Thursday, December 20, 2012
Party Line
When I was a child, we were on a party line. There were quite a few on it. Some 'hogged' the line, calling another person quickly when they hung up from the current one. If we wanted to call someone not on the line, we had to ring the operator and give her the number. On the line one would hold the ringer for one long ring and then for four short ring to call us since our number was fourteen. I do not remember what someone not on our line told the operator to get our party line. I got in trouble one time when my mother was not in the house and I tried to call my imaginary friend "Little Pal". A neighbor heard me and told my mother. I heard about it for many years afterward. Oh yes, it was a box on the wall as you have seen in pictures. I had to get up on a chair to use it.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Memories of the Second World War
Today (Dec. 7, 2012) some have been thinking about the attack on Pearl Harbor which was 71 years ago today. How many of you actually remember hearing the news report on the radio? I do. My brother Winston and I were listening to the radio in the sitting room. (Does anyone have a sitting room today?) We heard the special report and were shocked. We listened in silence. We knew that our lives and those of our family and friends would be affected. The next day, Monday, found us in school. I was a freshman at Lancaster Academy and High School. Shortly after noon those of us that brought our lunches to school went down in the basement where Mr. Kingsley, the janitor, had a radio and listened to President Roosevelt address Congress and ask for a declaration of war.
I visited the Pearl harbor Memoroial in 2007. We took a small boat out to the Arizona site. It was like being in a cathedral.
My answer to Bill's question about my memories of WWII.
I was living on a farm about five miles from Lancaster, NH.
I can not put an exact date on those. But it was probably several months before we had rationing. We had to go to the nearest schoolhouse and report how much sugar we had on hand. My mother, at the insistence of my dad, had cooked pies and cakes etc so we did not have a lot to report. We had books with coupons that were used with money to purchase sugar, canned goods etc. My dad always had a large garden so we did not hurt for vegetables. Gasoline rationing came a little later. Since we had a farm my dad had "T" coupons which meant he could get what he needed. We had an old car which got "A" coupons-three gallons a week. People walked or shared rides. There was another letter for those who drove to work. My sister married her boyfriend secretly on Dec. 21st. He had been released from the army and would be called back and was in about February, I think. She was teaching school and there was a rule against married women teaching. That was soon abolished and never came back. We were not too far from the east coast (less than 100 miles as the crow flies) so there were no street lights and everyone got blackout blinds or covered their windows. A small building was set up out in a meadow near town ( where there was an abandoned railroad track) where spotters took turns watching for airplanes. As the war went on there would be large fleets of bombers and fighters going overhead on their way to Iceland and then England. Also all the young men either enlisted or were drafted. Almost all the high school boys enlisted as soon as they turned 17. We were frequently shown movies at school about the war effort. We had radios and newspapers and if we went to the movies we could see newsreels of the war. Some goods became scarce. Girls' skirts became very short. One of my brothers had a bad leg so he went to Connecticut to work in a war plant. Two others were farmers and could not go. Another brother did eventually get in the army. I had a number of cousins in the service. EVeryone watched the papers for the lists of killed, wounded, or missing in action. One of my cousins was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. I think some were wounded but do not remember exactly.
I visited the Pearl harbor Memoroial in 2007. We took a small boat out to the Arizona site. It was like being in a cathedral.
My answer to Bill's question about my memories of WWII.
I was living on a farm about five miles from Lancaster, NH.
