the projector and we would watch them on a sheet hung on the wall.  Our favorite part of this was when someone would fall off of the horse and dad would rewind the projector and they would hop right back on.  We laughed so hard at this.  Dad would repeat it a few times for  us and then continue on with the movie. Someone would get shot and die and he would rewind and they would hop right back up alive.  We never knew when he would do this, but we always had great fun watching when he would rewind and laugh so hard.

Gene Autry was the singing cowboy and my mother and aunts loved that! To name a few more, there was Annie Oakley and Maverick.  There was Paladin – Have Gun Will travel.  We made up different words to the Paladin theme song.   There was Sky King which we LOVED hearing…”Out of the blue of the western sky”….  There was also Sergeant Preston of the Yukon with his dog, Yukon King.

I am sure that I am missing some, but you can comment your favorites below.  I know that later on there were many more westerns, but these are the ones from when I was a child, the ones in black and white. Another great thing that was a result of  these shows were the things you could purchase.  You could buy lunch boxes and you could get a matching thermos with something depicted from the show on them. There were little toy guitars and cowboy hats with the same depiction and do not forget my six shooters!  I took them everywhere I went.  Those were great times.  The cartoons were the best back then too and you could purchase even more items relating to those.  We will do cartoons and other shows at a later date.  Please feel free to comment your favorite show or to comment on one I mentioned.  Tell me your memories?

I do not know why most of these are only addressed to my grandfather.  I have no idea if they were from my grandmother or what.   Lots of Valentine post cards, though.  Some are so detailed and are what I could call embossed.  Most seem to be from 1910 through 1914.  What very neat cards!!!!

On the message side of the post card some say “Correspondence”, some say “Correspondence Space”  and some say “Space for Writing Messages”.

On the address side, some say “Address”, some say “Space for the address” and some say “This Space For Address Only”.  One says “The address is to be written on this side.”

I have not looked, but what a neat idea to send valentine postcards.  I may have to check it out!

This one is from my grandmother to my grandfather with a message to him.  So cute!!!  she drew little hearts with arrows at the top with their initials!

There will be a post following with the remainder of the cards that I found.

First off, Happy Valentines Day!

Going back to my grade school days, I remember making the construction paper “envelopes” and decorating them for Valentines Day. This was done during class time. We hung them on our desk and the classmates went around and put a card in it that they got for you.  I remember it being fun and I liked making the envelopes with hearts and lacy borders.

As far as the short time my children were in school, I remember them making a box and I feel like we made those at home rather than at school and then took the box to school the day we took their cards for their friends.  We also had a party for them.  We made treat bags with candy and small trinket gifts such as pencils, stickers and such.  They had either cupcakes or cookies or something like that.  We parents could attend the party and that was great fun to watch the children’s excitement.

I feel like I like for the children to have fun on Valentines Day more than the romantic concept of the day.  I did, however, receive a nice bouquet from my husband today and I LOVE that!  Thank you Wes! We would go all out with the children.  They got gifts from us and had a special dinner at home.  These ranged from heart shaped pizzas, heart shaped cakes, etc. I think one of the most remembered gifts was one large item that we gave to them all as a group gift.  It was a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)  with the game The Lion King.  That happens to be one of our favorite movies and a very, very good game.  We played that for hours even after we beat the game. (Cody is the best in the family at video games now.) I would love to play it again with them!

One time while my husband was with Cody coaching basketball practice, Shelby and I prepared a wonderful valentines meal.  We used icing to attach conversation hearts around the edge of the plate.  We made cherry kool-aid and dipped the rim of the glass in sugar that we colored red.  I think we may have had steak and we colored the macaroni and cheese red.  Shelby had such fun helping make all of this and it was such a pretty display.  The boys really loved it!  It was such fun to see their faces. (Shelby is a fantastic cook to this day and always plates her meals like a professional!)  I miss my babies not being around for the fun today.  Happy Valentines Day to my babies!

NOW —- to the old days.  Following is a Valentines Card that my Grandmother, Dora,  sent to my Grandfather.  The back of the card just has his name and address on it.

The following is a card that my grandfather’s sister, Leda, sent to my grandmother.

The print on the card is rather light.  It reads in part… as some of it is now missing, “Would that I could ——–to my heart” and then I cannot read the next lines but at the end it says, “word can impart” and then I cannot read more and then it says “you.” I wish I could still read it.  I did google cards from 1913 but I did not find one like this.  The stamp on the back is green was one cent!

Again, Happy Valentines Day to you all.  Spend time with your loved ones, they are so precious!

These adorable babies!  Two completely different and opposite tooth fairy stories.  The children went to public school for a short period of time. They went to a small school in Lerna, Illinois, through second grade for Cody and kindergarten for Shelby. We moved to town and they attended Carl Sandburg for third and first grade. After that, we taught them at home.

Let’s start with Shelby.  This was while she was attending Lerna school When a student lost a tooth, they got to keep it in a “tooth necklace”.  This was a plastic tooth on a necklace that opened and closed.  The tooth was placed inside and the date of loss was written in marker by the teacher.  Shelby witnessed many people receive these and wanted one more than anything! It was so important for her!

