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!

Back to the farm days —

Among the animals that mom and dad raised, they raised a lot of chickens.  They were not my favorite at all, they were so “messy”.   They would buy the baby chicks and they were kept on the closed in back porch type area with heat lamps on them.  I do not remember how long we had to keep them on the porch, but it seemed a while.  We constantly heard their peep, peep, peep.  They were cute, but there were so many. They would peck each other’s behinds and she had to put this medicine on them that was red and looked sort of like tar and that kept them from doing that.  In my opinion, this was gross.  As cute as they were, actually a lot about them was gross to me. As they grew, they were kept outside in their large fenced in  pen. We had two roosting houses.

I did not like to gather the eggs either.  I never liked sticking my hands under the roosting chickens or even walking in the houses. You never really knew what you would find in there.  Some of the eggs were pretty gross too.  My sister agreed to let me just carry the basket, but we could not get out of there soon enough for me!  I guess I am a wimp.  I did not even like eggs anyway.  Unless, of course, if they were in a brownie or something. I do not much care for the taste of eggs today either.

The chickens would grow up and it would be time to “harvest” them.  At least that is what I call it.  At first, it was not bad and was actually quite fun because we had duties according to age. Naturally, my little brother and I had an easy job, it was sort of cool, too.  A lot of family came out and helped at this time.  Okay, this is not meant to offend anyone, if you are please just do not read it.  It was the way of life.  The older men would get the chickens and remove their heads.  That quote about running around like a chicken with your head off is a true statement!  Those chickens took off!  My brother and I were right behind them.  Some of them ran down the hills into the woods.  So, we are weird I guess, but when you were a little kid, that was sort of fun. We chased them all around and some of them went pretty far! I am sorry, but it was also pretty odd to see, at least in a child’s eye.  Think about it, the trauma of having your head chopped off and you then take off running?  You cannot even see where you are going!  How in the world can you run and why would you even try? I was told it was a reflex/reaction, but what a horrid reflex to have. Looking back on it, what a terrible thing to witness. Our generation was probably accustomed to it, but the kids today may have nightmares from that.  I am sure we saw a lot of things back then that they would have no idea about. As a matter of fact, I am absolutely certain that I could not do half of the things that I did back then!

This part is the worst.  We carried the chickens to the ladies and they took them by the feet and dipped them into very hot water.  That smell of those wet feathers….once you smell that, you will never ever forget that smell.  It was the most unpleasant smell. You could even say it was foul….pardon the pun (f-o-w-l, haha.) To this day, sometimes when I eat chicken, I feel like I can taste that smell.  I cannot finish eating it then.  I guess this will be a lifetime issue with me. Your taste does depend on your smell as well, you know.  Researchers say 80% of the flavors we taste come from what we smell, which is why foods become relatively flavorless when our sinuses are stopped up.  I always have to explain myself when I tell someone that the chicken tastes like feathers. I have been able to “teach” my family that point, however.  When they eat the piece of chicken that I refused to eat, they can taste the difference, too. At the moment, I have not had chicken for quite some time because lately they all seem to be smelling/tasting like feathers. Here is a side note, when we were children, we use to get milk straight from the cow and there was this taste that it had that was not so great.  I am assuming the pasteurization may have taken some of that out, I do not know. Occasionally when you buy milk today, some batches have that taste in there that you can detect.  I then say this milk tastes like it came from a cow.  Try explaining that statement.  People just laugh at me. Some have said dang, hate when it tastes like it came from a cow!  Haha.  I still try to explain myself.  My family has now learned that taste too.  Haven’t you ever had a potato and it seemed you could taste the dirt?  I hope you can understand what I mean here.  Sorry about getting off track a bit, but back to the chickens… They had to dip the chicken in the water to make the plucking easier.  When I grew up and this became my task, I hated it!  That smell…..yuck.  The feathers did come out pretty easy, though, but then there were the pin feathers and they were harder to remove and you never actually got them all, not even close.