I can not put an exact date on those. But it was probably several months before we had rationing. We had to go to the nearest schoolhouse and report how much sugar we had on hand. My mother, at the insistence of my dad, had cooked pies and cakes etc so we did not have a lot to report. We had books with coupons that were used with money to purchase sugar, canned goods etc. My dad always had a large garden so we did not hurt for vegetables. Gasoline rationing came a little later. Since we had a farm my dad had "T" coupons which meant he could get what he needed. We had an old car which got "A" coupons-three gallons a week. People walked or shared rides. There was another letter for those who drove to work. My sister married her boyfriend secretly on Dec. 21st. He had been released from the army and would be called back and was in about February, I think. She was teaching school and there was a rule against married women teaching. That was soon abolished and never came back. We were not too far from the east coast (less than 100 miles as the crow flies) so there were no street lights and everyone got blackout blinds or covered their windows. A small building was set up out in a meadow near town ( where there was an abandoned railroad track) where spotters took turns watching for airplanes. As the war went on there would be large fleets of bombers and fighters going overhead on their way to Iceland and then England. Also all the young men either enlisted or were drafted. Almost all the high school boys enlisted as soon as they turned 17. We were frequently shown movies at school about the war effort. We had radios and newspapers and if we went to the movies we could see newsreels of the war. Some goods became scarce. Girls' skirts became very short. One of my brothers had a bad leg so he went to Connecticut to work in a war plant. Two others were farmers and could not go. Another brother did eventually get in the army. I had a number of cousins in the service. EVeryone watched the papers for the lists of killed, wounded, or missing in action. One of my cousins was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. I think some were wounded but do not remember exactly.
Did My Heart Good
(This was written in July 2006) )I had an interesting experience today. I had parked in town in
front of an office and was about to go in when I heard someone yelling. At first
I ignored it, but it was quite insistent so I looked around.
The voice said "Over here, over here!' Then I saw a black
(African-American) woman in a car stopped at the stop sign.
When she saw I was looking her way , she called, "remember
you, You were at Annie Sims (school) when I was about so high," and she lowered
her arm out the window.
I called back something like, "How are you doing?" and went on
into the building to deliver some papers.
When I came out, there she was, a very neat, well-dressed
woman. She had parked and had come over to wait for me.
She said, "I remember your face. Remember when we were at
Annie Sims?"
I asked her name.
She said, "Delores Heath."
I asked her what she was doing these days and she told me she
works for the school district and now is at Annie Sims. I think she is a
teacher's aide, because I had heard that she was.
So we hugged and laughed and enjoyed the moment.
The memories of that year came flooding back as I told my
husband about our meeting.
A the beginning of the school year in 1973 I was transferred
to teach third grade at Annie Sims Elementary. The school also began a new
program in which one teacher would be designated the Title One teacher, would be
given the weakest students for reading class and would have an aide (a
very new idea then). Since I had had experience with remedial reading
I was chosen.
Delores Heath was one of my new students. An oh, did she have
a reputation, and oh, was she difficult to put it mildly. Then one day she told
me she had never won anything and she wished she could win a ribbon for
something.
When I was in the school office later I told the
principal and secretary about that. The secretary hunted around and found a blue
ribbon for something. We marked it over and I took it to my room.
The next day I showed it to Delores and told her
she could "win" it by showing good behavior for a week.
At the end of a week it was hers. She proudly carried that
ribbon with her every day. Her behavior stayed nearly perfect. I like to think
that maybe her road to success began then. Others helped. The next year in the
fourth grade she had an excellent teacher who also showed her caring and taught
her better manners etc. I am sure many others helped her through the years.
Now she is one who is helping youngsters on their way.
Family
My father and mother married on September 29, 1909. (One of my nephews got married many years later on September 29, 1990. I thought that was an odd coincidence.) Dad was 25 and Mother was 21. Dad grew up in Maidstone, VT but left at a young age when his father died and worked for numerous farmers (including his future in-laws and even took the train out to Western Canada to work the wheat harvest one year, I remember him telling about riding all day along the shore of Lake Superior. The next year they bought and moved onto what we know as The Home Place on the Lost Nation Road about five miles from Lancaster, NH. . The place tayed in the family until 1967 or 1968.. Some third and fourth cousins have been living there since. I usually stop by when visiting family in NH. My oldest sister, Hazel, was born in 1910, then Doris in 1911, and Cecile in 1913. Brother Millard came along in 1914. So my mother was very busy with a young family and my dad was busy improving the farm and working out some too. I have been told how in at least one winter he would do the milking, take his team of horses, drive several miles up to the Mt. Hutchins logging camp, load up logs and drive them to Lancaster, getting back home late, do the milking and, get to bed as soon as he could,; then get up and do the same thing the next day.