I can see her little face just like it was yesterday.  She was so adorable and all smiles! I would pick them up from school and we all three would chat all of the way home.  When we got home, at some point, (always outside in the yard) Shelby would saunter up to me, all smiles, and say, “Mom.”  I would bend down to her and she would shyly step side to side with her hands in her pocket and say, “I lost a tooth today.”  I would exclaim excitedly and ask to see it.  She would be so darn excited and reach in her pocket, giggling, and start to hand it to me, pausing to make sure we could take it to school and get one of those necklaces! When I reassured her we would take it the very next morning and get one, she would hand me her tooth.  What a sweet, cute, little girl.  She would hand it to me and wait.  I so hated to disappoint her.  Apparently, she could tell by the look on my face and I would look at her and  she would look at the ground and back up at me and shake her little head side to side and ask, “No?”  Evidently,  she would search and search on the playground and find her “tooth”.  She would take such care to not lose it and bring the tiniest little white rock home to me!  Those little rocks do amazingly resemble a tiny little tooth. How heartbreaking for me but apparently more heartbreaking for her.  She tried at least twice a week to show me those little rocks and hope they would pass for a tooth.  Not only did I think she was so adorable, I thought how smart of her to try this.  I felt so sorry for her. I wanted her to enjoy recess instead of looking for “teeth.” I would reassure her that they would come out when they were ready but she could hardly stand the wait. Of course, she did finally lose her tooth and get her necklace!  She was so proud that I let her wear it for days. Haha. We did make a production of putting the tooth under the pillow for the tooth fairy to take and, of course, to  leave a nice little amount of money in return for the tooth.  I sure do miss those days.  I love her so very much and always see that beautiful little girl face when I look at her.  It does not matter her age, she will always look like my little baby girl in my eyes.

Now for a whole different perspective with Cody.  We moved to town which is why we had to switch schools.  Cody was in third grade now.  Shelby had lost another tooth and of course would not stop going on about it.  When I was tucking Cody in to bed that night,  he asked me to stay a little longer so we could talk.  This was an enlightening and heartbreaking talk.  I had never ever thought of what Cody told me.

He basically told me he knew there was no tooth fairy.  He told me not to worry that he would not tell Shelby because she seemed to like the whole thing.  This is what hurt me and I had never thought of before… He asked me why I would want my child to think that some “thing” would come into his room late at night and get under his pillow and take something away. He asked me if I had thought about how this might scare some child.  Wow!  I was speechless.  Here I am feeling terrible, explaining to my son how I had never thought of that and telling him that my parents did it and I was fine with it.  I told him that I only thought it would be fun for them and had not thought of all of that.  Then I, of course, apologized to him.  He told me that it was okay and he was not mad at me.  Wow! I had no idea.  He was, however, smart enough to mention that I still should be paying him so Shelby would not wonder about it and perhaps not believe.  I had to be careful to not laugh at that part.  I do not think I will ever forget this story and how he spoke to me.  He was sort of chastising me but yet being gentle so as not to hurt me.  Such a sweet little boy.  I have yet to this day heard a child say something like that about the tooth fairy.  I am still impressed that he even came up with that. What a thinker he was! He clearly had put a great deal of thought into this. When I think of this, sometimes I still wonder how long he dealt with his thoughts and how hard it probably was for him to come to me at such a young age. I still feel sorry sometimes and hope that I did not scare him.  Who knew?

The second item he brought up was Santa.  He, in a very matter-of-fact way, told me that he knew there was no Santa and to not worry, he would not ruin this for Shelby either.  He then added his little sermon to me.  (We all thought he would grow up and be a pastor, but….) He proceeded to tell me how Santa was not part of Christmas and God would not have some person be able to do all that Santa was suppose to do.  He said that God would not give someone powers of that type.  Only God can see all. He actually began asking me questions about it and expecting me to answer … Why would God want someone to have those powers?  Why would I think that?  Why would I want them to believe that?  Thankfully, he let me off of the hook saying that he got that it was fun and he would not ruin it for Shelby, but he knew this was not true and could not possibly be true.  To quote a movie here…..”I am filled with chagrin.”  Haha.  I sure do miss those days.  I love him so very much and always see that beautiful little boy face when I look at him.  It does not matter his age, he will always look like my little baby boy in my eyes.

In fact, they will always be my babies!

Someone commented on yesterday’s blog that I should maybe research this a little.  I did and here is what I found about Ration Book 1, pictured again below.

I found on a website, Department of History, Library, Duke University some of the following.  I am in a way quoting them but without the quotation marks and not verbatim.  I hope this does not get me into trouble.  Haha.

Interestingly, the book I posted a picture of up above, was dated on the back May 4, 1942.  I found that Ration Book 1 was issued to the public May 4 – May 7, 1942.  They were initially used to ration sugar and later were designated for other products.  For instance, it said that stamps 1-4 were for sugar.  Each stamp was worth 1 pound and had to be used in a two week period.  Stamps 5-6 were worth 2 pounds and each was valid for a 4 week period.  Stamps 15-16 were for 5 pounds of sugar each, for home canning! This article went on stating the stamps and their values.  It said Stamp #17 was for a pair of shoes. Stamps 19-28 were for 1 pound of coffee.  This was a very interesting article.  It even offers that you can print a copy of Ration Book 1.  By the way, my family must not have wanted the coffee back then, as those were the stamps that were left in the book!  I know they certainly drank it when I was alive.

The above is the back side of Ration Book 3 which I shared in my prior blog.   The article I mentioned stated that this was distributed May 20, 1943.  The coupons were used for food and other commodities.  It contained 8 pages of stamps.  Four were for meat and four for a clothing program.  The article said that was never put into effect so some clothing stamps were eventually validated for shoes.

I encourage you to google the article and read it.  It is very interesting.  Here is the link  Department of History

Following are some pictures of Ration Books that I found.

I only remember a few stories that my mother told about the rationing.  I do not remember my father speaking of it much. Remember how you wish you would have listened to your parent’s stories more when you were younger?

I ran across these and just thought you might find them interesting.

My husband’s family lived about an hour away, in Sullivan, Illinois.  We camped a lot and mostly at Shelbyville.  Although there is a nice place in Sullivan, Bo Woods, we spent most of the time in Shelbyville.