The chickens were cut up and frozen for later use.  I grew up and had to participate in this part as well. I will not go into all of the details of that, but it, for me, was not as bad as the plucking, but I really did not like this job either.  I could not stand the sounds of the popping and snapping. (When I go to the chiropractor, I tell them to try to do what they need with no “popping of my bones”.To this day they have not popped anything. This may be why I cringe when I hear people popping their knuckles.) There were many more unpleasant things about this job, but we will forego them. After harvesting, it would be quite some time before I could stomach eating chicken.  I surely did love my mother’s fried chicken, though. It was the best and my favorite meal! Well, not when you would get the occasional piece that tasted like feathers! Haha! That meal was fried chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes and corn! Most of the time, homemade biscuits accompanied the meal. However, have any of you noticed that the chicken does not taste like it did back then?  Actually none of the meat today is as good as back then.  Hamburger is the most noticeable, it does not even smell as good as it use to.

We had ducks as well, two of them.  I have no idea why.  I guess for the novelty.  They were funny, though.  We would play with them and they would follow us around.  I guess mom and dad just wanted ducks.  Is there a reason for having them?  Does anyone know about that?  Do they assist with chickens somehow? We did have fun watching them waddle around.  I just do not know what their purpose was other than being a duck. Do not get me wrong, that is purpose enough. They were snow white and absolutely beautiful!

Mom and dad loved to eat quail!  They had an opportunity to purchase some of them so they did. My brothers also hunted quail.  Remember in the old days when you would see quail and pheasants running down the road?  I cannot remember the last time I have seen a quail or a pheasant.  I wonder why that is?  I miss them being in abundance like they use to be.  Perhaps it is due to the abundance of coyotes that we do not?  Anyway, harvest day for the quail came.  Mom and dad had them captured in one of the roosting houses.  Everyone came out that day and were ready to help.  Mom opened the front door to get them but I guess my little brother had a different idea.  As they opened the front door to get some, he threw open the back door.  Quail were going everywhere! People were going everywhere after them!  I just wish all of these things could have been on video.  Such a funny sight to see.  They lost most of the quail.  Funny thing, they did not seem to be all that angry because my little brother did not get into too much trouble.  I remember mom and dad fondly telling the story in later years and just laughing and laughing about him doing that.  On the bright side, at least my brothers would have more quail to find when they went hunting!

This “harvesting” of animals was a learning experience, but I am pretty sure I would be just as good without having some of these memories.  The butcher is good enough for me. Sometimes seeing some of that stuff makes my stomach a bit queasy as well.  It is pretty neat that mom and dad dabbled in so many things. They probably would not refer to it as dabbling.  They were probably trying to make a living and feed their children.  I am sure it was an awful lot of hard work for them. In my opinion, since I was a child, life was so interesting and such fun. There was always something go on and life seemed so exciting.

The snow is so beautiful!  I absolutely love it!  Everything becomes blanketed in white.  The sounds are different, hard to explain, but just not the same.  They are sort of hushed.  The snow falling makes a noise itself, the limbs sway and sort of make a crackling noise, the crunch of walking on the snow and the sound tires and snow plows make are all nice to hear. It feels warmer outside as if it is God’s insulation.

I love, love, love it at night time.  The snow is God’s big night light to me.  You can see everything outside.  I do not like night time so well anyway so the snow makes it better for me.  I also love to hear the plows come by at night even if it wakes me up.  You can see the animal tracks and know that deer have been at your house while you were sleeping.

My pastor, my friend Dorothy’s son,  told me long ago that white is a sign of purity and that may be another reason to like snow.  Watching the snow fall is such a peaceful, calming thing to see. It is like living in a snow globe.  I always say, “someone is shaking my house”! The children get to build snowmen, snow forts, have snowball fights and go sledding.  Their laughter is the best.   Snow can be such fun….and then there is snow ice cream and cancelled school days.

Yes, snow is cold and wet.  Yes, it is terrible to have to work outside in it and I feel sorry for those people.  Yes, the roads can be bad and that does worry me, but put those aside and I am sure you all would have to admit that snow is absolutely beautiful!