In 1918-1919 came the great flu epidemic. My dad, my sister Cecile, and my sister Hazel all were very sick. Dad and Cecile nearly died and Hazel did. So many were sick and dying that there could not be a regular funeral, Hazel was the first to be buried in the family plot in the Lancaster Town Cemetery. A few days later with Cecile and Dad getting well, my mother went to her brother-in-law’s, my Uncle Jerry’s where the whole family was sick and took care of them until they were well. A picture of Hazel hung on the wall at homeand I often looked at her picture. I have regretted not knowing her my whole life.
In 1920, my brother Stanley was born, the Otis in 1922, Winston in 1924, and I arrived in 1927 to complete the family. By that time my older sisters were in high school. I am told that Cecile looked at me and said, "There goes my college education".
Both Cecile and Doris went to college. Doris took the business course at Plymouth Normal School (now Plymouth State) and became a business teacher, Cecile won a scholarship in debating to the University of New Hampshire and became an English teacher. They both later married and after a time moved back to Lancaster where they raised their families. Millard stayed on the farm after graduating from high school until he married and got a place of his own a few miles away and where he raised his family.. Stanley stayed on the farm awhile, then took a machinist’s course and moved first to Connecticut and then to California. Otis went to college in Keene, NH, became a shop teacher, married, was in the US Army, and later became Production Manager for a paper mill. He lived in town where he raised his family. Winston stayed home, got married, later took over the farm, and still later moved to Florida where he raised his family, and retired to Arizona. I also went to college in Keene, taught school, married a Texan while in California and also taught school in Texas while we raised our family
Farm Food
I had an easier childhood than many in the 1930's. My folks were not rich. Far from it. We had a dairy farm in the North Country of New Hampshire. My dad had paid off his mortgage in the twenties when times were good instead of going deeper in debt as many did-and ended up losing their farms,
Dad was a good gardener. We had plenty of vegetables to eat. Mother would can the surplus .I would often wake in the morning hearing the click, click of his hoe as he tended his garden behind the house. We had tomatoes, Swiss chard, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers (and some became pickles), corn, pumpkins, and squash. On one side of the garden were rhubarb plants which came up every year. We kids liked to get a saucer of sugar and dip the tart stalks in the sugar and eat them while making faces because it was still so sour. On the other side of the garden were parsnips which I do not think anyone but Dad ever ate..
We picked raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, ate a lot, and canned the rest, I remember many mornings when Dad would come home from taking the milk jugs to the creamery and announce that he had heard that there were lots of blackberries in Lunenburg (across the river in Vermont) or blueberries on Dalton Mountain or some somewhere else. We would gather all the smaller pails and milk pails and off we would go. It was usually a day after a rain and no haying could be done. We would come home scratched, tired, and happy. My mother and older sisters then set to work cleaning and sorting the berries. There would be a shortcake and pies for a few days. Raspberry bushes grew on the low stone walls that separated the fields "overback" We picked them frequently as long as they lasted.
We had some apple trees but had lost most in the freeze of ‘34. I do not really remember that, but so I have been told. So Dad would buy a couple of barrels of apples in the fall and keep them in the cellar. There were shelves for the canned fruits, meat, and vegetables in the cellar. There was also a large potato bin where the annual crop of potatoes was stored. Mother would sometimes send me to get some apples for a pie and always counseled me to look for those developing bad spots. If I wanted an apple to eat, I got the same warning. Once I asked if I couldn’t please have a perfect apple! Sometimes in the fall we would pick a lot of crab apples and take them to be made into cider. Oh, so good. .
We had our own meat. Dad would butcher a cow and a hog in early winter.. My mother would pack the cuts into cloth bags, hang them in the woodshed until they were frozen solid, and then they would be put in the oat bin in the granary where they would stay frozen well into summer. Some of the hog meat would be ground up and flavored for sausage. Some beef cuts were canned, and hams were smoked in the smoke house. I would get very tired of canned beef in the summer but knew better than to complain. How happy I was when my mother bought some hot dogs.
We had three small chicken houses which were alongside the garden. Each held about 20 or 25 hens. As soon as I was big enough, I had to feed and water the chickens and pick up the eggs .Once I saw what seemed to be a big kitten under a nest. I reached down to pet it and then I saw a white stripe down its back. I got out of there as quickly as I could. We would have a stewed hen for dinner sometimes. They were chosen because they were no longer laying and stewed because they were old and tough.
