Grandma and LaRue Bake Cookies!

Grandma & LaRue bake cookies!

On Friday, June 27th, I helped LaRue bake Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Mmmmm! They were so delicious! LaRue is quite the little kitchen helper for just being 4 years old. I measured the ingredients and LaRue dumped them into the bowl. She and I mixed the cookie batter together and she and I took turns using the cookie scoop to drop cookies onto the cookie sheet. That cookie scoop was hard for her to squeeze with her little hands but she did it 'all by herself!' When we were all done she said, 'Let's clean up Grandma!' She 'wanted' to do the dishes! LaRue is very helpful. She does not like being messy! She likes her hands to stay clean. I think that's why she loves doing dishes! It keeps her hands clean! I enjoyed the time LaRue and I spent together this afternoon baking cookies!

Tillie loves ice cream!

A picture is worth a thousand words! As you can see from the picture Tillie loves ice cream!

We were eating Tillamook Udderly Chocolate ice cream. Mmmm, good! She would have a mountain of ice cream on her spoon and try to fit half of it in her mouth! She would pick up a fistful and put it in her mouth. I kept telling Lisa, "Oh my goodness, I would have an ice cream headache! My hand would be frozen. Look at her. It doesn't bother her in the least!" She ate a bowlful!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #16

Story #16 - The Swimming Pool – I nearly drowned – those darn boys!
Do you like to go swimming? Isn’t it the best fun!

My father built a swimming pool in our back yard. I was probably about 5 or 6 years old when it was built. Living in southwest New Mexico it got very hot in the summer. It was not uncommon for the temperature to hang around 100 degrees in July and August. It was a dry heat. If you were sweaty from working, you just stood still and the hot sun would bake you dry! There wasn’t any humidity in the air. The pool seemed huge to me at that age. When I was older I realized it wasn’t that big. My dad and brothers helped dig out the big hole. It was probably about 5 feet deep and 15 by 25 feet in diameter. He over-layed it all in concrete. Now that I think about it that must have cost a fortune back then! He built a one-foot high wall around the entire top edge of the pool to make it a little deeper and also we could sit on the sides. He built a three by three-foot pump area and the filter kept the water clean. He also had a sidewalk of concrete paved around the entire pool. Let me tell you in that hot sun it burned our bare feet. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time standing on that concrete! It sure was nice though when you wanted to dry off. We would lay our towels down on the hot concrete and we would be dry in no time!

We had so much fun playing in that pool! My dad had some old inner tubes from car tires. We pumped those up with air and then played on those in the pool. You could bend them and sit on them like ponies and we had a ball! We tried to pull each other off of them. One day my father brought home an airplane tire tube. At 6 years old that seemed HUGE! Six kids could sit on that tube. We had so much fun with that. Two of us would stand up on the tube and keep balanced and someone else would push us across the pool. We would stand on the wall edge of the pool and dive through that tube. What fun! Well my brothers were all sitting on the tube with their legs dangling through the middle of it, the hole, and I was swimming under the water. We would swim back and forth under the water across the pool. We would dive for things. We kept our eyes open. That wasn’t good because they would get red from the chlorine in the pool. Well I was swimming under the water and had to come up for air. When I tried to come up my head bumped into the bottom on that huge tube. Then I would move and try to come up again. I bumped my head again on the tube. I was running out of air! I made it over to where the ladder was and came up. I gulped in enough air to gasp for breath. Then I screamed at the top of my lungs at my brothers. “You’re trying to kill me! You want to drown me!” They denied that! What was I talking about! They didn’t see me! I ran into the house and told my mom what they did. She came out to investigate. My brothers honestly told her that they did not know I was under there and did not see me. Well I was sure they were trying to drown me! She told us all to be more careful and LOOK where they were going. I can look back on that now and realize they were just having fun and not paying attention and probably didn’t feel that little bump under the airplane tire tube. It was big! They were kicking their legs to get the tube to move across the water. Well after that happened I was a lot more careful when I was under water!

