It seems like my memories of my oldest brother were of him not living at home.  He was 13 years older, so I do not remember him being at home with us much.  He did visit all of the time, though. Or maybe he was living there, I honestly do not remember.  I remember having the mumps and he gave me some awards that he had won and they were on his boy scout uniform.  He pinned them to my pajamas.  I was so proud to have them!  I remember him playing with me and making me laugh, but most of my memories are of him grown and I have plenty of those to share later! This brother is the one who came up with the idea to walk the barrels.  He was full of ideas and such fun!

My little brother was three years younger than me.  He and I had to get immunizations. I was on the exam table and my brother, being so young, was on my mother’s lap.  The doctor gave him his shot in the butt and he started screaming and crying.  He cried so much he quit breathing.  They all went running out of the room.  It seemed I was on that table forever!  I kept thinking if only I could jump down or if I could just reach this or that.  There was some pretty interesting stuff on that tray and counter and all shiny, too! What a long time I sat there. It got very dark in my room because the hallway suddenly went very dark. I wondered when they would come back in.  It turns out, they all took off for the hospital which was just up the road. The doctor told my mom that he was sorry and pronounced him dead.  She screamed at him to do something!  It turns out, the doctor was able to clear my brother’s throat from mucous and bring him back to life.  My mother said that he stuck a tube down his throat and sucked it up into his own mouth and then spit it out.  My little brother checked out fine, so he sent my mother home with her baby and called the office and told them to close up!  Hey!!! What about me???  No wonder I am like I am.  Left, locked in and forgotten about! That could cause a complex!  She got home and asked my older brother where I was.  He said he thought I was with her. She thought he took me with him when he left.  They made some calls and they found someone to check the doctor’s office.  They found that I was, in fact, at the doctor’s office, locked in, all by myself.  My brother came and picked me up.  The nurse or receptionist, someone who let him in, asked if I would like a sucker and extended a little jar of suckers for me to pick from.  I said I wanted the whole jar.  They both laughed and she gave them to me.  I had like a little bouquet of suckers and I felt that I deserved them.  It felt so good to hold my little bouquet.  When I got home my mother said she would keep those suckers for me.  Yeah, right, I didn’t get very many of them. You know, too much sugar and blah, blah. I have a newspaper article about my little brother being pronounced dead. I am sure glad they were able to save him!

My next to the oldest brother was 10 years older.  Mom and dad use to have him  babysit while they went shopping or on errands.  Boy do I have memories of that!  As soon as they left he would make us clean up the house and he took the credit for doing it.  Mom and Dad just thought it was wonderful how great he was to do that!  They loved it!!! Of course, we knew better than to bust him out for it and admit it was us.  Believe me, later in life we told them it was us!  Who wants to go though life without credit?

If we misbehaved he would have us stand in the corner and put our noses up to the wall with our hands behind our backs.  After a few seconds he would say something like don’t you move, but, uh, oh, there is a spider crawling down that corner right by your nose! Yep, we were scared!  After a few times of this happening, we knew to ignore him.  He would have my little brother do something like wrestling with me.  He made an area to use as a ring and he would have us wrestle there until he ended the round.  I think we had to go only 3 rounds or so.  He would read a magazine and look up from time to time and say round over. He would forget once in awhile to stop us and my sister would get mad at him and he would say round over. Sometimes he would have us put a piece of bread in our mouths so it looked like we had mouth guards in   He was not brutal, do not get the wrong idea.  He was just being an older brother. He was fun and we loved him.

We were always in the woods playing.  I remember going down there with my brother this one time and I was so totally excited when I found these huge sand piles.  Someone had piled them up into great big hills.  I went running for them and my brother was telling me not to.  He was not babysitting today, so who did he think he was?  I jumped right into the big hill of sand and kept jumping and jumping.   It was such fun.  My brother was running up to get me and I wondered why he did not want me to play in the sand.  That was just mean of him.  All of a sudden, I started screaming and screaming.  My brother picked me up and ran up the hill with me and started taking my clothes off.  I was screaming my head off.  Mom and dad came running out of the house and my brother told them I had been jumping on an ant hill.  My mom took me in and put me right in the bath tub. No wonder he did not want me playing in the sand. Man-oh-man, can those things bite!  I do not know what they really were but we called them army ants. Well, that is the story my brother told anyway.  He told me I was so lucky because those army ants were called that because they pulled soldiers down in to their holes and ate them.  He told me it did not really matter if you were a soldier, they would eat you anyway and thankfully he saved me.  I had no idea about these things and had  never seen them before.  There were 4 or 5 of those huge “sand piles” in the woods. I don’t remember seeing them much after that so I think that Dad must have done something to get rid of them.  They were something to see, though.