With a large family to feed, my mother had a rule. You ate what she served or you ate bread and milk. When she had pea soup, I ate bread and milk. When we had liver, my brother Winston ate bread and milk.
In the spring my brothers would tap some maple trees in the woods across the road from our house (they belonged to my Uncle Bill Bishop who had lots of maple trees and a sugar house way over on the other road near his house). Sometimes I went with them to collect the sap. We also had a big maple in our yard that they tapped. Its sap was especially sweet. They would pour the sap into a big boiler on the kitchen stove and keep it boiling until it became syrup. This did not produce all that much syrup. We would go to a "sugaring off" at Frank Rowell’s up on the mountainside (quite a climb). Dad would buy some syrup and pails of maple sugar. Mother would use them in cooking and we would have syrup for biscuits and pancakes.
Mother made her own bread, dried apples on a rack which hung from hooks over the kitchen stove, made a cake and a pie or two nearly every day, and served 20 meals a week. On Sunday nights we were on our own to pick up what we liked and could find, often bread and milk or leftovers-if there were any.
Breakfast was usually cereal, hot or cold, rolls which Mother made each morning (when someone asked for the recipe, she said to beat an egg or two-if available., add some butter, pour in some milk, and stir in flour until it felt right).
Dinner at noon was meat and potatoes with whatever vegetables were ready in the garden or canned ones, bread, and pie (lemon, apple, berry, raisin (and another note-my dad loved raisin pie so he would bring home boxes when grocery shopping until my mother had to show him she had way too many in the cupboard).
Supper was a dish like macaroni and cheese, rice, shepherd’s pie, corn or fish chowder, pea soup (ugh!), what they called sauce (berries, canned peaches, pears, plums) which my dad insisted we eat with bread whether we wanted to or not, and some kind of cake.
What did we drink? We drank a lot of milk. Unlike some dairyman, Dad encouraged us to drink all we wanted. Others felt this was their income and discouraged their families from using much milk. Mother liked her tea. Dad drank Postum in the mornings. As we children got old enough we could have coffee. In the summers we made root beer (non-alcoholic) using a 15 cent bottle of root beer extract, quite a bit of sugar and 5 gallons of water. We put it in quart jars and put them in the cellar. The hay crew consumed it rather quickly along with water and sometimes lemonade. When we had raspberries, Mother would make raspberry shrub. She squeezed the juice from the berries, and then mixed the juice with sugar and vinegar. We would put a little in a glass and fill it up with water. Delicious.
In telling my husband about how we grew up in New Hampshire, he compared it to his growing up on an East Texas farm. While different in many details, there were many similarities, especially in the nearly self-sufficient farmers of that time.
We ate well and probably more healthy than many today in spite of using lard to make pie crusts and not knowing better than to eat the fat on the meat. . I think all the fruits and vegetables more than made up for that.
My father and mother married on September 29, 1909. (One of my nephews got married many years later on September 29, 1990. I thought that was an odd coincidence.) Dad was 25 and Mother was 21. Dad grew up in Maidstone, VT but left at a young age when his father died and worked for numerous farmers (including his future in-laws and even took the train out to Western Canada to work the wheat harvest one year, I remember him telling about riding all day along the shore of Lake Superior. The next year they bought and moved onto what we know as The Home Place on the Lost Nation Road about five miles from Lancaster, NH. . The place tayed in the family until 1967 or 1968.. Some third and fourth cousins have been living there since. I usually stop by when visiting family in NH. My oldest sister, Hazel, was born in 1910, then Doris in 1911, and Cecile in 1913. Brother Millard came along in 1914. So my mother was very busy with a young family and my dad was busy improving the farm and working out some too. I have been told how in at least one winter he would do the milking, take his team of horses, drive several miles up to the Mt. Hutchins logging camp, load up logs and drive them to Lancaster, getting back home late, do the milking and, get to bed as soon as he could,; then get up and do the same thing the next day.