On a side note—we would get brown as Indians from swimming in the summer. My dad said the only white patch we had was where our swimsuits covered! Our hair would bleach out white blonde from the sun. We must have looked funny with our very blue eyes, blonde white hair and very brown skin! The town where we lived had a population that was 60% Mexican, 40% Caucasian.

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #15

Story #15 Chores – The paper bag and the tumbleweed

I mentioned in story #14 about having to do chores. I hated chores! My brothers were not too thrilled about them either. I’m sure you’ve heard your parents tell you that chores teach you responsibility. I heard that too. I also told that to my kids. It does teach you responsibility. It also teaches you about teamwork and working together.

My older brothers had to mow the grass and all of us had to ‘pull weeds’. Yuck! My mom would pass out a paper bag and we had to fill that paper bag with weeds. Then she would look to see what kind of a job we did and if we did a good job, ‘we were done!’ If we didn’t do a good job, we worked longer and she saw to it that we did a better job! We had this one weed called ‘goat heads’ and they were thorny little buggers. They spread out across the ground and then they would bloom pretty little yellow flowers and those flowers turned into a little flattened thorns. They hurt like the dickens if you stepped bare foot onto them. If they were dried thorns, they stuck into your feet and you would have to pull them out. Ouch! It was dry where we lived, and when it rained, the weeds grew like mad! These were mostly the weeds we had to pull one particular day.

In the summer, we usually started out early in the mornings around 8:00a.m. to do our chores because it got too hot by 11:00a.m. and then you pretty much stayed in the shade, if you could find some, or stayed indoors. My twin brother Gayle got done awfully fast and I was still working on filling my paper bag. Our bags would hold about one gallon of weeds. He didn’t like pulling weeds any better than I did. I couldn’t imagine how he could get done so fast. He sat in the cool shade while I worked. My mom came out to check on us and asked Gayle why he was sitting there not working while the rest of us were. He told her that he finished! She told him to bring his bag to her and let her see. Sure enough there were weeds and it felt a little heavy. So she poured out the bag and what do you suppose she found? A tumbleweed with a few rocks on the bottom of the bag and a few weeds on the top and the tumbleweed was in the middle. How very clever! Only mom didn’t think that was very clever at all. She made him pick ‘two bags’ of weeds for being dishonest and lying to her! Gayle could be sly and sneaky only this time it got him in trouble! I didn’t share his same talent. It never occurred to me that you could cheat when doing chores! Gayle wasn’t too happy about getting into trouble and picking twice the amount and he didn’t get done as quick this time. I was just glad I didn’t do that and I hurried and got my bag filled and sat in the shade and watched him!

Why I love 'Blogging!'

Blogging

I find that term interesting. Why is it called 'Blogging???'

I love it! A month ago in Relief Society, the first Sunday-when it's the presidency message, we were talking about how to keep in touch. I raised my hand and told them about how my daughters and I have 'blog' pages and how my oldest daughter walked me through the steps to get started over the phone. There were a few 'ahhs' and a few 'what's that?' They know, having been their former RS Pres. a few years back, that I am pro computer and all about the internet!I had made the VT routes all via internet with the exception of a very few who did not have a computer or internet. One 'click' and your route has been reported! They are on their 3rd RS Pres since my departure and they are still using the internet VT reporting! That's progress!

Now that I have digressed a bit, I do love the internet for keeping in touch! It's so great. I love clicking on the blogs and catching up. I click on my grand kids' pictures and via a 'click' transport them to their family My Picture files! :o) I love going to Drop Shots and seeing the pictures and videos they post. I love their scrapbooking pages as well! Being a long distance grandmother is not fun I can tell you. Keeping them a 'click' away and seeing them and their families makes my heart swell! I am always amazed how fast they are growing up and how tall they are getting. Not too far and they'll start being teenagers, wonderful young people! :o)

Our kids gave dad and I a 'Digital Picture Frame' for a Mothers/Fathers Day gift. We love it! Soon I am going to have to add more pictures to it as I've been collecting more photos.