I absolutely cannot bowl… at all!  I have never stopped trying, though.  In high school I would go bowling with my friends.  I did not get to do this for long as the owner asked me to not bowl there any longer.  I am sure others bowl how I do, but I never improved. Sometimes I would release the ball as it was heading backward and it would go sailing behind me.  I had a knack for releasing the ball at the wrong time and it would rise high into the air and hit the lanes with a terrible crash.  I could never keep my wrist straight.  I have the same problem throwing a frisbee.  Being a baby boomer, frisbees were a big thing. I could only watch. Try as I might, it always went to the left or right and never straight.  When you curve like this while throwing a bowling ball, your ball will jump two to three lanes over.  This is the reason the owner had the unpleasant task of asking me to please not bowl any longer.  I complied and just would watch my friends bowl. Much later in life, I mentioned that to the owner who was always a very, very sweet man.  He questioned me that he did it and said he felt absolutely terrible and he was so sorry.  I laughed and laughed and told him not to feel terrible at all, he really had no choice.  It is fortunate that I never injured anyone with my wild tosses. He thought that felt so mean of him to do.  He was so sweet!

I remember that you would write your scores yourself on a sheet of paper, but I feel like I have a memory of that paper being able to be projected on to the screen at the top.  I am not certain about this, but I feel like you could see the scores up there and it was not yet all electronic.  Anyone can correct me below or tell me your memories, I would appreciate knowing. I am not sure, but I feel like somehow you could see the scores and I feel like there was someone writing them on paper.  I think it was the case as I never liked for anyone to see my scores!

When I was older, I would go bowling with my sister, her husband and her two sons. The sons were so young and so much better than me.  My sister could never understand why I could not do something simple like bowling.  She would coach me on how to hold my wrist straight.  She would tell me different ways to try, complete with walking up to the lane and rolling it.  One time when we were bowling, it was like a light bulb went off for her.   I am left handed but do most sports with my right hand.  I am not too great at  any sport, however.  She told me to bowl with my left hand, and that she was sure that was my problem. I assured her that this was not the case but she persisted in having me try it.  I did and I swung back my arm with the ball in tow and brought the ball forward straight into the side of my knee.  I am not sure I have felt pain like that in my knee ever.  It turns out there was no damage, but it sure did hurt.  At least, everyone had a good laugh over that one! One time my ball got stuck back with the pins and the owner’s son had to get back there and remove the ball.  My sister whispered to him to stay back there and the next time I bowled, for him to be sure and knock them down.  Well, I bowled and missed them all on the first try, the second try I missed them all as well.  Out comes this hand, very obvious, and he knocks them all down.  What a great laugh we had! Again, no pictures captured that!

I then went bowling with my husband (who happens to still have his trophy from back in the day) and with my children.  I was no better, but I wonder why I thought I would just improve with age and no practice?  I was happy when we found they had bumper guards and I could bowl a little better.  I found a spot that I could hit that bumper and knock several down.  I am surprised I could hit that same spot, but I should not have been because after all, it was the gutter.  That is where most of my balls went! My children, however, did not “need” those and really did not want to bowl in those lanes so my “great” bowling days were over.  I think the lowest I have bowled a game was an 11 and the highest was a 110.  I am not sure how I got this high score, it must have been the bumpers or people taking a turn for me.  I am certain that others have these same types of stories to tell about bowlers they know.  I cannot be the only one.  These tidbits of my bowling experience, or rather lack of, is just a prelude to the story below.

The story about bowling that tops them all, is one about my Aunt.  She was a great bowler and was on bowling leagues for years.  They wore those cute league shirts that came in different colors.  Each league had their own color with the team name on the back and their name on the front of them. I remember that I was always impressed with the fact that she even owned her own ball!  We went to some of her games when I was a child and I can remember the atmosphere.  It was so lively with all of the different leagues bowling at once.  You could hear the balls hitting the floor and rolling down the lanes.  I loved that noise as well as the pins slapping to the ground.  The bowlers were all smiling, having such fun and excited to be there. They had a soda fountain and grill.  The hamburgers smelled so good and the sodas were great. There were a few pool tables and pinball machines. This was just a fun experience and good memory for me.

My cousin, Scottie, however has a great story to tell and he shared it with me. He and his little brother, Timmy, were taken to the bowling alley with her, their grandmother.  She was bowling and as she was approaching the lane, she sneezed.  Guess what happened??? She rolled the ball at the same as her sneeze and she spit her teeth, the top plate, out right down the lane!!!  I bet that tops all of the stories!  Probably not a  lot of people know anyone who has done that! Again, oh for a cell phone with a video camera!!! Scottie said she ran and grabbed her teeth quickly and about busted her behind doing it! He said she turned five shades of red and ordered him and Timmy to get out of there quickly!  I am told that she was so mad all of the way home and was cussing fixodent!