My brother and his friend were burning the trash one time and some how the woods caught on fire.  It was the woods, but several of our out buildings were nearby and then our house. My older brother was called and he came right over. I have no recollection really of how it happened but what I do remember is that there was no volunteer fire department then and the city fire department would not come out to the country  My mom just called the radio station and people started arriving with shovels and gunny sacks.  They would wet the gunny sacks and swat at the fire.  We had to pump water from the well. Trenches were dug beyond the parameters of the fire to hopefully stop it from spreading but the fire just kept spreading.  The radio station kept announcing updates and asking anyone who could come to come out.   More and more people arrived.  It was unreal how many people showed up.  How nice everyone was back then, so kind and loving and willing to help.  We need more of that today. There was a back hoe parked over in a field and someone suggested calling the owner and asking him to come help since the hoe was just right there.  They called and he came too.  The fire was finally extinguished without damage to any homes or buildings.  Whew!  So thankful that people were so kind. It sure makes you thankful for the volunteer fire fighters!!!!!  If any of you reading this remember this, please comment.

Both of my older brothers were hunters.  Although the older brother did not live at home, he would come over bright and early in the mornings and go rabbit hunting with my other brother.They would hunt in our woods and bring back rabbits and immediately clean them for breakfast.  My brothers had these green coats with huge pockets and they would fill the pockets with the rabbits they got.  I never liked seeing that.    Sometimes, I was elected to hold two of the legs while they gutted the rabbit.  As you can imagine  this was not my favorite thing to do at all! It took two people, one to hold the front legs and one to hold the back legs and then stretch tightly.  The third person would cut it up the middle and gut it. Mom would make fried rabbit, biscuits and gravy.  How would you want to eat that after witnessing the cleaning anyway? I would never eat it after only one time of tasting it.   I did not care for the flavor, but the rest of the family loved it.  My mom, at some times, would try to trick me and tell me she made chicken.  I was not that stupid.  I have never seen a chicken leg have that bend in it.  I would tell her I knew she was trying to trick me and that chickens did not have elbows or knees in their legs that bent like that. She was so frustrated, she wanted me to like it. To me, that meat had an unforgettable twang to it. People call it a gamey taste.  Well, apparently I do not like a gamey taste!  I could not even tolerate the taste the rabbit gave the gravy. What a cruel thing to do.   Homemade gravy is the best, how could you ruin the flavor of it with rabbit?

You may not like this story, but I still to this day think this is a good story.  Rabbit hunting was done in the winter and Christmas is in the winter.  The whole family loves a good joke and we are a bunch of pranksters.  My big brother was always there when we did this, too. My dad came up with this idea of leaving a wrapped present alongside the road and watching out the window to see who picked it up. This present was always the fanciest wrapped gift you would ever see. They put the nicest of ribbons around it and a beautiful big bow on top. The trees had all lost their leaves so we could place the nicely wrapped gift a bit down the road from our house and watch the cars stop and get the present. Not a lot of cars came by so there was a little bit of a wait. Not one car ever went on by, though.  Some may accidentally  pass it but they would screech the brakes and back up! They would open the door and get out and look around to see if anyone noticed them.  They would try to nonchalantly pick up the present and put it in their car. Inside of that nicely wrapped gift  was a box full of the rabbit guts!  Terrible, I know, but so funny.  When the cars stopped to get the present,  they could not stand to wait and they would  hurry down the road and turn at the first  corner and park the car to investigate their wonderful treasure. They were parked where we could perfectly see them.  It never took too long for them to suddenly open the door and throw that gift right out in the ditch and speed off!  Oh did we laugh! Hmmm, I suppose you should not take something that is not yours.  What if some poor person had lost that gift and came back looking for it?  They may have learned a lesson.  No, I doubt that they learned a lesson, I bet they were just furious! That thought made us laugh even harder. In fact, we still laugh today, just thinking about it.   You may disagree with our joke, but well ….we all had a lot of  laughs over it. It certainly helped to pass a winter day and there is an old saying…. it is better to give than to receive.!?