In 1918-1919 came the great flu epidemic. My dad, my sister Cecile, and my sister Hazel all were very sick. Dad and Cecile nearly died and Hazel did. So many were sick and dying that there could not be a regular funeral, Hazel was the first to be buried in the family plot in the Lancaster Town Cemetery. A few days later with Cecile and Dad getting well, my mother went to her brother-in-law’s, my Uncle Jerry’s where the whole family was sick and took care of them until they were well. A picture of Hazel hung on the wall at homeand I often looked at her picture. I have regretted not knowing her my whole life.
In 1920, my brother Stanley was born, the Otis in 1922, Winston in 1924, and I arrived in 1927 to complete the family. By that time my older sisters were in high school. I am told that Cecile looked at me and said, "There goes my college education".
Both Cecile and Doris went to college. Doris took the business course at Plymouth Normal School (now Plymouth State) and became a business teacher, Cecile won a scholarship in debating to the University of New Hampshire and became an English teacher. They both later married and after a time moved back to Lancaster where they raised their families. Millard stayed on the farm after graduating from high school until he married and got a place of his own a few miles away and where he raised his family.. Stanley stayed on the farm awhile, then took a machinist’s course and moved first to Connecticut and then to California. Otis went to college in Keene, NH, became a shop teacher, married, was in the US Army, and later became Production Manager for a paper mill. He lived in town where he raised his family. Winston stayed home, got married, later took over the farm, and still later moved to Florida where he raised his family, and retired to Arizona. I also went to college in Keene, taught school, married a Texan while in California and also taught school in Texas while we raised our family
Farm Food
I had an easier childhood than many in the 1930's. My folks were not rich. Far from it. We had a dairy farm in the North Country of New Hampshire. My dad had paid off his mortgage in the twenties when times were good instead of going deeper in debt as many did-and ended up losing their farms,
Dad was a good gardener. We had plenty of vegetables to eat. Mother would can the surplus .I would often wake in the morning hearing the click, click of his hoe as he tended his garden behind the house. We had tomatoes, Swiss chard, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers (and some became pickles), corn, pumpkins, and squash. On one side of the garden were rhubarb plants which came up every year. We kids liked to get a saucer of sugar and dip the tart stalks in the sugar and eat them while making faces because it was still so sour. On the other side of the garden were parsnips which I do not think anyone but Dad ever ate..
We picked raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, ate a lot, and canned the rest, I remember many mornings when Dad would come home from taking the milk jugs to the creamery and announce that he had heard that there were lots of blackberries in Lunenburg (across the river in Vermont) or blueberries on Dalton Mountain or some somewhere else. We would gather all the smaller pails and milk pails and off we would go. It was usually a day after a rain and no haying could be done. We would come home scratched, tired, and happy. My mother and older sisters then set to work cleaning and sorting the berries. There would be a shortcake and pies for a few days. Raspberry bushes grew on the low stone walls that separated the fields "overback" We picked them frequently as long as they lasted.
We had some apple trees but had lost most in the freeze of ‘34. I do not really remember that, but so I have been told. So Dad would buy a couple of barrels of apples in the fall and keep them in the cellar. There were shelves for the canned fruits, meat, and vegetables in the cellar. There was also a large potato bin where the annual crop of potatoes was stored. Mother would sometimes send me to get some apples for a pie and always counseled me to look for those developing bad spots. If I wanted an apple to eat, I got the same warning. Once I asked if I couldn’t please have a perfect apple! Sometimes in the fall we would pick a lot of crab apples and take them to be made into cider. Oh, so good. .
We had our own meat. Dad would butcher a cow and a hog in early winter.. My mother would pack the cuts into cloth bags, hang them in the woodshed until they were frozen solid, and then they would be put in the oat bin in the granary where they would stay frozen well into summer. Some of the hog meat would be ground up and flavored for sausage. Some beef cuts were canned, and hams were smoked in the smoke house. I would get very tired of canned beef in the summer but knew better than to complain. How happy I was when my mother bought some hot dogs.
We had three small chicken houses which were alongside the garden. Each held about 20 or 25 hens. As soon as I was big enough, I had to feed and water the chickens and pick up the eggs .Once I saw what seemed to be a big kitten under a nest. I reached down to pet it and then I saw a white stripe down its back. I got out of there as quickly as I could. We would have a stewed hen for dinner sometimes. They were chosen because they were no longer laying and stewed because they were old and tough.