I'm not much into My Space or Face book. To me, blog does the same thing. I'm a grandma, and sometimes I learn slow and have to have my daughters grin and bear a few repetitious steps on computer things, but God bless them! I love 'learning!' It keeps your mind from getting mushy!

Thanks to my wonderful children who help me keep learning!

Love,
Mom :o)

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #14

Story #14 - Duck Pond Soup

I wonder what picture comes to your mind when you think of ‘Duck Pond Soup’? Do you think of ducks on a pond or do you think of ducks sitting in your bowl of soup?

I was probably about 12 or 13 years old. We had some friends by that last name of Murray. They had 6 or 7 kids and were Catholic. The 2nd to the oldest in their family was named Michael. He was one year older than my twin brother and I. I had a crush (it means I liked him) on him. He liked me too! We had chores to do everyday during the summer and on weekends when school was in session. Michael would come over sometimes in the summer and help my brother and I get our chores done, mostly for my sake, so we could all play and Michael could spend more time with me.

They lived in a small apartment in town and then later they moved out to a big farmhouse west of town out by the old cotton gin. It was a much bigger house and accommodated the size of their family a lot better. That was such fun to play at their house, both inside the house and outside in the yard. My twin brother and I rode our bikes across town, over the railroad tracks and out to their house. It was probably a three-mile ride to their house from our house. If it happened to be lunchtime when we played, she would invite my brother and I to eat with them. My favorite was her ‘Duck Pond Soup.’ We never had anything like that at our house. It was mashed potatoes with a scoop out of the middle to make room for the pond. Then she would pour alphabet soup or vegetable soup into the scooped out pond. It would fill with soup. Billie, the mom’s name, said that she just invented the name. It made it fun for her kids.
It tasted wonderful! It was so good! We’d tell our mother about it and she would be very kind and say, “They have a lot of kids so this is probably a good way to stretch their food budget.” Well, at my age, the last thing I thought of was ‘budgets’ and what did that all mean??? I just knew it tasted good and wanted her to make it. She never did.

My mom did make us another dish that I loved. I guess you could say this was a poor man’s dish too. She would cook cracked wheat and make cooked cereal. I was not especially fond of it. However, she would take the left over cooked cereal and pour it into a bread loaf pan. Then she put it in the refrigerator. The next morning she would slice it into one-inch thick slices and fry it in a pan and then pour warmed Log Cabin Syrup over it. Mmmm, it was sooo good! I loved it fixed that way!

Well moving forward to adult years---Julie and Lisa had their wisdom teeth taken out together on the same day one half hour apart from each other. Julie was 18 and Lisa was 16. It’s not fun having your wisdom teeth pulled. Your jaw gets swollen and it’s hard to eat anything. Well I fixed them ‘Duck Pond Soup!’ I used alphabet soup. They thought that tasted sooo good. I made a lot for them.

In February of this year (2008) we lost power and we had no electricity for almost 5 days! That meant we had no heat. Fortunately we had a gas stove. You can strike a match and turn the burner on and it will light. So I was able to cook things on the stovetop. I made ‘Duck Pond Soup’ and I think it was the first time dad (Grandpa Neil) ever ate it. He liked it! I’ve made it several times since. It’s a really easy meal to fix for Kirsten too and she loves it!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl- #13

Story #13 - My favorite book - A Sort of a Sage by Bill Mauldin

I read this book when I was about 13 years old and I loved it! My father read it and would tell us snippets of the story here and there. He had got the book and we had it for years. Later when I was married and moved up to Oregon, I checked it out of a library and read it again. I laughed as much that time as I did when I read it at age 13. Bill Mauldin lived near Cloudcroft, New Mexico, which was about half an hour from where we lived. He grew up there. He served in World War II in the Army. He later became a cartoonist and his cartoons were syndicated in the newspapers. Some of his cartoons were war characters and other times they were political figures. His cartoons were always funny. He also wrote a book called ‘Up Front’ and ‘Back Home’ (printed before ‘A Sort of A Saga’) that were about his war stories and how life was when he returned home. I enjoyed ‘A Sort of A Saga’ the berst of all!