One time, my husband, Wes, decided we should leave a day early and spend the night in his mother and father’s driveway and spend the next day with them.  We thought this was a great idea.  However, his parents practically go to bed at dark, which is way too early for us.  Another downfall,  was there was no firepit to sit around there, so we basically had to spend the time in the camper at a pretty early hour.  The camper was right next to their bedroom window as well and we did not want to wake them by being in the yard.

This was actually not a problem as we decided to just play games in the camper.  I told my husband that I wanted to pop some popcorn so he needed to turn on the propane tank.  I still pop our popcorn on the stove in a kettle.  Popcorn is just too good to be made in a microwave!  Yuck!

The kids and I were getting things ready inside of the camper when all of a sudden we saw a very bright orangish, yellow light in front of the camper.  A very bright light!  We  were sort of standing in amazement and wondering what it could be from.  Suddenly, the camper door opened and Wes yelled, “Everybody out now!”   We had no idea what was going on but I quickly shuffled the kids out of the door.  As I got to the bottom of the steps, Wes pointed at me and said, “You are not getting any popcorn!”  Haha.  What a weird guy he is at times.  The kids and I start laughing at him.  He looks so shook up and why can’t we have popcorn? You would have laughed too.  He has this way of “dancing” when he is upset.

Before we had a chance to find out more information from Wes, the bedroom window flew open and his mother and father were looking out and they said in unison, “What is going on?”  The kids and I, of course began giggling at that site.  Their little heads together and the questioning look on their faces was just too much.  Wes quickly and perhaps a little embarrassed, said, “Nothing, go back to bed.”  His parents are so sweet and cooperative.  They said nothing more and down went the window. That little gesture set off our laughing again.  Wes then said, “Everyone back in the camper!”  We can be obedient at times too so in we went.

Okay, so what exactly happened?  Well, first off, my husband is not a stupid man,  but at times……… Haha.  I guess that when he went to turn on the propane tank he discovered that it was empty so he needed to switch over to the full tank.  There is some sort of lever to turn and he could not see the lever.  Since the one tank was turned off and the other one was empty, he flipped out his lighter to see the lever.  I guess this was not the brightest thing for him to do.  Anyway, as he flipped the lever to switch tanks, the remaining fumes escaped the empty tank and BOOM! So, that is what the big light was, flames!  There was no damage it extinguished itself. Well, I guess I left out one small detail.  Apparently there was some damage.  He did burn his hair which was not pleasant to smell and there were these little burned ends on his hair.   His hair did not look the best.  Another minor bit of damage was the loss of his eyebrows. This might have been why the children and I were laughing so much. If I remember right,  we may have called him “Singe” for awhile.

This was not as bad as the time that his father saved him from a similar mistake.  This one could have ended much worse. Before we were married, Wes worked with his father who had a trenching and backhoe business in Sullivan, Sanders Trenching. They were at a job and Wes was filling the trencher up with gas from a tank in the back of a pick up truck.  Wes was standing there with the gas hose in the tank and was bored and just looking around when he noticed there was a spider on the gas tank.  We all know that Wes is afraid of crawling things and he was going to fix that spider!  Wes, without thinking, reached for his lighter and tried to  kill the spider by igniting him.  I am not sure if he got the spider but he definitely got the tank!   This made a noise and then there was Wes screaming.  His father heard  both and ran around and quickly screwed the lid on the fuel tank of the trencher which extinguished the flame.  All I can say is that it is a good thing his father was there and was thinking!

It is also a good thing that Wes quit smoking and no longer carries a lighter with him!

I was talking with a friend and we were both expressing our concerns over some problems or issues that we had. One thing led to another and we were chatting away. My friend stated that writing these blogs probably helped some with things. I replied yes and my friend said that they were helped by writing about things as well.

I started reflecting after that conversation. Although, I am not a writer at all, I realized that I have actually been writing my whole life. My grandmother kept a planner at one end of her kitchen table and when I would spend the night with her, I would notice that she wrote in it every morning while having breakfast. I now have those diaries and they are such a treat to read. My grandfather did the same thing. It is really neat, because on my birth date, there is an entry that states that my father has a little girl! I so love having that diary and better yet being mentioned in it!

When I was in 7th grade, my mother bought me a diary for Christmas. I still have it. It was navy blue and locked and had a tiny, little key. I was so happy with that! I rarely missed a day of an entry. I have not stopped writing since then. I have tablets, spiral bound notebooks and various types of journals that I have written in. I would record the date and jot down my thoughts of the day or write about an event. I go through spurts, sometimes I will do this for only a month, sometimes for several months, but I have lots of these around.

However, what prompted me to talk about this was a memory of my father. I do not remember what happened but I remember I was upset and probably even sad about something that had happened. I believe that I was unhappy for a couple of days. I cannot believe that I do not remember, but I have heard that you sometimes block painful memories. My father gave me a pad of paper, I even remember the pad. He worked for the New York Central Railroad and they had these pads of a very distinct pale yellow that was bound at the top by glue. It was unlined and about half the size of a sheet of typing paper. He brought me that pad and a pencil. He told me that he wanted me to write about the incident and why it was bothering me. I really did not want to do this and did not see the point. He insisted I did it, though.

I finished writing it and gave it to him. He told me that he was not going to read it, it was only for my eyes. He then had me go outside with him and we walked to the edge of the woods and told me to read it again. When I was finished reading it, he set it on the ground and told me to watch it closely. He then set it on fire and told me to watch my problems burn up and go away in the smoke and to not think about them any longer. What a special memory this is for me. What a smart, loving father! Not only did he know that writing must help with a problem, he taught me to know how to let go of it and he showed me how much he loved me! Perhaps he was the reason I started writing in that diary and have continued to do so.