With a large family to feed, my mother had a rule. You ate what she served or you ate bread and milk. When she had pea soup, I ate bread and milk. When we had liver, my brother Winston ate bread and milk.
In the spring my brothers would tap some maple trees in the woods across the road from our house (they belonged to my Uncle Bill Bishop who had lots of maple trees and a sugar house way over on the other road near his house). Sometimes I went with them to collect the sap. We also had a big maple in our yard that they tapped. Its sap was especially sweet. They would pour the sap into a big boiler on the kitchen stove and keep it boiling until it became syrup. This did not produce all that much syrup. We would go to a "sugaring off" at Frank Rowell’s up on the mountainside (quite a climb). Dad would buy some syrup and pails of maple sugar. Mother would use them in cooking and we would have syrup for biscuits and pancakes.
Mother made her own bread, dried apples on a rack which hung from hooks over the kitchen stove, made a cake and a pie or two nearly every day, and served 20 meals a week. On Sunday nights we were on our own to pick up what we liked and could find, often bread and milk or leftovers-if there were any.
Breakfast was usually cereal, hot or cold, rolls which Mother made each morning (when someone asked for the recipe, she said to beat an egg or two-if available., add some butter, pour in some milk, and stir in flour until it felt right).
Dinner at noon was meat and potatoes with whatever vegetables were ready in the garden or canned ones, bread, and pie (lemon, apple, berry, raisin (and another note-my dad loved raisin pie so he would bring home boxes when grocery shopping until my mother had to show him she had way too many in the cupboard).
Supper was a dish like macaroni and cheese, rice, shepherd’s pie, corn or fish chowder, pea soup (ugh!), what they called sauce (berries, canned peaches, pears, plums) which my dad insisted we eat with bread whether we wanted to or not, and some kind of cake.
What did we drink? We drank a lot of milk. Unlike some dairyman, Dad encouraged us to drink all we wanted. Others felt this was their income and discouraged their families from using much milk. Mother liked her tea. Dad drank Postum in the mornings. As we children got old enough we could have coffee. In the summers we made root beer (non-alcoholic) using a 15 cent bottle of root beer extract, quite a bit of sugar and 5 gallons of water. We put it in quart jars and put them in the cellar. The hay crew consumed it rather quickly along with water and sometimes lemonade. When we had raspberries, Mother would make raspberry shrub. She squeezed the juice from the berries, and then mixed the juice with sugar and vinegar. We would put a little in a glass and fill it up with water. Delicious.
In telling my husband about how we grew up in New Hampshire, he compared it to his growing up on an East Texas farm. While different in many details, there were many similarities, especially in the nearly self-sufficient farmers of that time.
We ate well and probably more healthy than many today in spite of using lard to make pie crusts and not knowing better than to eat the fat on the meat. . I think all the fruits and vegetables more than made up for that.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Way Older Than Dirt
Some time ago some people were talking about being"older than dirt".After thinking about it, I decided that I am WAY older than dirt.
I am way older than dirt!
I remember the day electricity was turned on in our house. Until then I read in bed with the light of a kerosene lamp. We had a woodshed at the end of the house. The little house out back was actually attached to the woodshed so we did not have to go outside on a stormy winter night like
so many of our neighbors did. We had running water which many of our neighbors did not have. Before we had electricity there was a gasoline engine that pumped water from a well in the cellar annex into a huge tank. When the pressure got low my mother would call on one of the menfolks to start the engine. It vented the exhaust outside. When there was snow my friend and I would mound up snow over the end of the pipe and make a volcano. I remember one neighbor had a pump in the kitchen that they had to save water for (to prime the pump). Another had water from a spring that was piped downhill from the spring and ran constantly into a tub in the woodshed near the back door.
My dad visited all the neighbors to get contracts signed promising to pay so much a month for ten years to get the electric line run down our road. (People quickly used so much he contract was soon nullified.) Until we had electricity in the winter my oldest brother would go down to the Grange millpond and bring back large blocks of ice which were put in sawdust in the icehouse and would keep all summer to keep the milk in jugs cold until they were taken to the milk station (every day) and to make homemade ice cream now and then..
