NANA'S MEMORIES

By the time I finish this post, it will be 2012. I have spent a good part of this New Year's Eve reading posts from the blogs I follow. Although I do not always know where you live, I do love to read of your everyday goings-on. I find them all so interesting while at the same time all so different. So many of my favorite blogs seem to involve chickens. I guess it is a little late for us to begin raising chickens as we left the farm we had lived on for forty years for a place closer to town. But it would be nice to see the chickens scratching around outside. Aren't they supposed to be good for keeping down the tick population? But aren't they also a little silly? They might get loose and get hit by the trains that come roaring past the house. And too, I would  have to think of names for them all. I will just read about your chickens. I love to see all the photos of the gardens and canning you do. We did put in gardens at the old place. A few gardens were so large I th...

As I have decided to be kinder to myself in 2012, I am not making a resolution this year. Why set myself up for disappointment? It is pretty pointless anyway for me to resolve to diet and exercise when I know I will not do it for more than three days anyway.   Well, wasn't that pessimistic? Let me re-phrase. When I began to think of all the diets I have been on, this Johnny Cash song came to my mind. Maybe I have not been on as many diets as places Johnny Cash has been, but I have been on an awful LOT. Johnny Cash's "I've Been Everywhere" I have told you about Dr. Lane's Diet - otherwise known as the Looking For A Husband Diet. It was my most successful as I lost weight AND gained a husband. I did lose a little weight while hubby was in basic training but did not follow a particular plan. I ate a little of whatever I wanted but just did not eat a lot. Although I was not looking for a husband at the time, I was looking forward to a husband coming h...

Am I the only blogger out here that has had trouble finding time to write even a small blurb? As I have way too many memories crowding the current things I need to be remembering, I will be writing again soon. In the meantime, a little preview of my next post entitled "All My Past Diets." The following is a former post entitled "The Looking For A Husband Diet" As mentioned in previous posts, I broke my ankle the summer I turned thirteen and spent that summer with a cast on my right leg. I got out of doing chores until Mama caught me scuffling with David and then I was back to doing dishes. I did walk to town with a friend several weeks after initially learning to use crutches. I had to stop a couple of times walking back up Cherry Street hill in front of the high school. But most of that summer was spent sitting in front of a fan while watching television. Mama was working then so we had a babysitter that came to the house. (I hav...

Another great Christmas has past. Santa brought our 9 year old grandson a tablet. When his Papa told him he used a tablet in grade school called a Big Chief, Blake asked if it was a touchscreen. Another great Christmas morning with our two children and their family. I love those grandbabies.  Another great Christmas dinner at the in-laws. When I noticed this sweet vintage Pyrex casserole dish there, my mother in law said I could have it. Not a Christmas present per se but a nice gift nonetheless. And an equally great day doing nothing today but watching old movies with hubby. As there is a cold rain here out, I hope to stay inside and watch some of the old fifties movies our kids got us. I may even let hubby watch the old westerns while I nap. Life is good. Oh yeah, my same as sister cousin welcomed her first grandchild yesterday morning. Ella Gail - what a special gift.

Christmas Eve is tomorrow. I think I will have it all together by the time everyone arrives to have breakfast and open gifts on Christmas morning. I am so blessed to have our children live nearby. I have been remembering my childhood Christmases. Sometimes after we were bathed and dressed in our pajamas, Daddy and Mama would bundle us up to go see all the lights in town. Although Christmas displays were pretty modest in the fifties, I do remember Oklahoma Tire and Supply dressed their store windows in all the latest toys.  I could have sat there for hours looking at the dolls, doll houses, and carriages.  Of course, my brother was into the Tonka trucks. The red, blue and green lights across Spadra bridge seemed magical to me.  I love this picture of me and my brother. What do you think of that huge bow in my hair and my too short bangs. Is that the way bangs were supposed to be cut in the fifties? Isn't my little brother cute? He looks pretty s...