Incidentally, I mentioned above that I cannot remember what I was upset about. I guess his plan worked! Thank you, Dad! I love you very much!

This is a photo of my dad when he was in Japan in the Army.

This is a photo of my father’s family. My father is in the middle! Left to right, my grandmother, my grandfather, my father and then his two brothers are next.

In reference to my blog, Chickens and Ducks and Quail. Oh My! I finally found the pictures of the chicken house, chicken coop and chickens! Believe me, I was intent on finding these!  I have looked and looked, so, I am rejoicing now!

In the first picture on the right, is my older sister, then my youngest brother and I am on the left.  You can see that the chickens did have a large pen.  In that picture, that is just a fraction of the chickens. You may notice the peach trees inside of the fence.  We had the most yummy peaches!  We also called that the peach orchard.  Behind the orchard were bushes of gooseberries, blackberries and raspberries. These were, of course, out of the way of the chickens! Can you just imagine the pies that we had!  Yummers!!!

The second picture was taken from the front of the pen and you can see the chicken house which we also called the roost and behind that is the coop.  We called the bigger building in the front the chicken roost and that is where we gathered the eggs from in the mornings.  When the chickens went in to roost, we closed the front and back door. I do not remember if they all went in for the night or not. The smaller house in the back we called the chicken coop. I think the chickens just sort of hung out in there. Actually, I think there was a roosting area in the back and around the sides of that building.  I am not sure if that had a door that closed or not.   I was just a child, what do I know? I don’t know why we called the buildings different names, but we did.  If you zoom in on the picture, or look closely, you can see our ducks that I mentioned! I counted at least 4!  I do not know how many we had, I had thought we had only 2 ducks until I found this picture.

The bottom picture is from the back of the pen.  As you can see, some are free! I think you can see some of the berry bushes there as well.  I just wanted to share the photos of the chickens to go along with the story.  I love the older photos!

As you know if you have read the prior blogs, my husband is a truck driver.  They are like fishermen, they sure can tell the the stories.  I am going to share one today.

I believe it was in the mid to late 80’s when people were doing the thing of throwing/dropping things off the overpass.  They dropped rocks, pop bottles, cans and various items on to the highway.  They thought it was fun if they were able to achieve their goal of striking cars and trucks with the items.  This was a terrible thing to do and many accidents and tragedies occurred.  My husband witnessed one such event.

He was on his way to Chicago on Interstate 57 North passing through Kankakee.  He heard on the CB radio that at the railroad overpass people were throwing stuff off. He started paying closer attention to the radio because he was approaching that overpass.  They were dropping cinder blocks. Instead of dropping the blocks and taking a chance on missing a vehicle, they came up with an idea.  Turns out it was a very stupid idea, but at the time, they thought it was a great idea.

They attached a rope through the hole in the cinder block and tied it up and then wrapped the other end of the rope around their arm so that they could just drop the block down and dangle it over the bridge.  This made it so that when a truck came under, the block would then break out the windshield.

Well, mission accomplished.  Their idea unfortunately worked.  The truck came along and the block did in fact break out the windshield.  They did not expect this, but the block went through the windshield and inside of the cab of the truck.  The bad thing is that since the rope was wrapped around the arm, with the force of the impact and the speed of the truck, it ripped the arm right off.

By the time my husband went through there, the ambulance had already left with the injured person. Traffic had, of course, come to a stop.  My husband was out of the truck waiting and saw the police handcuffing the truck driver.  This was a terrible thing that happened.  However, my husband was puzzled as to why they were taking the truck driver away.  What else happened to cause this?  What did the truck driver do to be at fault?

My husband went up and asked one of the policeman what happened, as he thought  obviously the people throwing things  were at fault.  He asked if the driver had done something.  It was confusing because it seemed as if they were arresting the victim. Therefore, he just had to ask why they were arresting him because this made no sense at all.  The policeman turned to my husband and said they were arresting the truck driver for…..

ARMED ROBBERY!!!!!

Haha.  I am sorry, just had to do this.  My husband tells this story over and over to people and they always swallow it….hook, line and sinker.  Even though it sounds terrible at one part, it always makes them laugh when they realize how gullible they have been.   I hope it made you laugh too!

I LOVE old photos.  This was in my father’s collection.  What a jewel of a picture to have!

Someone sure must have had a sense of humor.  What a great picture to stage. I am delighted to imagine how they were thinking that this would be so neat to take and decided to all not smile, to keep a straight face, strategically have the children stick their heads out here and there, and for the guy to lay across the top of the bicycles.  This is  great! Think of the planning they put into this.  It just makes me smile. Wouldn’t you love to know about this photo and this incident?

It would be nice if pictures could talk??!!  Everyone is always saying they wish walls could talk, well it would be nice if photos could too.  There is the saying that  a picture paints a thousand words and that is true as well.  Sometimes I just need them to be more to the point and to talk louder.   What a fun picture!!

On the back of the photo in handwriting, it says “Bicycle Wreck.”  That is a lot of bicycles to have back then and to actually take a picture!!  It appears that there are a lot of tires (huge tires at that) and not all bicycles.  Perhaps this was one of their family pictures taken at a family event? Were bicycles affordable and in abundance then?  Did they have a bicycle repair shop?  Were they  from a junk pile? Wherever they got the “props”, this sure looks fun.  I am so happy this was in my father’s collection and I absolutely love it!!  Too bad I have no memories of him speaking about this photo.   It would be nice to hear what he had to say.

Does anyone want to share their thoughts, or better yet…. caption this photo?