We were on a party line of fourteen. Some really hogged it and my mother would have to break in and ask for the line if she had an important call to make. One of our neighbors wrote a neighborhood column for the local paper. If you did not want your business in the paper, you better not mention it on the party line.
In the summer we dammed up a place in the brook and made a swimming pool. It was clear, cool water. My mother insisted we come out when our fingernails turned blue!
Before I actually started helping with the haying (driving the horse rake) I would go to the field when they hayed "up the road" at the Cummings field. The church on the other side of the road was always open in those days. We might go in but were very careful not to disturb anything.. There were wild cherries growing along the fences. My mother would not let us drink milk if she looked in our mouth and saw purple. So we took leaves and carefully wiped off any trace of the cherries before we went in for lunch.
Each fall my dad and brothers would put a sort of fence with boards a foot or so from the house. Then they would fill it in with dirt. I believe it was called "banking". It was supposed to help keep the house warm in the frigid winters. We had wood stoves. My dad and brothers would go up to the Parks Place (about two miles up in "the Lost Nation" on the mountainside) and cut trees, trim, and then haul the logs home behind a team of horses hitched to a dray. (A dray was a bobsled with poles behind it which dragged on the snow or ice. The bobsled had runners instead of wheels.) Then in the spring the logs would be cut into stove length pieces which were later split with an ax to get pieces of wood the right size for the stoves. One of my winter jobs was to fill the woodbox by bringing in wood from the woodshed.
I remember one Christmas there was a community Christmas tree and party in the grange hall in the Grange (a little hamlet which had a church, store, millpond and sawmill with maybe a dozen houses). My dad hooked two bobsleds together and layboards across and then we all put on our heaviest clothes and drove (horses) to the Grange and back. I can recall going across the Way Flat just before Holbrook hill on the way home. My dad was standing, wearing a bearskin coat, and we were all huddled together singing Christmas carols. The night was crisp and cool with the stars brightly shining. 'Twas indeed a night to remember.
I could tell a lot more!
I am way older than dirt!
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Not Just a Cat
(I wrote this several years ago. Tiffany adopted us about 24 years ago now.)
Nineteen years ago a black female cat took up residence in our woodpile. Looking out one day, I spotted a pure white, long-haired kitten. "I have got to have her!" I exclaimed. When she was old enough, we got her trapped in a piece of wide pipe that she played in and caught her. I named her Tiffany. She was quite wild. She soon learned to trust me but nobody else. We called her "the white flash" or "white lightning" because if some one else appeared she ran-fast. I had her neutered and had all her shots given by Dr. Skidmore. Over the years she has paid many visits to his clinic.
I already had another cat named Puddin'. It took them some time to accept one another but eventually they became very close. We would find them snuggled together in the same chair. When Puddin' died she was lonely for some time.
She learned to tolerate Roger, but no one else. When the grandchildren arrived, (she was born before any of them) she would watch them from a doorway, and if they moved in her direction, she moved faster.
Her first Christmas she watched as I assembled the Christmas tree. Then I put the tree skirt around the base. She almost immediately decided it was there for her and spent much time sleeping under the tree and every Christmas since she has claimed the tree skirt as her place. As presents have been put under the tree, a space has always been left for her. Sometimes it has seemed she believed she was the owner of this house and we are her "humans".
For a long time she was an indoor-outdoor cat. However, that ended one time when I was away for a week or so. The dogs scared her away from the house and she did not come back. Roger had me call her over the phone, but it did not work. They taped my calling her, but got no response. We gave up on her. About 4 o'clock in the morning after I returned home she came to the back door. Her hair was all matted and she was very thin. I took her to Dr. Skidmore's. They cleaned her up and fed her with a dropper. She seemed to agree with us that outside roaming was no longer for her.
After that she would be waiting at the door when I would come out of the bedroom in the morning. If she thought I was late, she would call me. (Not very loudly, she never had much of a voice.) If she did not see me when she awoke from a nap, she would travel the house, calling for me. Daughter Judy has remarked that Tiffany worried about me.
