MEMORIES

thick potato-peelings

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 21:56:22 GMT

I'm preparing our family holiday meal for this evening, and of course, we'll have mashed potatoes. Real ones, not instant.

As I peeled the potatoes, I noticed how hard I was working at keeping the peeling as thin as I possibly could, as I always do. While doing that, a memory was jogged, and I realized there's a reason why I make such an effort.

At sometime during my childhood, we had Sunday dinner at someone's house. Whoever the lady was preparing the meal peeled the potatoes far too thick for Mother's liking, although of course she said nothing to her.

"Lands sake," Mother said later, on our way home, "She threw half the potato away!"

That was forever imprinted upon me so that even today at the age of 62, I make every effort to keep those peelings thin.

Tags: peeling potatoes

bubble lights and oranges

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 02:11:53 GMT

Back when Christmas was untainted and pure, Christmas trees were magical and Santa was real. I was so young.

Why is it that real Christmas trees don't smell as good, for as long, as they did in the 1950's?

Since my parents were the local telephone operators, they often received little gifts from their customers. One of the things you could count on us getting every year was a copy of "Christmas Ideals", a magazine with all sorts of lovely, seasonal pictures and poems. I used to get lost in those pages, reading "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause", and stories of how St. Nicholas came to be.

Somehow in those good days, Mother and Daddy acquired a string of bubble lights. The silly things were a bit awkward, because it was hard to keep them upright. But oh, how I loved them! To me, they were the prettiest baubles I'd ever seen, and I fiddled with them constantly. They'd fall over, I'd straighten them. What beauty, though!

I'd hang a stocking on Christmas Eve, and it was my own, real stocking... not some bright, red-and-green, decorated fake stocking. Oh no, I had these knee-high socks I wore when weather was cold. They stretched a bit, and on Christmas morning there was always that obvious globe in the very toe of my stocking. An orange!

In those days, I'm not sure we had oranges at any other time of year but Christmas. Anyhow, there was something extra-delicious about the oranges Santa brought, although they looked identical to the ones Mama had on the table that she'd bought just before Christmas.

I miss the magic. Anybody have some bubble lights?

the winter of 1967-68

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 13:23:42 GMT

We bought our first house, with twenty acres, in the fall of 1967. Our baby, Jimmy, was four months old. The dear old man who sold us the house (he'd simply bought it as an investment) let us set our own payment amount, and since Cliff cleared almost $100 a week, we made our payment $100 a month, figuring we could afford to devote one paycheck per month to a house payment.

The house had four rooms: kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms. The small bedroom had been a back porch, and someone had made into a room. A sink and bathroom stool had been put in a closet of our bedroom, and a shower had been placed in a sort of cubby-hole over the basement stairway, in another of our bedroom corners.

Yes folks, it was primitive.

There was a space heater in the living room that had once had a fan to circulate the heat to other rooms; but by the time we got the place, the fan didn't work.

Cliff and I had both been raised in similar kinds of houses, so we felt only excitement at owning our own home.

I took on a sort of Little-House-On-The-Prairie state of mind, and started baking my own bread. We bought a milk cow, Suzie, from my parents, and I made butter and cottage cheese.

Then winter came, and it must have been a dandy! Pipes froze more than once. The poor old heater in the living room couldn't put out adequate heat for four rooms, so I moved the baby crib into a corner of the living room and shut up Jimmy's bedroom by hanging a quilt over that door. One less room to heat.

When Cliff's family came to visit, they'd leave their coats on and huddle around the stove, trying to keep warm.

I remember making bread when the kitchen was so cold the dough wouldn't rise; so I moved it into the living room and set it between the stove and the wall, where it not only rose... it began to bake, on the side nearest the stove!

Were we miserable? Nope, we were having the time of our life. I wish I could just have one of those days back... just one.

That's Jimmy, pretending he's reading over his daddy's shoulder, in January, 1968. Look at the mis-matched decor in that living room! The main reason for that is that everything, from curtains to carpet, was hand-me-down... mostly from my mom.

State Fairs

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:59:29 GMT

It's about time I dusted off this journal and added some memories.

This week, either tomorrow or Thursday, two granddaughters and I will go to the Missouri State Fair. Cliff will take us down, set up the popup camper, and leave us for three days. It's supposed to be hot, as it always seems to be at fair time.