The first point I must make is that I am not a writer and have never claimed to be. I admire writer’s and always have.  I even had a fictional book that I started years and years ago, but I know I could never be a writer.  I just enjoy telling stories.

The funny thing I have noticed, though, is that when I feel like telling a particular story, it just rushes out and I cannot type fast enough.  I have a 3 or 4 page list of stories that I want to tell.  My husband and I remember something and add to that list. When it is time for my Sunday or Thursday post, I look the list over and boom! out comes a story.  My husband jokingly talks about me having writer’s block. I laugh and say I am not a real writer, so no, I do not.  But, as I said above, sometimes it just seems to flow and I have my story in no time.  The point of this is that today, I do not really have a story that jumps out or that I want to tell.  I am “just not feeling it”.

I want the main result of the stories I tell to help people recall good memories, to laugh, to smile or to just feel good.  Today, I do not have that gumption.  I have sort of been blue all week.  I have no idea why and I have tried everything that I can do to turn a different color!  Lol!  I have played music, I have danced, I have exercised to get those endorphins going that are suppose to make you feel good, I have played with the kitties, I have done anything that I could think of to stop those tears.  I have not even watched a Hallmark movie as those always bring tears! The odd thing is, there is no reason for the tears, or at least none that I can think of, they just appear.

At first, I thought it was because I needed to pray for someone and that something bad must be going to happen.  I can successfully say that I think that I have the town, the United States and some other countries covered with prayer! Every time a crying spell would come I would pray, I started with the standard list and then waited for someone to come to mind.  I would ask for people to come to mind and then I would pray for them. Since that was not helping, I naturally thought there was someone that I was missing to pray for.  I feel like I pretty much have it covered though.

So, back to trying to figure out exactly what it is.  I thought it was thinking about everyone out and about in the horribly cold weather, but I had specifically prayed for that as well. I have no idea.  I figure it is that I miss my babies.  Once they move out, what you spent your entire life doing has to change.  It is hard to stop being a mommy and believe me, I am not doing a good job.  I annoy my children with all of my cautioning statements and warning.  I wear them out wanting text messages when they are home for the night from an event or when the weather is bad.  I am trying to back off and eventually I may, much to their hopes!  I am so silly.  Then I would cry thinking about how my mother must have felt and feel sorry for that.

Well, there is no excuse that I can find.  It must just be hormones even though all of that was over with in my early 40’s.  I guess hormones mess with you your entire life. A friend told me to blame the weather.  We can blame that as well.  Although, I really try not to complain about our weather, because it is sort of the best.  You have a couple of days of extreme frigid temperatures, -50’s and stuff like that and then in three days, you have a 50-60 degree day.  It is so good to not have an entire deep freeze for 3 or 4 months like others do.  A lot of winters , we do not even have frigid temperatures and sometimes not even snow to speak of. I love that we can have several different seasons in just one week.  I think it is the perfect weather.

My mood is on the upswing.  I have not teared up once today! Anyway, sorry for not telling a happy story.  The Super Bowl is coming up and if my team wins, that certainly will improve the mood!  I may tell Sunday’s story before the game to insure a happy one!

My father was a conductor on the railroad, but he was also a carpenter.  Not professionally, he only worked on his own projects.  He was very talented!  When they had money saved up, they would start a new project and slowly were getting the house the way they wanted it to be.  My mother and father were remodeling their living room and dining room area.  They purchased the newest thing to come out, carpet squares.  They were totally excited about this. The boxes were stacked, waiting for them to begin this remodel.

One day, while our parents were grocery shopping and running errands, my little brother suggested we lay this carpet for them since they had not done so yet.  I questioned him but he said it would be so easy.  He laid it on thick and was very convincing.  He was going on about how very busy they were and what a great help it would be if we were to do this for them.  I am not sure of our ages at the time, but he is 3 years younger  and I was not yet 16.  This should be proof enough that we had no clue as to how to do this and should in no way attempt it! We also may have been old enough to know better, but obviously not.  Are you cringing with the thoughts you must be having now?  Haha.

My little brother assured me we could do this and he sounded like he knew what he was talking about.  He had an opened box and he showed me how you just peel off this backing and stick it to the floor.  Well, that was pretty neat and looked to be easy enough.  I shrugged and we decided we could do it.  It WAS really, really easy.  We were so fast at it, too!  Why had they not done this yet?

Mom and Dad returned home and we were so proud that we had finished this for them. We were all smiles, it looked so pretty and it took hardly any time at all to complete! Mom and dad pointed a fact out to us that we had not noticed.  I am sure they noticed right off because after we were told, we realized that looking at the carpet sort of made your eyes go crazy.  Evidently, the carpet tile had a vertical pattern of lines throughout it in different shades of color.  We, of course, not realizing this had laid these squares without paying attention to that one, small, little detail.  Consequently, the pattern was going all different directions.

They were sad and frustrated, but I do not remember much anger coming from them toward us.  I cannot believe they were not furious! (Maybe they were and I just have am not remembering that.)  I think perhaps since we were so proud, it was hard for them to show all of the anger they must have been experiencing?  I wonder about all of the money we just wasted for them. (Perhaps they ran into the bedroom and buried their screams in a pillow, haha!) We felt so terrible for trying to help when we really did not know what we were doing.  Thinking about it now, I am wondering if there needed to be some sort of underlayment put down first?  It was that old tile everyone use to use that is known as commercial tile.  There was alternating colors of brown and black. I found this picture on the internet, but ours was this tile and then a black tile and was in a checkerboard pattern.

Do you remember that tile?  I think it may still be in use today but not in homes. My brother and I just put the carpet  over the old tile that was there and I am not sure that was the correct thing to do in thinking back about it now.