His book ‘A Sort of A Saga’ was so funny! He told stories about when he grew up. I guess the reason I liked it so well was because I knew what he was talking about as we lived kind of in the same area. One of his stories I remember was---A neighbor that lived down the road from Bill had an old 2-door sedan probably 1929 or 30’s model. We’ll get back to this guy in a minute---Bill’s friend caught a skunk and de-sacked it and put the skunk musk in a bottle. The problem was that it stunk so badly! They buried it in Bill’s backyard. They wondered what they should do with it. They wrote a letter to Sears and Roebuck Co. and said that they had ‘skunk musk’ and would they be interested in purchasing it for their perfume. They heard that musk helps perfume cling better. Musk was supposed to be valuable. They waited two weeks and did not hear a word from either Sears or Wards and gave up on the idea and kept the musk ‘buried!’ So much for striking it rich selling skunk musk! Ha! Ha! I thought that was so funny! Well, they didn’t know what to do with it.

Now-- Back to the neighbor with his car. About 3 times a week in the evenings Bill’s folks had friends over at their house and they played bridge. Bill and his brother Sid had to go to bed while the adults played bridge and Bill and his brother didn’t like that too much. This guy with the car had a big voice and was rather loud and obnoxious. Bill and his brother Sid didn’t particularly like this guy; perhaps it was just because he was loud and obnoxious. The guy didn’t exactly talk in a low voice, it boomed! One particular night while in bed the ‘voice’ was loud and Bill’s dad told him that the kids were sleeping and try to keep the noise down. The guy with the ‘big voice’ said that if kids worked hard all day that they would be so tired that they would probably be sleeping already. Well Bill and his brother Sid heard that and didn’t like it. So they slipped out of bed and snuck outside to the guy’s car. Bill wanted to smear the skunk musk all over those new leather car seats. His brother Sid had a much better idea. He put some down the carburetor. They snuck back to bed. Well the next time the guy drove he had to roll down his windows. He thought he hit a skunk and checked his whole car over top to bottom and end-to-end but could not find the skunk. So all winter long he had to drive his car with the windows down because he couldn’t stand the skunk smell. I thought that was so funny!

After writing this story, I went to Amazon.com and found there were still copies available. So for $5.95 plus $3.99 shipping-a total of $9.94, I ordered it. It came in the mail and I read it in 2 days! If any of my children or grandchildren is interested in reading it they can borrow it from me. It sure is entertaining reading!

Book-'A Sort of A Saga'- entertaining reading!

I just finished reading this book, 'A Sort of A Saga' by Bill Mauldin. It's 301 pages and has lots of cartoon pictures that he himself drew for this book relating to his stories that he tells. It was printed in 1949 for $3.50. I just bought it on Amazon and I love it! I bought it, hardback, for $5.95 plus shipping. It's entertaining to read! I laughed all the way through it! Just ask your dad. I had to make several, ummm, potty stops, and enjoyed the book immensely!

I grew up in the southwest in southern New Mexico. The book takes place not far from where we lived. It also has a few chapters when they lived in the Phoenix, Arizona area. I highly recommend this book for reading. If you can't get it at your local library I would be happy to loan it to you. My dad read the book and I read it when he was finished. I was 13 at the time. I read it again around age 30 and now I've read it a third time. I never tire of the humor it offers!I read it in two days. I do have to say, it does have a few swear words in it, but nothing horribly vulgar. I think J. Golden Kimball would have loved Bill Mauldin's dad!

Wen Grandma Was A Little Girl - #12

Story #12 - The rapids – rain, storms and flashfloods!