So, we had the farm life…. the animals were fun.  Sarah, the cow, you know about.  Harold the goat gave milk and Elmer the pig gave birth to little piglets. Shows you what us kids knew about animals!  Well, the farm venture came and went and our mother and father decided to change the barn up. Stories of all of  our outdoor ventures and “play time” will be posted later.

They remodeled and put in wooden floors and a “kitchen” area.  They started square dances on Saturday nights with food and drink for sale as well!  They started a night of dancing for Western dances also. That really took off so they added an extra night of dance and had “teen” dances too.  The barn really rocked!  So, so many good times were had there.  People even came from out of state to dance.  All of the music, both for the country dances and the teen dances, were live bands.  We really got to meet a lot of interesting people. My mother could really dance, she was always listening to music and dancing everywhere. My father could pick up any instrument and play it.  He loved the saxophone and the harmonica.  He always had the harmonica in his mouth. He had a piano for a while and he had an accordion.  Mom and Dad are probably why we all had such a love for music and dance! They were always trying their hand at different things. They loved people and they loved children which is why they started the teen dances too.

One night at a dance, a huge black snake dangled down from the hayloft and was swinging from the rafter in the middle of the dance floor.  My brother and his friend came to the rescue.  The friend grabbed the snake and ran outside.  The dance went on but some of us ran outside to see what happened with the snake.  The friend said “Watch this!”  He took the snake by the tail and like a rope he swung the snake around and around and then he jerked on it.  The head of the snake came off and a bird flew out!  The bird did not fly out as birds fly out,  he flew out as in propelled out of the snake.  The bird, of course, was dead as snakes swallow their food whole you know.  My friend and I were watching the whole thing.  As the bird came out, my friend put her hand to her mouth in a gasp and the bird actually hit her right in the arm pit.  I will never forget this entire scene.  As gross as it was, we all broke into laughter.  The dances were great fun for us kids. We had so many children we could play with at the dances.

Mom served sandwiches, chips, coffee, soda and pies. Her pies were so well loved, people would request she make an entire pie just for them to purchase and take home with them! She served this homemade barbecue on Saturday nights and everyone loved it!!

Barbecue — that lead to a couple of other ventures.  My next to the oldest brother was drafted and served in Vietnam.  Sad, sad day when he left!  I will probably talk more about that later.  Vietnam was not good for anyone.  It not only affected the young men, it affected their entire families.  The young men were never the same, in my opinion.

He loved mom’s barbecue.  He said he sure wished he could have some.  That request was all it took to set mom into action!  Dad  found a place that would process her food and put it in tin cans like the type vegetables came in.  (I hesitated to say she had it canned because to me, I think of people canning things in mason jars and preserving foods.This was actually in a can.) They mailed him about 7 cans and some buns. My brother said they warmed it with some sort of torch or lighter while it was in the can. He shared it with his friends and said it was the best ever.  That lead to mom and dad starting a barbecue drive.  There were articles in the paper and mom called various businesses and people and got monetary donations as well as ingredients donated.  What was not donated, mom and dad gave. She took names of other soldiers in the area so that she could send them some too. They got it canned and shipped it overseas to the boys!  Mom and dad had such good hearts!

Mom’s great cooking lead to the opening of a restaurant with home cooked meals and baked goods. My father always, always encouraged her to do these things.  He was her greatest fan, he believed in her and they did these ventures together.  They were always supportive of each other. Granny’s Kitchen and Bakery was opened and it was a success.  My little brother remodeled the building they rented up on the town square.  He built the booths and tables.  It was beautiful!  He was the grill cook and she cooked the main entrees and sides and did the baking. Dad did whatever was needed from him. Dad, however, was a retired railroader.  He was now working across the street at the courthouse as a bailiff. He was at the restaurant all that he could be, though.  My wonderful aunt did the dishes and helped in all areas that she could.  My sister-in-law was the waitress along with some others who were hired.  Some of our cousins were waitresses, (mom and dad’s nieces).  A lot of family was involved at Granny’s. I later moved home and helped waitress as well.  Actually everyone pitched in wherever they may have been needed.