Gradually she began to accept the grandsons. They always showed her that she had nothing to fear from them, but it still took a long time. More recently she would stay in the livingroom when people strange to her were here. (Once we had had a visitor for a week or so who declared we did not have a cat! He never saw her even once.)
Her health began to fail this winter. I had medicine which seemed to help that I gave her every morning. She got to be very choosy with her food. Often she would eat a certain kind of canned cat food only to reject it when offered days later.
On Sunday she acted strangely and could not move around very well. Monday she seemed to slip into a coma. She would come to for a few moments and move her legs slowly only to slip away again. Several times Tuesday I thought she was gone.
This morning I realized her little heart was strong and she could go on like this for some time and slowly starve to death. Judy and I carried her up to Dr. Skidmore who said she had been having strokes. He very quietly gave her an injection and in a few moments she gave up her fight.
We brought her home, wrapped her up, put her in a box, and George (our farm employee) dug a deep hole by the rock in the front yard where she now lies without pain. The lilies that are around the rock will be hers now.
Nineteen years ago a black female cat took up residence in our woodpile. Looking out one day, I spotted a pure white, long-haired kitten. "I have got to have her!" I exclaimed. When she was old enough, we got her trapped in a piece of wide pipe that she played in and caught her. I named her Tiffany. She was quite wild. She soon learned to trust me but nobody else. We called her "the white flash" or "white lightning" because if some one else appeared she ran-fast. I had her neutered and had all her shots given by Dr. Skidmore. Over the years she has paid many visits to his clinic.
I already had another cat named Puddin'. It took them some time to accept one another but eventually they became very close. We would find them snuggled together in the same chair. When Puddin' died she was lonely for some time.
She learned to tolerate Roger, but no one else. When the grandchildren arrived, (she was born before any of them) she would watch them from a doorway, and if they moved in her direction, she moved faster.
Her first Christmas she watched as I assembled the Christmas tree. Then I put the tree skirt around the base. She almost immediately decided it was there for her and spent much time sleeping under the tree and every Christmas since she has claimed the tree skirt as her place. As presents have been put under the tree, a space has always been left for her. Sometimes it has seemed she believed she was the owner of this house and we are her "humans".
For a long time she was an indoor-outdoor cat. However, that ended one time when I was away for a week or so. The dogs scared her away from the house and she did not come back. Roger had me call her over the phone, but it did not work. They taped my calling her, but got no response. We gave up on her. About 4 o'clock in the morning after I returned home she came to the back door. Her hair was all matted and she was very thin. I took her to Dr. Skidmore's. They cleaned her up and fed her with a dropper. She seemed to agree with us that outside roaming was no longer for her.
After that she would be waiting at the door when I would come out of the bedroom in the morning. If she thought I was late, she would call me. (Not very loudly, she never had much of a voice.) If she did not see me when she awoke from a nap, she would travel the house, calling for me. Daughter Judy has remarked that Tiffany worried about me.
Gradually she began to accept the grandsons. They always showed her that she had nothing to fear from them, but it still took a long time. More recently she would stay in the livingroom when people strange to her were here. (Once we had had a visitor for a week or so who declared we did not have a cat! He never saw her even once.)
Her health began to fail this winter. I had medicine which seemed to help that I gave her every morning. She got to be very choosy with her food. Often she would eat a certain kind of canned cat food only to reject it when offered days later.
On Sunday she acted strangely and could not move around very well. Monday she seemed to slip into a coma. She would come to for a few moments and move her legs slowly only to slip away again. Several times Tuesday I thought she was gone.
This morning I realized her little heart was strong and she could go on like this for some time and slowly starve to death. Judy and I carried her up to Dr. Skidmore who said she had been having strokes. He very quietly gave her an injection and in a few moments she gave up her fight.
We brought her home, wrapped her up, put her in a box, and George (our farm employee) dug a deep hole by the rock in the front yard where she now lies without pain. The lilies that are around the rock will be hers now.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Dinner at MeMe's
They are here today, Sunday September 25. J.C. is here from Denton (junior at North Texas) and also Marshall, Lance, Kaitlyn, Kristina, Johnny and waiting on Judy.
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