Our intentions were good and I think our parents did appreciate our attempt, but, gosh I wonder what that cost them?!!

My friend who lives in Australia sent these photos for me to enjoy.  I think she has sympathy for our extremely low temperatures that are here and plummeting…. Very cold wind chills tonight and Tuesday morning, between 15 below and 25 below zero. Dangerously cold wind chills expected Tuesday night through Thursday morning, with wind chills as low as 50 below zero expected.

Australia is completely the opposite of here …. hot.  She told me that on the morning that they went there, Thursday, the weather was suppose to have scattered storms so they thought it would be the perfect temperature to go for a good walk but it turned out really hot and she was  extremely burnt. It was around 90 degrees that day.  These photos are of Nobbys Beach, Newcastle Break Wall and of Newcastle Harbour. She tells me that there are some absolutely beautiful beaches there.  I would love to visit Australia!

Admittedly, these are not the greatest of photos as they were taken with a cell phone.  I just thought it was too pretty to pass up!  It was a very cold, windy day and the sun beautifully lit the tops of the tress making it look like fall colors to me!  I just had to share.

The sunrise to the front of these pictures was extraordinary.  By the time I got into the house to go out the front door to take the picture of the sunrise, it was gone.  Just like that!  I just happened to see and act at the precise time! I am so pleased that I got these pictures!  What amazes me most is that if someone were to paint a picture like this, I would say that it was so unreal looking and how would that happen.  I find that I say this more and more and I think I have learned my lesson….amazing things do, in fact, happen!

God’s artistry is amazing!!!

My mother and father later opened a restaurant – Granny’s Kitchen and Bakery.  It was located on the downtown square. This was mentioned in a prior blog, “Life After The Farm”. She even wrote a cookbook, had it printed and named it Granny’s Cookbook.  She sold 2,000 or more copies of it.  Here is a photo of her cookbook.  My brother-in-law made the cover of this cookbook for her. My sister and I say that that is us by her at the stove.  Haha.  Actually all of us children were underfoot, we loved being in the kitchen with her!  We got to lick spoons and beaters, taste things as they came out of the oven and spend time with her. My son tells me that he would like to do another printing of this and sell them. He is very proud of his grandmother for writing a cookbook, as we all are.

Among other things,  her cinnamon rolls were highly sought after.  They were about 1 1/2″  to 2″ in height and covered the entire saucer.  They were huge! They had a glazed icing on top.  She served these daily, they were the probably the best seller of the bakery.  I am not sure about that, though.  She sold her peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies and others by the dozens.  Her pies and cream pies sold like crazy as well!  On Saturday mornings people would come from out of town and buy a dozen of the cinnamon rolls at a time so they could have a week’s worth of them.  Others would buy 2 or three pies at once and several dozen cookies for the same reason. The cinnamon rolls were great when warmed up with melted butter.  I thought I would post the recipe here for you.

My mom was a fantastic cook and even better at baking.  Well, thinking about this, I am in error.  She was equally fantastic in all areas of cooking.  My sister inherited this talent of baking.  One Christmas my mother got us both a cookbook.  She said I was great at cooking meat and that I made the most tender and best meat she ever tasted so I got a cookbook with varieties of meat. (She was always a very complimentary mother.  I cannot make half of the stuff she could make. I sure would love to be able to make her swiss steak!)  My sister got a cookbook of desserts. I laughed and told her this was backward.  I should get the one my sister got so I could learn to bake and vice versa.  Mom, said, no, she was correct in what she did and laughed.  I guess she knew that the desserts book would not help me.  I have to say, though, that I like meat, potatoes and gravy type foods better than baked goods so that may be why i was best at cooking those foods.  You do tend to do best at what you like.

Anyway, in honor of my talented, wonderful mother, and at some people’s request, here is my mother’s cinnamon roll recipe that she sold at Granny’s Kitchen and Bakery.  This is a photo taken out of her cookbook, page 33. Enjoy!  Let me know if you remember her restaurant or cookbook.  Also, if you try making them, please let me know how you like them!

So, I feel a bit remiss. I posted about my first metal concert and failed to post about some talent in my family. In my defense, there is a difference because I was posting about a “first”. I have lots of special nephews, but I am talking about this one at the moment. It does not mean I am not as impressed with my other nephews and their talents. So, other nephews…. no jealously allowed!!! I love you all equally the same.

Anyway….he first impressed me because I hoisted this little boy on my lap in his cute brown corduroy bibs with either a blue or green flannel shirt. Talk about total cuteness!!! I proceeded to read him a book while rocking him. His mother quickly told me he would never sit there and listen to me, let alone go to sleep. Well, he snuggled right up and I began to read. He would look up at me occasionally with those big brown eyes and what a feeling that was. He did intently listen to me and actually did fall asleep. Talk about tugging on my heart strings.

This is not when and where I read to him, but this picture reminds me of it even if he is not as young and is not in his bibs.

This little boy grew up to be a multi-talented young man. I believe he began in high school, but it may have been earlier. He took an interest in art and just started drawing pictures. Wow! The pictures he drew! He still draws pictures and is very, very good. I can remember when my brother called me and said that Seth had taken up drawing and was instantly good. He went on and on about how I should see his drawings! If I am not mistaken, he was a natural and was pretty much self taught.

My brother called me another time and said Seth has bought a drum set and he just stays up in his room drumming all day long. He went on to tell me that I should hear him because he is really becoming pretty good. My brother LOVED drums. He even sort of made his own set of drums and played on them daily. I wonder why he never got a real set and did anything with it? He even would sit at a table and using all of his fingers, would “drum” along with a song. Well, now he has a boy doing the same thing but with a real set. He would call and ask if I could hear him through the phone and go on and on about him. I think that he taught himself to play the drums and then went on to teach himself how to play the guitar.