I guess I got my love of the state fair from my parents. Because they were tied to the switchboard 24/7, we didn't get away for extended vacations. Someone had to be hired to stay at the telephone office, and money was pretty tight back then.

But we often got away for two or three days to camp out at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. My brother's family lived there, and we'd usually meet up with them during that time, too. One year I even remember my sister, her husband, and thier little boy going.

We didn't own a tent. We'd borrow an olive-drab tarp from a farmer, Ted Davies, that Daddy worked for sometimes, and my parents would somehow make it serve as a tent, securing it in closed car doors and windows on one side.

Those trips to the fair are the only vacations I remember having until I was thirteen or so, and we'd moved to the city.

After Cliff and I married, I talked him into camping at the State Fair two or three times. It just wasn't his cup of tea. He's fond of saying, "I can see everything I want to see at the fair in a half-day." Not to mention the fact that he really doesn't enjoy camping out.

So we'd drive down there sometimes for a day, or I'd hitch a ride with neighbors; but the camping-out times seemed to be over.

Until my oldest grandson, Arick, was about eight years old and hanging out at our house a lot.

I got a crazy idea: What if Cliff took the camper down, set it up, and left me and Arick there for a few days? Would he go for that? He's quite a worrier, and I didn't know whether he'd be concerned for our safety or not.

He thought it was an excellent idea, and a tradition was born. Arick went with me for at least four years, and sometimes his cousins went, too. I recall my daughter's oldest, Brett, going once or twice, and also her step-son Jonathan. I think Cliff's sister's step-son, Jeremiah, even went one year.

But of course those kids grew up, as children must; and going to the fair with Grandma was no longer on their list of priorities. There were a few "fair-less" summers for me.

Four years ago, I realized that my daughter's two girls might be old enough to enjoy the fair, and I asked Rachel what she thought about sending them camping with me. Natalie's always been quite a mamma's girl, so my daughter suggested I only take Monica, who was six years old at that time.

It worked out great.

The next year, Natalie went too. And last year. This year will be Monica's fourth trip to Sedalia to the fair, and Nattie's third.

Cliff gets to stay home, I get to camp, and the kids and I have a blast. It's a win-win situation.

I don't know how much longer these girls will be interested in the fair, but I figure I have at least three years left before I have to hunt up some new kids.

my mother's memories

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 23:26:52 GMT

One of the best things about my mom was that she loved to tell stories about her past. Her childhood, her early years of marriage... all of it. I consider that a rare treasure. And as much as my mom and I were at odds for certain parts of my life, that is one thing I appreciate.

You see, I have ALWAYS loved a story. I'm forever trying to worm stories out of people, and most folks are reluctant to give those tales up. I remember as a little girl trying to get Grandma to tell about her childhood, and she never seemed willing to do that.

Oh, but Mother was willing!

She told how she and her next-youngest sibling, my Uncle Carl, went fishing together. But their dad wouldn't let them go fishing until they each weeded two rows of the garden.

Mother told how, in the coldest part of wintertime, her dad would hitch up horses to a sleigh. All the kids would bundle up for the trip to Church, or to town. Grandma would heat bricks on the wood stove and wrap them up, for the kids to put their feet against.

In more pleasant weather, Grandma would hitch the horses to a wagon herself, load up the kids, and go into Eagleville to visit her parents.

My grandma gave all her kids a drop of kerosene in a teaspoon of sugar in the spring, to get rid of worms.

Mother talked about her Uncle Fishade, who evidently was a hobo, showing up once in a blue moon and leaving behind one of the baskets he'd woven.

And about visiting Aunt Sadie (oh, she was a BIG woman) in Arkansas, and how they'd lift up the boards of the floor in their living room and reach down and get the eggs the hens had laid under the house. Aunt Sadie had a Victorola, and Mother taught me to sing "In A Lonely Village Churchyard" just like she learned it in Arkansas.

I heard about their trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota, and how Uncle Leo, the baby, was bitten by so many mosquitoes one night when they camped beside the river that his whole body swelled up. And how, on Sunday, they had church, just their family, on the mountainside, taking communion and all.

When Mother and Daddy decided to get married in December of 1932, the roads were muddy and the car got stuck and wouldn't go any further. So Mother and Daddy walked the rest of the way, got married, and spent the night with some friends. What a honeymoon night, huh?