All of the dinners were home made too. I do not remember the exact hours but I know they were opened for breakfast, perhaps 6:00 a.m. or 7:00 a.m..  I know we were there working at 4:00 a.m. The “coffee drinkers” came every morning and we always had such good times with the customers.  Breakfast was served all day. I thought the biscuits and gravy were the best!  I remember that the lunch special was $1.90.  What a deal, too!  You were served more than enough.  Lasagne was served every Wednesday and bright and early Wednesday mornings the calls would start coming in for pick up orders.  The lasagne was a huge hit and several pans were made of it.  My favorite was swiss steak.  I have yet to be able to make it taste like hers, even when I attempt to follow the recipe.

She had a bakery case at the front of the store that was filled with so many delicious baked goods  Her cinnamon rolls were highly sought after!  People would come from out of town on a Saturday and purchase enough for the entire week.  The cinnamon rolls were as large as the saucer! They were extra good when warmed and topped with melted butter and, of course, you would need a cold, cold glass of milk! She made a cookie/cake type of dessert called candy bars.  Those were my favorite.  It was an oatmeal cookie/cake dough with caramels and chocolate chips layered on top and then more of the cookie dough. There were sugar cookies, oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies and a variety of other cookies, cakes, bars,  and any type of pie you could think of including cream pies. She made everything you could imagine. They did not serve supper.  They tried that but there were not that many customers in the evening.  The uptown square area sort of went to sleep when the businesses closed.  It did not use to be that way, but the times have changed.  The shopping establishments, theaters, barbers, etc.  moved away from the square and the courthouse and law offices seem to have taken over. They stayed open for after the bars but that was not profitable either.  Therefore, the closing time was 4:00 p.m. rather than right after lunch rush because the employees on the square would come for an afternoon snack.  She had a cook book published with all of her goodies in it.  I may post that cookbook on here at some point or on face book and link it here for you.

This was, I believe, their last big venture.  In between the barn dances and the restaurant, she was chairman for the Cystic Fibrosis foundation.  There will be a post just for this at a later date in order to keep this post shorter.

In summary, mom and dad were such great parents.  They worked so hard in life and yet continued to do things to help others.  They were a great example and so very loving. Our house was always filled with friends and family.  Cards or some sort of game was always being played. When one of us children moved out, our friends still would go to mom and dad’s and hang with them!  Anyone that came to visit was always offered something to eat.  If  nothing quick was available, mom would cook them something.  I have never met anyone like them.  Their sense of humor, their pranks, the fun they made, the love they gave, it is hard to actually describe just how they were. They loved laughing and made any situation into a fun situation even if you were waiting in a long line or whatever you were doing, it ended up being fun! They never knew a stranger.  You actually just had to know them. If you did, and would like to share a memory below in the comments, please do so.

 

Thanksgiving… what can you say about Thanksgivings?  The memories of old when you were a child with your family, the memories of you with your children and your family, the memories when the children grow up and leave.

Thanksgiving memories as a youth—- the night before and the morning of was such a flurry of activity.  The smells in the house were awesome!  Sometimes family would arrive the night before and how thankful we were that they made it in, what with the snow storm.  There is hardly a snow storm on Thanksgiving now as the weather has changed and continues to do so.  There was snow by early November and it actually stayed on the ground until the January thaw. It was such fun to play in the snow on Thanksgiving with all of the relatives.

Everything was homemade, of course.  Mom made several types of home made pies, chocolate, pecan, raisin cream, coconut cream, mincemeat and of course, pumpkin! She was noted as the best baker, ever!  Everyone loved her pies.  There were homemade noodles (my favorite), turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, several types of dressing: sage, oyster and chestnut,  cranberry salad, homemade rolls, gosh, I cannot even remember all of the food.  One of my favorite memories every Thanksgiving was tearing several loaves of  bread into pieces for the different dressings.  When we woke up, the television was always on with the Thanksgiving parade on, which I remember as being  much better back then. We would tear the bread while watching the parade.  It was always so exciting to see Santa at the end!  That set the mood for decorating for Christmas that night.  The family was huge!  Great, great times.  Those memories will probably be brought up later as they come to mind in my other posts.