Seth has written some songs and has played in some bands. He is in a band today, as well. He performs at open mic and sings karaoke. When he comes home to visit, we sometimes make it to karaoke. He always will sing a song for his mother and includes one for Aunt Debbie. The karaoke DJ always asks if Seth is coming when he sees me. He gets so excited when I say yes Seth is coming. When Seth goes up to sing and the crowd hears him, they are stunned and actually turn around in their chairs to see who is singing and some even stand up when he performs. He is that impressive.

He has such a range, he can sing AC/DC better than AC/DC. Haha. If you are not looking, you would think it was them! It is the same with Chris Stapleton, you think it is Chris up there when he sings his songs. He was the praise leader at his church here in town until he moved. When he comes to visit, he always visits that  church and surprises his grandmother with a song. See what I mean by the range he has?

AND… no matter your age, Seth, I still see that little face of yours and you dressed as I described earlier and always will. It is just like it was yesterday to me! We all love you, Seth.

If any of you ever get the chance to hear Seth perform, you would not be disappointed! I think he is in a band now named Close to Spectacular. I am not sure, but I do know that HE is close to spectacular!

Remember the old days, telephones in the house attached to the wall, answering machines that were plugged in with flashing lights for message notifications,  long distance charges, no texting, you actually had to call someone and listen to their voice! You actually had to answer the phone to see who was calling! Our phone numbers were 7 digits and the first two were often referred to by words. Ours began with a 3-4 so it was called Diamond.  Mattoon had a 2-3 prefix and theirs was called Adams.  These numbers had alphabet letters on them. The number 2 had abc, the number 3 had def, the number 4 had ghi, etc. Therefore ours was 3,4 and that had a D and I so we had Diamond.  Get it? Below is a photo of the rotary dial.

There were party lines.  I think these were only for the people who lived in the country. We had 8 people on our party line.  We had a different ring to let us know which call was for our home.  There was a long ring, a short ring, two long rings, etc. You would listen in hopes it was your ring and there was a call for you!  You would pick up the phone to call someone and hear other people talking and would have to hang up….unless….you were quiet and were not heard and could eavesdrop!

A friend and I were on one party line together and our other friend was on a different one.  We were able to call the one and then have the other pick up and have our own three way calling!  This was great fun! Of course, you could not talk for long as others may have wanted the phone.  It was sort of an unspoken rule that if someone picked up the phone, you tried to make your call short and hang up.  That was the courteous thing to do.  We had some we called “the clickers”.  They would repeatedly click in your ear until you hung up the phone.  Sometimes it made you feel like never hanging up just to get back at them.

Party lines became a thing of the past and then we got call waiting! Back in the day….my niece and I were very close.  She called frequently, but there was that long distance charge.  Call waiting beeped in and no one could stand to wonder who might be on the other end, even though it meant putting you on hold and perhaps paying more in long distance fees.  You see, there was no caller id or anything then. It happened, she had to put me on hold.  She was gone for a long time and I was thinking I should hang up and let her call me back so that it would save her some money.  We all know what happens when the one on hold hangs up!

Yep! She clicked over to tell me something and I was gone so she was, therefore, still connected with the other person! She said “Aunt Debbie, I am so sorry.  I am hurrying but there is this stupid cable guy on the phone and he just won’t shut up no matter what I say! He just keeps going on and on and nothing I say is getting through to him.  I am so sorry.  I will have to call you back!”  I guess there was a long pause and she says “Aunt Debbie?”  She hears a quiet little hesitant voice saying, “uh…this IS the stupid cable guy!!!!”  She, at this point, fell all over herself in apologies that will have absolutely no meaning.  There will be no way out of this for her.  Haha.   When I got my return call from her it was such a delight.  I have never laughed so hard.  This has been a story that has brought great laughter and has resurfaced so often.  I am sure all of you have a story like this to tell. It is a famous call waiting problem!

The answering machine — Remember that time you called someone and they didn’t answer and you hung up…or so you thought… and proceeded to talk terribly about them?  Yep! The answering machine caught it all! That phone call you got back saying, “you know we heard everything you said and have it on our machine.”  There is no hole big enough or deep enough to crawl into!!!!

The pranks –I had a nephew who always had great ideas with answering machines.  He came to visit once and his friend was not home.  Let’s say his friend’s name was Dave.  He had all of us here call and ask for Mike.  We all called in our different voices and left Mike a message.  Lastly my nephew called Dave and said Hi, this is Mike, are there any messages for me?  We had a great time with that one.  Of course there are all of the old tricks like calling stores and asking if you had Dr. Pepper in a case, Mr. Clean in a drum or King Edward in a box.  Then you would tell them to let him out and laugh like crazy.  There were the tricks of calling people and saying that their cat is your garden and of course they would say that they did not have a cat.  You would laugh and say that you did not have a garden! You would ask if their refrigerator was running and then tell them to go catch it!

First cell phone — My boss got a motorola bag phone. It was pretty awesome.  We were all so impressed with this invention.  We were out of town at a meeting and my boss asked if I would like to try the phone and call my mother.  I was excited and knew she would like to hear when I would be home, anyway.  They dialed the number and handed me the phone in a bag!  I was yelling and yelling that I could barely hear her and she was yelling back.  The boss says, “we can all hear her!!”  Turns out I had the phone backward all of the time.  I was talking and listening into the back side!  Haha.  It was really neat talking to my mom while riding in a car going down the road though!  Impressive.