About 5 miles out of town where we lived was a canyon area that had a stream running through it and some low waterfalls. In the summer it would get around 100 degrees and it got hot! A lot of people, like us, would go to the falls to swim, cool off and have fun. We would pack a picnic lunch and spend several hours there. It was the most fun! We really looked forward to going there. Usually you would see some of your friends with their families up there.

The mountains were probably about 20 miles away. When there were clouds rolling in and once in awhile you could hear thunder and feel the breeze down in the valley where we lived, you could smell the rain on the wind. Usually that meant the mountains got the rain and we got the dust! But that first breeze with the rain smell in the air was so wonderful! When you have arroyos (smaller and lower than a canyon) and canyons, you have to be careful. It may be dry down in the valley and the gulches and arroyos and small canyons, but not for long when it rained in the mountains. So you usually went to those when the mountains didn’t have rain.

One afternoon we were at the falls and enjoying ourselves. I was probably about 12 years old. We noticed that clouds had formed in the mountains so my folks were anxious that we all get out of the water and get our stuff and head out of there. I was the last one to cross over the water. I was still on the wrong side where the falls were, away from my family. We heard this ‘roaring’ sound thundering down the canyon. My parents yelled, ‘Diana get across now!’ Just as I was hiking up the side and out there came the muddy water and it crashed down! I was almost caught in a ‘flashflood’ of muddy water and sticks and debris.

When a flashflood came it took everything in its path with it. The rains would come down and the rivers would fill and come rushing down the mountainside down to the valley below. That scared me! I could have got caught in it and that would have been the end of me! I would have drowned and been carried a few miles down the creek to the gulch below. We looked up the stream and we saw muddy water and debris rushing by. We got in the car quick and made a run for it to the road. Where the road was you went a few miles and then had to cross through a gulch and up out onto the road again. By the time we got to the gulch it had less than a foot of water. So we hurried across. I remember saying a prayer to myself being so ‘thankful’ we all made it out of there.

One time in the paper we read about a car carried downstream and after one of the big rains came and whoever was in that car was driving through the gulch and they made it out of the car but the car went on down the creek bed.

About 15 miles above our town the highway had big ‘dips’ in it. It was above a town called Carrizozo. They had signs along the side of the road just before you got to the dips. They would say, ‘Dip’ and some would say ‘Dangerous -watch for flood waters.’ It was not a joke. When the rains came and it flowed down into the valley and washed across those ‘dips’, you stayed out of there. Those dips were 6-feet deep and would fill with water and a car wouldn’t make it through.

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #11

Story #11 - My ride down the water tough – it almost killed me!

We would go up to Cloudcroft in the mountains and not too far off the highway was a public waterspout. It was mountain water that was runoff and they had a small 3x3-foot rock pillar about 4 feet tall with a pipe spout half way down the front side where you could collect the water. It went down onto a trough and behind the pillar back down the mountainside. I guess you could say it was like a natural spring. The water was ‘soft’ as they would say and tasted wonderful and it was always mountain cool! It felt good on hot summer days to go up there and then feel the cool water. The water we had at home and in the town was mineral tasting and hard. My dad used to tease and say, ‘Watch out if you throw that water at someone, it will knock you down!’ In other words it was ‘hard water’ and tasted a little bitter. As a kid, personally I thought it tasted great! Nobody in our household thought so! My mother had about eight 5-gallon water jugs and about a dozen one-gallon jugs. We would fill them up and haul them all home. We had a water cooler in our kitchen that my dad and sometimes my brothers would lift the 5-gallon water jugs onto.