Thanksgiving memories as a mother…. Our children were too young to remember my mother’s Thanksgivings which is a shame.  My father passed away before our children were even born.  My mother passed away when our youngest girl was 4 months old.  By the time our children were in their early teens, I lost my sister and two brothers, so my family is greatly diminished.  Most of my nieces and nephews are not even in the state, so it is rare to see them on a holiday.  One of my brothers still lived in town until he passed away and his wife and children usually stop by every Thanksgiving night and play games and visit, etc. We enjoy those times together. The Thanksgivings on my husband’s side were held at his grandmother’s  She had a large two story farm house and there were so, so many people there.  The children had other children to play with and they probably have memories like I do of my childhood Thanksgivings but I do not know for sure their memories and feelings.  There was lots of family, though, and that is what I think is the most important.

Our children have moved out and the Thanksgivings are not what they use to be. So many of the family have passed away, some have split up with their boyfriends or girlfriends and some have divorced.  We miss each and every one of them and still love them all!  We are still thankful to be together but we all miss the gathering of a large amount of family. We do stray from tradition, though. None of us much care for the standard turkey and I have a gluten issue, so we eat differently but it is all still good, good food, at least in our opinion. This year our appetizers were chips and salsa and chips and hummus. We had Apple crisp, cherry crisp, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, scalloped corn, chili, lasagna, ham, beef and rice, green beans, red hot jello, corn bread muffins, deviled eggs, and more. It sounds like a weird combination, but this way everyone has something they like.

Nothing can be done about the ones who are no longer with us and the ones who live far away are probably feeling the same about the losses and longing for older times,  but we do not linger on those thoughts. All of us are thankful for the family we do have.  We create our new memories and carry on and have a wonderful time.  We try to make each one special and memorable.

Something you notice about life, it truthfully repeats itself as does history.  Your thanksgivings are huge and then people die off and break up and they dwindle, then new family is added by marriage, dating, birth of children and they again are huge.  People die off and they dwindle again, then they grow again. I hope that this is a little bit encouraging to you who are missing the larger old time thanksgivings.  There will be larger and new ones again.  Make the most of your times together and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Do not dwindle on the past, remember it with a smile, share some of your memories with laughter at dinner or after dinner and have a good, good time.  Do not miss out on your blessings that you have right in front of you.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

As you can tell from the title, this will not be a continuance of my previous blogs.  I feel like I need to talk about this concert. I will most likely jump around like this from time to time.  Perhaps one post a week will be the continuance and the second will be a different subject if I feel prompted. I have never been one to stick to a program or plan.  I am spontaneous so here goes.

IT STARTS! (Don’t miss the reference here —- Lion King!)

I was born the fourth child with two brothers and a sister being born before me (another brother followed me). Childhood, of course was awesome. We moved to the country when I was around 4, so life was so interesting with all of the exploring we could do on the property and we spent most of our time in the woods playing in the creek, building forts, looking for Kool Pop houses and whatever came to our imagination!

There was a commercial about a big old owl who lived in a little “woodsy” house and he would give children who happened by a Kool Pop. There was also an owl on the tootsie pop commercial wondering how many licks it took to get to the tootsie roll, but this one was different. I wonder if any of you remember the Kool Pop house? Children would be on a walk and come upon this cottage/treehouse thing and the owl would give you a Kool Pop. Our dad would go out and half way assemble something (we found this out later in life) then he would walk around with us through the woods and say, “There is a Kool Pop house!” and point in the direction. We would excitedly look and it was just a partial frame. Dad would say, “Oh I am sorry, I saw it and it disappeared because I am a grown up.” Our older brother and his friend were always building forts, etc, out there, so it may have been some of their failed attempts as well. We spent days looking for those houses. This was probably a good ploy of dad’s to keep us occupied for quite some time! We wanted to find one so much!!!