-continued from yesterday- Grandma and Grandpa took me and my two cousins to every fellowship meeting, camp meeting, and youth rally around. Once again, Uncle Jack teased we were looking for our "intendeds." Although there may have been some truth to that, neither of us married anyone we met there. Mid week services were devoted to the youth as well. My "only three words the whole trip to Oklahoma City" uncle was usually the best at the sword drill. That was the Bible quiz game where someone calls out a book and verse and the first to locate it in the Bible stands up to read it. I am ashamed to admit I would not be able to find the books of the Bible as quickly today. When did I become too busy to read a chapter from the Good Book daily? I remember Aunt Loda standing on those long steps leading up to the church yard and laughing about giving some boy a stick of Cloves gum she had powdered with alum and replaced in the wrapper. I wonder who it was and whether...

It is funny how everyday events become traditions. I do not remember baking Christmas cookies with my Mama or with my children either. Yet we have been baking sugar cookies with the grandchildren every Christmas for years now.  I think this is why Mama didn't want to bake with kids I feel like new family traditions evolve as the parent's ideas and practices become intertwined. Although I do not remember reading bedtime stories to my children, my son began reading books to his first born when she was just a baby. I know this because while I was taking the grandchildren to school one morning, I overheard her tell of something the teacher had said. I thought she was relating the story as the Charlie Brown teacher would when she finished with, "and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." When questioned she said, "That's what daddy says sometimes." He must get tired of reading. I remember daddy telling me bedtime stories from memory. I would ask to hear t...

Don't you just hate it when you have no intentions of mopping your floors on a Thursday night then you spill a whole bowl of freshly cooked pinto beans in the middle of the kitchen floor and then not only do you have to mop the floor you have to wash the heavy kitchen rug and while you are washing it you may as well wash the one in the foyer and then you notice bean juice splashed all over the refrigerator and freezer so you have to wipe it down too and while you have the cleaner out the dishwasher and range needs cleaning as well. But it is just as well I did go ahead and sweep and mop or I might not have noticed the two little "I promise you brown beans" that had somehow rolled way over into the small bathroom.

The weather is warm yet quite dreary in Arkansas today. I am home sick and as I opened the drapes, I noticed the pelicans out on the water for the first time this season. Although I may give in at some later date, I refuse to pay the price of a good camera. Therefore, you will just have to take my word that the pelicans have returned to my part of the river. I believe it is actually called Lake Dardanelle. Anyway, here are the pitiful pictures I have taken of them. Oops, no pelican here. This is what I like to think of as a wise old bird - I believe a crane. My sixty year old eyes can make it out better than this pitiful camera lens. Here's a couple of pelicans separate from the group. The main group stay huddled on an old log midway between the bank and Goose Island. I am very curious about this little group of birds. Where do they go during the summer? When did they start out on their journey to Arkansas? There are many more this year than there were last y...

I have a confession about my home grown tomatoes. They are home grown but are not vine ripened. I got maybe a total of ten tomatoes off my vines during the whole past summer but come cooler weather they started producing little green tomatoes. I wrapped those, along with the ones my brother in law gave me, individually in newspapers and have them setting in a window of the cool attic. Every few days I check to see which ones have ripened. I expect I will have a few for Christmas dinner.

I didn't have frozen biscuits so Blake helped me make scratch biscuits. It's hard to do with only one arm. He wanted one large pizza biscuit And two gingerbread ghost shaped ones Blake and Papa sorting the tomatoes Some did not survive the cold One perfect tomato Two perfect tomatoes - note the flour on his nose.  A bunch of perfect ones

I just have a minute for a quick word. I am getting behind on reading my blog list - duty calls elsewhere. I will be glad when I retire so I can read your blogs and write my posts all day. That is how retirement works, isn't it? My daughter in law came down yesterday to decorate a little for me. I am almost a minimalist so I don't have a lot of fluff in my home. I do like seeing what everyone else has done with their decorating - fluff and all. Maybe I just don't like taking it back down.  I need to insert a memory here after re-reading the first sentence. Shortly after Grandma's oldest daughter married, she moved far away to California. She raised all three of her children there before returning to Arkansas. She and Grandma exchanged long newsy letters routinely that often started - just a quick word. They usually ended up long words. Kids today could never survive with just letters coming through the mail two weeks apart. I love turquoise and aqua. N...