When we were up in the mountains filling the jugs my mother would warn us, especially my twin brother and I, NOT to climb into the trough behind the pillar. It was dangerous and it was not to be touched! I was about 5 or 6 years old and well, one day my curiosity got the best of me and I just HAD to go for a ride down that trough. I barely got on it and hadn’t gone 3 feet when I was ‘snatched’ up off of there and scolded for doing so! Then I was shown what would have happened to me had I not been snatched up. It scared my parents to death! I can’t remember who snatched me, whether it was my mom or my dad. I kind of think it was my dad. Having two little twins made their work twice as hard! We could think of a lot to get into, and that would be trouble. Well they showed me where the trough went and then I was scared! You see the trough was only a few feet long and went over the side. What you couldn’t see was that there was barbed wire stretched across the trough as it got very steep and went over the side and fell far below onto rocks. There was about a foot gap under the stretched barbed wire. Perhaps a person could slip through, but hopefully the barbed wire would save them first. That was a long way down! I never went near that trough again. In fact, it scared me so badly that I was afraid if I went behind the pillar I might slip onto the trough and get massacred by the barbed wire. From then on I always stayed in front where the water came out!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl-#10

Story #10 - Hide and Seek on Starry Nights

I grew up in a little town called Tularosa in southern New Mexico. Tularosa means City of Roses. The population of that town was just under 4,000! It was not too far a drive to go into the foothills or the mountains. The mountains got the rain and we got the ‘dust!’ We would joke and say we got a 12-in rain today! The drops were 12-inches apart! Ha! Ha! Ha! But at night when you looked up at the stars they were so beautiful. It was like you could reach up and pick them out of the sky! My bothers and I would lie down on the grass and look up at the sky. It was very common to see shooting stars. The Milky Way was so bright and so beautiful! The sunsets were just as gorgeous. The sun would make the sky turn the wispy clouds orange!

One of our favorite past times at night was to play ‘Hide and Seek.’ We had a low wall and trees and shrubs to hide behind. I always hated being ‘it’ because I had such a hard time finding my brothers and any friends we had over. We had a neat porch with pillars. Usually the porch post was ‘home base.’ I hated to wander too far from the porch because they could outrun me and usually tag ‘home.’ Then I would be stuck being ‘it’ all over again. But the times I wasn’t ‘it’ I had fun hiding and not being found and making it to ‘home’. Another game we like to play was Red Rover. We played a lot of games to entertain ourselves.

A new pair of shoes???

Interesting new boot wouldn't you say?

Actually if my accident were videotaped it would probably make in America's Funnies Videos or whatever the name of that show is called. It was rather hilarious, painful but hilarious! Yesterday, June 14-Flag Day, I was working outside quite a bit of the day. I pressure washed the deck and it looks brand new! With all the rain we have been having sooner or later we have to empty what water gets into the jacuzzi. It has been empty since last November. There was about five gallons of water in the bottom so I was going to empty it out. I have pressure washed the inside of the cover and the inside of the jacuzzi. I had a 3 gallon bucket in my right hand and was just stepping inside the jacuzzi. I had my left foot on the top step and was leaning over to put my bucket down inside when all of the sudden my foot slipped and I was going headfirst down into the jacuzzi!

It happened so fast! I've cleaned that jacuzzi so many times and have never fallen or slipped until yesterday! Well they say that things comes in threes. I have now had three falls and hope that's it! I keep my balance very well. After the past month, now I'm not so sure! I was coming downstairs a month ago and my mind was a thousand miles away thinking of all I had to do that day and I completely missed the last step and was 'launched onto the floor! Splat!' No harm no injury! A week later I'm out on the deck outside and on my way off the steps to do a chore and I missed the last step! Ouch! That hurt! I landed on the top of my left foot and now have a quarter sized scar from the burn I got. It was like getting a carpet burn only from the step on the deck. Hmm. There seems to be a pattern here. My mind is in the stratosphere instead of 'on the ground!' Actually I came down from space 'onto' the ground! Then yesterday I was being careful and was taken by surprise when I went 'head first' down into the jacuzzi! I have to tell you that hurt! There's no water to break your fall. It's surprising how fast your mind clicks! I shot out my arms to break my fall. It's a wonder that I didn't crash on top of the bucket that was now at the bottom of the jacuzzi as well! My arms grabbed onto the sides of the seats where you sit in the jacuzzi. They smacked down hard. I vaguely remember my right foot smacking the top edge of the jacuzzi. See, it would have make a great funny video! My right forearm really hurt. Well I stood up to make sure all my limbs worked. Aside from them smarting quite a bit, everything worked! So it took me 10 minutes to clean out the jacuzzi.