People that knew my aunt, their grandmother, knew that she was a hummer.  She hummed at different times, but actually quite a lot of times.  We learned that she hummed at different things, happiness, her favorite songs,  nerves, anger, excitement, etc. and in different manners for different emotions.  Scottie said that on the way home, there was an awful lot of humming going on.  Haha!  I know just what hum that was as I have heard it before! Story has it that when she got home, she was on the phone for about three hours doing damage control.  Even though he was eight or so at the time Scottie says he can see it clear as can be to this day and it is still just as funny!  He said she was getting mad at them for laughing about it so much.  When they got to her house he and Timmy went behind her garage and relived what they had just witnessed and laughed for hours!!!  I wish I would have seen this, but being told the story was just as good.  I can just picture it all! She was such a great, fun woman.  My mother and her had so many wonderful adventures.  There were three of the sisters.  There will never be any like them again.  They were such fun! I am sure there will be many, more stories of them and their antics.

Speaking of fixodent, if that were on film, what a great commercial it could have been for fixodent!  Don’t let this happen to you, get fixodent today!  I realize she used fixodent, but they could still use it, no one had to know that she did.  Hahaha!!!!

Mom and Dad had New Year’s Eve parties. They were not really parties, they involved the family and were a bit different. When we were children we would try to stay up late so we could go outside and make noise at midnight. This was a tradition that Mom and Dad had. We did not always make it until then since we were so young. This was a night to play games and watch television. We had all sorts of snacks during the evening, complete with some left over Christmas goodies! When we did make it up until midnight, it seemed that great things happened! It was such fun to go outside and make noise. Mom gave us pots and pans and wooden spoons and we would get to bang on them as hard as we could. Clang! Clang! Clang! I always liked the angel food cake pan. You could put your hand in the middle of the pan and bang away! The older brothers would fire shotguns into the air. We could hear the other neighbors making noise as well and some had firecrackers. It seemed such fun to be able to go outside late at night and make noise! I have no idea why they thought of going outside and making noise, but hey, I happily participated. It was fun and it was really neat! The sounds of talking in the distance, sounds of merriment and noise-making echoing through the woods and the area was something to hear! Some noises were muffled as they were more in the distance and we would try to guess what neighbors were doing what. This was such excitement for little kids and the grown ups seemed to enjoy it too!! After the noisemaking, Mom honored the tradition that a man had to be the first person through the door of the house the first day of the year, so we had to wait for Dad or one of the brothers to enter the house first. If a woman/girl entered first, she would have you walk out backwards so a man could then enter. Walking out backwards must have “un-done” your entrance. I think some of the times, we would open the door so we could let the old year out and let the new year in.

After the noise making, mom and the older children would come in and call relatives and friends. All of the phone prefixes started with the same number then so if the year was 1965, they would disguise their voice and call people and say is this 1-9-6-5? They would for some reason find it funny if the person would say no and they would laugh and say yes it is! They would shout “Happy New Year!” They would only talk for a brief moment as they had others to call and do the same thing to and they did not want them to beat them to it!

The bad part of this was the next day. There was some sort of food mom had to serve. I am shocked that I do not remember this, as I was always upset that she made it, mainly because I did not care for it. It was either cabbage, or beans and corn bread. It was something that she said was to be the traditional first meal of the new year. I do not know which it was. Her mother was German, so I am thinking it was cabbage. Well, I have talked with a reliable source, my cousin, Scottie, …and he states that it was corned beef brisket, and cabbage, boiled with potatoes and carrots. He still eats it every New Year’s Eve! Scottie, I never really cared for it, but I am thankful you were there to remember for me.

When our own children, were younger, we would have snacks and sparkling grape juice to toast with at midnight. We would play some games and perhaps watch a movie. We enjoyed watching the yearly countdowns, top music, top news, etc. As the children aged, we would host game nights with plenty of food. We would allow the friends to all stay over (in fact we preferred it) so no one would be out driving with the ones who drive and drink. We would go outside at midnight and make noise, but we never heard anyone else and it felt sort of silly to be doing that. The kids did not really see the point, so we stopped that. We would serve breakfast for the ones who stayed over. Some times, we would have the same type of thing at church and stay there until midnight or later. The church sort of lost interest in this or the people did, so we had it at our home mostly. We always liked to provide alternatives for the children. We had such great times on New Year’s Eve.