We had great times there, we had a huge garden, orchards, lots of animals…pigs, cows, goats, chickens, horses, ducks, quail, rabbits, a bit of all farm animals. Dad had a very long sledding hill built for us and a pond. You can figure our childhood was filled with lots of fun things to do. My older brother one day asked me if I wanted to ride Sarah, the cow. I of course said sure. He hoisted me right up there and off Sarah and I went. We went all over those 10 acres! When we returned, my brother came running up and started helping me down asking if I were okay and if the cow tried to get me off of her or run me into any trees or fences. When I said no, he started excitedly hollering, “Hey everyone we can ride the cow!” My mother heard this and I am pretty sure she was not too happy with my brother, but I was safe and had a nice ride!

The entire country was ours for the exploring. We would walk or ride bicycles all day and visit neighbors and gather in each other’s yards or woods for the day to play. We would run out that door at sun up and return at lunch and head right back out until supper. When we needed snacks, we could grab something from the garden or have some berries, apples, peaches, cherries, whatever was growing. I sure miss those fresh foods! It seemed that most of the time everyone was at our house. We had a huge yard. We would play baseball, starting with flies and grounders. As cars would come by they would stop and get out and play and before long we would have a baseball game. The same thing would happen with kickball or flag football. It was amazing that people who never even knew you would feel comfortable enough to stop and get out and ask if they could play! Of course, we welcomed them.

We caught the rain water in barrels so we had a lot of barrels. We would “walk” on the barrels and have races. I have a picture of this that I might post some day! We had barrels for our appropriate sizes. My little brother and I had the smallest ones. Doing this took some balance and leg strength! The neighbors came down and got in on this activity as well. People passing by would always stop and join in the fun. What great times! My older brothers became more competitive and adventurous and would race with my little brother and me on their shoulders! Pretty sure mom was not thrilled with this either.

Well, this is a bit of background. I really did not think I could just jump in and randomly tell stories. I feel this background helps you get to know me and my family and to know my character. I will try my best, but I probably will not tell stories here in chronological order and I may just want to talk about things at times and not tell stories. I have always been one of those people where so many random things pop out of my mouth that I even surprise myself sometimes. Often times, it is the case that I would have been better off keeping my mouth shut. Oh how I try to talk myself out of the situations I get myself into then. It is always good for a laugh, though!

I will probably post on two days a week. Thank you for coming back again to read what I have to say. More to come………………..

Welcome.  Today, since I am starting out, I really do not know what to say and believe me, I always have a lot to say!  I write in tablets, binders, any type of booklet that i pick up.  I sort have kept a diary since I was 13.  There are many unfinished ones lying around the house and in storage bins.  My children may or may not have a good time reading them when they come across them.   They may think, if they do not already…. What a crazy mom!

Let’s start with the title …. Follow what brick road?  That was taken from my all time favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz.  It is too bad that there was not such a clear cut road to follow in life. There are more turns, hills, valleys and loop de loops than one can handle at times. That is what this will mostly be about, all of the many paths life leads you down.

Next, we will sort of introduce me…. I love to laugh, love people, love children.  I grew up in a family of 5 children.  There was always something going on. My mother is responsible for this.  We will go into detail about her later.  She was definitely one of a kind.  You might say that our family never met a stranger.  We always talk to people, meet new people, and love it! Often times, this can lead to some very funny and embarrassing situations which will be mentioned here later.  Great times! My husband and I  have a family of 5 children ourselves and we love a house full!  Our home as well as my parent’s home was open to all.

Bear with me here, this may sound dull, but I promise you it will be interesting.  It is hard for me to stay on track and not talk too much at once. For instance, when I mentioned my mother, I could have went into several stories, but I need to try to keep some sort of organization.  Some people call them bonus stories, others call it getting sidetracked.

I hope for this to entertain, encourage and enlighten.  The stories of the family are too good to let just disappear and I like the memories. The lessons learned may help others.  The biggest goal, besides my getting to write it down and recall the wonderful memories  is that perhaps you will just enjoy this and maybe it will bring a  smile or laugh to you.

THANKS FOR JOINING ME!