Mother said, "I knew what was going to happen after we got married, but I didn't think he would do it THE FIRST NIGHT!"

These are only a few of the wonderful stories Mother told me.

I'm SO glad my mother told me about her past.

Quilts

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 23:59:20 GMT

My maternal grandmother made lovely quilts. She spent hours working on them, and sold them for a mere pittance. I grew up with those quilts, and didn't realize their true value. I tossed them around as though they were cheap, store bought things, and wore several of them out. I really regret that now. When we are young, we don't always know where value lies.

When I'd spend my summer week with Grandma, she spent a lot of time upstairs, where her quilting frame was. In summer she did her quilting in the mornings, as I recall, while it was still relatively cool; after noon, she'd sit in her rocker downstairs and crochet, and listen to "One Man's Family" and other radio soaps. My Grandma never just sat and did nothing, unless she was sick. Or unless she had company with whom to chat.

When my mom reached retirement, she started making quilts, but they were of a different variety. She'd go to garage sales and buy any cheap double-knit clothing she could find (double-knit "never wears out", she said). She'd take her loot home and cut it into square blocks: sometimes big blocks, sometimes small ones.

Mother tied her quilts, rather than quilting them, which is a much faster process. And she got to the point where she could turn those quilts out like hot cakes!

She didn't sell many of them; she gave them away to relatives, church friends, and neighbors. She gave them for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and graduations. When Cliff got his GED, she made him a quilt.

I'm sure there are hundreds of her quilts scattered across the country and around the world. As I was making my bed yesterday, I saw one of many quilts Mother made for me... this one because she noticed I liked a purple quilt a friend had given me, so she made me one with some purple.

And I thought of all her efforts over so many years.

I'll bet there are a lot of folks who think of my mom while making their beds. Not such a bad legacy.

Gale Storm

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 16:33:33 GMT

When we moved to Kansas City in 1956, our first home there was an upstairs, two-room apartment. Directly below us lived Uncle Clifford, Aunt Mabel and my cousin, Alice. They had a television set.

Once we got settled in, Alice starting inviting me to come down and watch TV after school. I believe Howdy-Doody was on about the time we got home.

One of the first major purchases my parents made after our move was a television. Mother said that was the only way she'd be able to keep me home in the afternoons. However, I remember arriving home from school on several occasions to find her crying, watching "Queen For A Day". So perhaps she only used me for an excuse.

Another show that I seem to remember being on shortly after I got home was "My Little Margie". Oh, I loved that show, which starred Gale Storm. Since the show ran from 1952 to 1955, I had to have been watching reruns in 1956.

Later on Gale had some hit songs: "Dark Moon" and "I Hear You Knockin'" were my favorites. And in the late fifties, she had another TV show, "Oh, Suzanna".

The other day I got to reminiscing about this lady, and listened to those two songs I loved when I was thirteen or so. That led to my wondering whether she's still alive, so of course I Googled her, and found she is indeed among the living, and even has a web site. Somewhere in my investigation, I found she had written a book telling about her life and her struggles with alcoholism so, out of curiousity, I checked for it on half.com. There it was, for 75 cents!

I ordered it, and it came in the mail yesterday. It was published in 1982, so the pages are a bit yellowed. But it's autographed! Ofcourse, hardly anyone these days ever heard of Gale Storm, sothe autograph doesn't really mean much. But I consider it a bonus, because "My Little Margie" was such a wonderful part of my childhood.

Cliff asked, "Why would someone get rid of that?"

"The owner of the book probably died," I answered.

I can't think of one person who'd care about an autographed copy of this book these days... except for me.

Just one of life's little surprises, and all because I took a brief stroll down memory lane.

back-yard chickens, and chicken-feed sack dresses

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:47:20 GMT

I imagine if I used any picture of myself under the age of seven in this entry, I'd be wearing a dress made of chicken-feed sacks.

Mother always kept a huge back-yard flock of chickens, even in the last small Missouri town where we lived before moving to Kansas City. Sunday dinners nearly always featured Mamma's fried chicken as the main course. The chickens to be sacrificed for our pleasure were caught on Saturday, then had their heads deftly removed by Mama; she put her foot firmly on the head and pulled with the hand that was holding onto both of the chicken's legs. Then the chicken flopped madly around the yard without its head.