No game night tonight! All of the children and their friends are grown and really are not too interested in coming here. I wonder why? I even have pots and pans I would let them bang on!

Happy New Year, everyone! Enjoy and please, please be safe!

My husband and I pull into the grocery store parking lot and I see my cousin, we will call her Lucy, and my aunt, we will call her Alice, in a car.  Excitedly, I hop out of the car, tell my husband to hurry, and I run to catch them before they leave.  As I am running to their car, I notice Lucy’s husband, we will call him Chad, returning the cart to the bay. I immediately change directions and run over to him giggling and laughing and begin telling him how good it is to see him.  I grab his arm, link my arm in his and start walking him to the car. Okay, maybe I was actually sort of dragging him to the car.  He was keeping up, though. I point out that my husband is in our car and we both wave to him while happily skipping along. I  motion for my husband to come on as Chad and I are chatting and chatting on the way.  As unbelievable as it is, it should be noted, that sometimes I fail to let people get a word in.  I tell Chad I will give him a hug later, but let’s hurry to the car.  We arrive to the car with Alice and Lucy in it. I start telling Alice and Lucy how thrilled I am to see them, too, and motion for my husband again.  What is taking him so long??!! He is starting to be a bit rude.

I hit them with questions….how long will they be here, when did they get here, will we be getting together and other important questions.  Keeping an eye on my husband, I keep motioning for him to come join, but for some reason he is being all sorts of stubborn! The heck with him, I am excited.  I do not know what his problem is, but  let him stay in the car. I have  noticed that not just him, but everyone is acting sort of weird.  Except for Chad, we are arm in arm and still both smiling and laughing.  Strange that he is more excited to see me than the others because he is not as close to me, being that he is a new in-law.

Finally, Lucy asks who I am with. I am a bit puzzled and thinking she is odd  What an unusual thing to ask. Chad and I look at each other and we both laugh.  Aunt Alice and Lucy just shrug.  Chad and I laugh again.  They are so funny! We start talking about a good game of Rummy being started but Aunt Alice, a little perturbed, interrupts asking who the guy is. Chad and  I shake our heads and laugh.  Why are they continuing this charade? Seeming perturbed herself, again, Lucy asks who.  They are doing a good job playing this whole bewildered act because I am actually believing that they are.

Finallly, a bit annoyed, I  sigh heavily with something like well, duh…it is your husband.  Her eyes widen a bit, she is sort of looking a tad bit shocked and perhaps a little fearful.  I laugh and she widens her eyes more and shakes her head. I look at Aunt Alice with questioning eyes and she frowns. a little worried looking, and shakes her head.  Still clinging to Chad’s arm, I look up to him and without missing a beat, he smiles and says, “Does this mean I am not going to get that hug now?”   HaHa! What a way to relieve an awkward situation!  At this moment, I realize Chad is a lot like me! He, too, just plows through an embarrassing moment! I could not have picked a better stranger to haul around with me!  I look over to see where my husband is and he is, of course, still in the car.  He holds his hands up like he is not surprised at all and shakes his head.

Do NOT sit on that toilet seat!  Line that seat with toilet paper, says your mother.  Like any good child, I obey my mother.   

We often visited my husband’s family, a 45 minute trip. One particular time, I do not remember why but on the way home, my husband wanted me to drive.  We had four of the children with us, the two youngest and the two oldest.  He pulled over on the highway and stopped the van and told me to just climb over to the driver side and he would walk around. He is such a gentleman.  Too bad I am not as nice as he is!

The Walmart stories are always abounding.  There are the videos of the people of Walmart and how they dress and various other “Walmart” stories going around. I, too, have numerous stories but I will not put those on here as most of them are negative.  Negativity brings you down and I would rather try to focus on the positive because it helps you retain your good mood.  It feels like a chore enough to “have” to go to Walmart and moreso when you have all of the negative encounters there.  I am going to share a story that, in my opinion, is just a tiny bit humorous, at least to me. Then I am inviting you to share your story here.  You can share whatever type you like, positive or negative, but please feel free to do so!