I promise you I am going to decorate for Christmas this year...and will probably start this weekend. I plan to post a few pictures too. I am way too sleepy and tired tonight though so I thought I would just pull out an old picture from early last spring. Yes, it is a little tiny green snake that somehow managed to worm his way up onto my kitchen range. Or maybe he dropped down from somewhere. I know I could have picked him up and hand carried him out but I was all alone and had to sweep him outside. He kept wiggling sideways and giving me the creeps. He still gives me the creeps and I haven't seen hide nor hair of him in months. I may take a blog vacation and come back next week with pictures of my Christmas tree. Oh, you all know better than that....I can't be quiet that long.

Check out this article in my 1953 Good Housekeeping magazine I found at the consignment store. Can you imagine?  Unfortunately, I can. My OKC grandmother wore this type of girdle. How did they walk in them? How did you get out of them? What kept it from creeping up your thighs? Oh, I see. It has garters you attached to your nylon stockings that I imagine held the girdle down while holding the stockings up.  Although I want no part of being trussed up like the Thanksgiving turkey, I expect I would eat a lot less if my stomach was all squashed in. In fact, I once heard someone say spandex is the cause of America's obesity crisis. Nursing scrubs are notorious for the capacity to "give" as well. One of my nurse friends said she knew she had to start changing her eating habits when her scrubs started getting tight. I, for one, am going to worry about all of that after Christmas. 

It is funny about memories, isn't it? It seems most of my childhood memories include aunts, uncles, and cousins. Although they say you don't recall events that happened before you were three years old, I could not have been much more than that when Uncle Jack cautioned me to be careful with the big-as-me hammer I was using to drive nails into the dirt yard of the house on Taylor Street. This was during the time Mama had to stir the vertigo causing gravy for Aunt Lizzy because she had all day long morning sickness while carrying Monica. Monnie is not that much younger than I am. I remember how my Great Aunt Maggie's Chihuahua Princess Kay was called PK for short. I remember being shooed out of Aunt Maggie's dark bedroom after Daddy told us not to ask for any more chocolate covered cherries. She said we could have as many as we wanted. She died shortly after our visit. I remember how Aunt Emma's snuff left thin brown streaks in the creases of her mouth. I remem...

Work is so interfering with my newest pastime - reading everyone's blogs. I just have to work tomorrow and then no more weekends until after the New Year. I did high-tail it to Clarksville today to check out some old magazines I had heard about at a consignment store. JACKPOT!!!!!! You should be able to enlarge the picture to see the cover of this 1964 issue of Good Housekeeping with celebrity cookbook recipes from Mrs. LBJ, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Tony Curtis, Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Peggy Lee, Deborah Kerr. I cannot wait to check them out. Look!!! January, 1953!!! So sweet. An early Christmas present to myself.

I went to Aunt Lizzy's house today. Her sister, and my Aunt Dorcas, passed away this morning. I will tell of that in a later post. Although the pretty redbirds that were perched on the old dying apple tree outside her kitchen window would not let me take theirs, I did take some neat pictures while there. The last remnants of fall and the ever present flag off the front porch of the house they have lived in nearly sixty years. A Better Homes and Garden magazine from the year they married. Note the price is only $.25 for this content laden book. She declined my $50.00 offer by saying, "If I was going to get rid of it, I would just give it to you." My cousin took this picture of a fallen leaf on Thanksgiving day. Doesn't it look like a floundering starfish? This picture of the old storm cellar is deserving of a story all its own. My two same-as-sisters cousins and I sat on this shelter many days watching cars go by on what was the main thorough...

I am blessed to have the quilt my hubby used as a child. I believe it is called a friendship quilt because it has the names of friends from the Knoxville community embroidered on each block. Although I recognize all the names, I did not know all of these friends. This the one my mother in law did. I need to get her to re-do the last part of her name. This is where my step mother's name should be. Do you remember me telling you my step mother and mother in law are sisters? They were always together and I don't know why Sue didn't quilt a block?