My boss often would call me from the road to get his messages, have me do things, etc.  One time he called and was angry about something.  I started telling him there was so much static, something must be wrong.  Then I started saying his name over and over like I could not hear him and hung up the phone.  He called back about 25 minutes later or so and told me it was a good try, but he knew I  could hear him.  Then he started saying oh no, oh no!  Kids are throwing bricks off that overpass and almost hit me!  I, without missing a beat, said, you mean they missed??  No pay for them!  He then apologized.  Ha. Ha.

All of this is in the past now that we have cell phones, but there is still fun to be had.  Now it turns out that you can randomly text the wrong person. Sometimes this is not a good thing at all!  I won’t go into the details of those texts!  It actually happens to a friend of mine more than it does to me.  It can be even worse when you pocket dial someone.  They get to hear everything and anything you are saying!

There are so many solicitations now.  I just answer and have fun with them.  The ones from Microsoft are always good.  They say they are calling about my windows.  I cheerily tell them I have all new windows because my husband is a carpenter.  I thank them for their call and sometimes I hang up after that. Other times I go ahead and listen to their frustration with me as I keep talking about my windows and go on to say I have new siding as well!

I like the ones that tell you to turn on your computer because they see that you have a virus.  My husband may have heard it on a radio program or saw it on you tube or something, but he suggested I tell them the following.  They say we are calling because we see issues with your computer.  I ask them if they can see my computer and have access to it.  They tell me they do.  I proceed to tell them that my computer has been stolen and the police are working on it would they mind telling me just where it is and I ask for their phone number.  They hang up somewhere along the way and never answer me. Amazing! Another good thing to do is to interrupt them and start asking them questions.  I ask where they are from, do they have children, etc.

Wrong numbers are fun too. I have had some nice conversations with people who have called in error. No need to get angry with callers, have fun with it. My husband’s name is, of course, Wes. Every year this lady would call him and she was calling for a Wes. How unusual that was, because there are not many named Wes. She would call and say Happy Birthday, Wes.  It was not his birthday. Wes being nice, went on to talk with her.  She said it was her brother and it was his birthday.  Every year she always called my Wes.  My Wes would explain it to her and then they would have a nice conversation. This went on for years.  She lived in California and he would ask her how the weather was because it was always in the winter.  She has stopped calling but we often wonder about her.

I will end with a story that I was told that I did when I was about 3 years old.  It seems I was a very shy little girl and hardly talked to anyone.  They say that when company would come over I would hide behind a chair or the couch and would break out in a sweat. They had no idea why I was so shy. That is why mom  found this story a little unusual that I am about to tell. My mother said she would hear me talking in another room every evening when she was fixing dinner.  She said I would be laughing and having all sorts of conversation with myself.  She decided one night to see what exactly I was doing because I was so happy.  To her surprise, I was talking on the phone.  At first she thought I was just playing and then she realized it seemed I was waiting for a response.  She took the phone from me and said hello.  A couple was listening together on the phone.  Mom apologized for my call and said she was sorry I bothered them.  To her amazement, the couple told her to please not stop me.  I had been calling them every night at the same time and would talk and tell them stories.  They said they loved my calls and waited for them every night.  Mom was amazed at how I could call that same number over and over every night and even more stunned that I was talking so much.  I always liked hearing that story when I was a child.  I would smile and ask everyone, “See how smart I was?”  When I heard the story, even I was impressed that I would call the same number every night at the same time! I was told that after she took the phone that night, I never called those people again.  That sort of makes me sad.  I wonder who they were?

I know that I said I would post on Sunday and Thursday and I am consistent with that.  I am, however, posting some others from time to time.  I am sorry, but when I feel like it, I guess I just am.  Haha. Please forgive me.

I have mentioned our dear family friend, Dorothy, before but I have not yet talked about our meeting which I will do eventually.  Anyway, we talked daily, several times a day and visited about as often.  She lived just around the corner and we would walk and visit her or walk and meet her and Nipper, her precious pet, while they were walking.  Sometimes she would walk over here with Nipper.  She quoted Bible verses.  Those have stuck with me during times of need for different ones.  I am sure she knew this and that is why she quoted them!  I felt like the Bible tells us to do this too so I searched and found this verse:

2 Timothy 3:16-17 New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁶ All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for ^[a]instruction in righteousness,

 ¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I am sure that Dorothy knew this verse as well and she was following it when she quoted to us.  She followed God.  She loved Him so, and I am sure she quoted verses to everyone. She was a wonderful woman.

Today, I am feeling a bit uncomfortable.  Skittish.  Jumpy.  It is broad daylight, but sometimes feelings just jump right in there and you cannot help it.  Thanks to Dorothy, though, some Bible verses are coming to mind and I can actually hear her sweet voice saying them to me. Such a comforting thing.  Sometimes she even sang to me!  She always said she could not sing, but I found her singing to be beautiful!

Dorothy unfortunately is no longer with us here on earth.  How wonderful is it, though, that she is still comforting us today!  Below are a few of the ones she quoted us often.  I feel like these may have been a few of her favorites, too.  I am not sure, but maybe it was just because I  needed these that she quoted them so often!

I am posting today to share about her and her kindness, love and wisdom. Who knows, maybe I am led to as  perhaps some of you may need to read these verses today. I do not know, but here I am posting.

1 Peter 5:7 King James Version (KJV)⁷ 

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

2 Timothy 1:7

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

King James Version (KJV)

Philippians 4:6-8 King James Version (KJV)

⁶ Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.⁷ 

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

⁸ Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Thank you, Dorothy!  We are thankful for our friendship!  We love you!

These pictures go with the story “It Starts”.  I spoke of us children walking on the rain barrels and racing them.  I did not have access to the photos at that time. I am posting them now.  If you need to read the story, you will find it in the story “It Starts”.  You will notice these pictures were taken in 1963!