Next it was scalded; this loosened the feathers. I often got the job of plucking the chickens, and I really didn't mind doing it, although wet feathers don't smell very good.

I loved watching Mama "dress" chickens, although I often wondered why removing innards and cutting a carcass into pieces was called "dressing" them. My favorite part was when she retrieved the gizzard, or "craw", cut it open, and clean all the sand and gravel out of it, all the while explaining the purpose of each organ as she handled it.

I've never tasted fried chicken anywhere that held a candle to my mother's.

In my early childhood, chicken feed came in sacks made of cotton floral print; most of my dresses, as a youngster, were made from these sacks. Once I even talked Mama into making matching panties, and I was proud of them; although they turned out not to be real comfortable, thanks to seams being in the wrong places.

I found an article online about these sacks here, here and here, if you care to check it out.

Tent meeting

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:18:22 GMT

This picture is long before my time; my mom looks to be a very young teenager here (follow the arrow that says "me").

But the words "tent meeting" conjure up a couple of fond memories.

When we moved back to my mom's old home town in north Missouri, there was no Church of Christ in town. Now, you need to realize that if you are Church of Christ, you can't attend any denomination, because you are a member of the true Church.

So a few families started meeting in the home of a widow lady with a crippled son who worked on watches for a living. There were enough of us, I believe, to fill up the lady's living room.

Then an evangelist came to town, and a sort of tent was set up on an empty lot in town. It wasn't really a tent, because it didn't have a top. There were just four canvas walls around us.

There was a drought that year, so perhaps the brethren figured a roof wasn't needed on the tent. But on about the third night of our Gospel meeting, we heard thunder getting ever closer, much to the joy of my parents. We got rained out, and our garden was saved.

That night is one of my fondest memories: me, standing on the front porch watching the downpour, and Mama sitting at the switchboard on the other side of the screen door, singing, "There Shall Be Showers Of Blessing" after we'd been forced to leave the meeting.

Fast forward about five years: We lived in Kansas City. Sometimes our Church services were a little dry and boring. So when we wanted to hear a really rousing sermon, Mother and Daddy and I would go to the "colored" Church of Christ and hear some REAL preaching. One year they held a tent meeting, and we attended that, down in the heart of Kansas City's poor side. We were the only white folks there, as we always were when we visited their services; except when they held the "first Sunday singings". Then there were lots of us. Boy, they could sing.

I've heard the stories of old brush arbor meetings, but these times I've related are the only tent meeting experiences I've had.

The toilet (otherwise known as outhouse)

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 01:22:43 GMT

All of my growing-up years, we had no indoor plumbing. Water for all purposes was carried in from the hand-pump outside, in a three-gallon-or-so bucket. There was a dipper that stayed in the bucket; anyone wanting a drink sipped directly from that dipper and put it right back into the bucket of water. Not very hygienic, but I don't think we were any sicker back then than we are now.

When nature called, we had to go outside to the toilet. Nowadays people refer to them as outhouses, but we always used the term "toilet".

No matter how cold it was outside, that's where we had to "go". In winter, you can't believe how cold was that draft on one's exposed backside.

In summer, you were liable to find a snake curled up in a corner of the toilet, and wasps building nests in the rafters. My mom bought toilet paper for us, as far back as I can remember. But various aunts and uncles didn't believe in such luxury. They took all their last-year's catalogues out, to use as toilet paper. The trick was to tear out a page and wad it up tightly, then stretch it back out. That took away the slickness of catalogue pages, and made them a little more absorbant.

I remember occupying a two-holer with a couple of my Allen cousins, leafing through the pages and choosing the style of dresses we preferred from last year's stock.

In fact, the two-and three-seater toilets were great for conversation. Nowadays I can't imagine sitting on a plank doing my business, chatting with friends. But it was a common occurrence when I was a child.

We had one luxurious item for the times nature called in the middle of the night: an enameled chamber pot. This handy item had a lid (thank God) and was kept under the bed for emergencies; beds were much higher from the floor back then. My poor mother (or Grandma, if I was spending the night there) had the pleasure of taking the pot out to the toilet and dumping it, the next morning.

If I visited my cousins on the farm, they didn't have a chamber pot. There was a slop bucket on the back porch, with table scraps (potato peelings and other such garbage) they saved for the hogs. That slop bucket served double duty as a pot. Yep. And the hogs got to eat that mess.