When I got up to get out I realized how bad my right foot hurt. Then I looked down and saw this huge goose egg on the top of my foot above the ankle. I went in and showered and then had dad take me to Urgent Care. I was pretty sure I didn't break my foot but I wanted to be sure there was no fracture. They x-rayed it and I had a slight sprain and a badly bruised bone, a goose on the bone! I have to be on crutches for 4 days and then I should be okay.

Talk about feeling like a clutz!

When Grandma What A Little Girl #9

Story #9 - The Hoover Vacuum Cleaner business and naughty little twins! Oh My!
Have you ever put on a skit for your family or just for yourself or your brothers and sisters or friends?

My brother Douglas and his friend Larry Cunningham were buddies. Their family lived about 3 blocks away from us. A few years later their family bought one of the houses my dad built that was behind us.

We had a swimming pool that my dad built but after a few years we lost interest in swimming in it and it was left empty, no water in it. So my brother Douglas and his friend Larry decided to have a skit and create their own play business. They were probably about 12 or 13 years old. So that meant I was probably about 9 years old. They built a set and strung a rope across the middle of the pool with an old blanket thrown across to make an office space. They had little desk made out of boxes. They were ‘Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Salesman.’ They had my mom’s old Hoover vacuum and they made an office and it was pretty cool.

Well, they didn’t like my twin brother and I hanging around there. We ‘weren’t allowed’ in there without permission. We did not like that rule very well. We felt ‘left out!’ One morning my brother Gayle and I went up the street to where Larry and his family lived. Larry had a younger brother Lewis that was our age and two younger sisters, Linda and Pam. We knocked on the door and nobody answered. The door wasn’t locked. (Growing up when I was young, people did not lock their doors. We did not have problems with people breaking in and stealing from you. You felt pretty safe. It’s not like today were you have to lock you doors because people will break in.) Well, we went in and called out to see if anybody was home but no one answered. We should have turned right around and went home! We should have never even gone IN their house in the first place! I got the bright idea to ‘look around.’ I was curious! Larry’s dad Leroy smoked cigarettes. He smoked a lot. I looked into a kitchen cupboard and found some small packs of matches. I took some. We should not have; it was wrong! It was stealing! We took them without asking. We knew better. We left their house and as we went out the front door I said something like, ‘goodbye and we’ll see ya later.’ I said that in case any neighbors were looking. (What a pair of naughty twins we were!) My brother and I went home. Then we thought, 'We’re going to be in trouble because we know we’re not supposed to play with matches and mom will wonder where we got them.’ So we had to get rid of the evidence! So we went to the pool where Douglas and Larry built the set for their vacuum cleaner office. We climbed down into the pool. Like ‘ naughty little twins’ we lit the matches and burned little holes in the curtain they had and in their cardboard props. Then we threw the match stubs down and left.

---Talk about being dumb!
We burned holes in things and then threw the matches down! (Right now as your Grandma is writing this I am laughing myself silly at how dumb we were! Not to mention what little demons we were!)

You can guess what happened next!
Gayle and I were in the house playing and minding our own business and my brother Douglas stormed into the house and told my mom what happened to his set he built in the pool and how it had to be the ‘twins’ that did it! My mom went out to ‘inspect the ruins.’ I can remember thinking my twin brother and I should hide, but we weren’t quick enough. My mom charged back into the house and called both of us out and marched us straight to the pool! ‘Guilt’ was written all over our faces! The first thing she asked was if we did the damage! We nodded our heads and said, ‘yes.’ We looked pretty scared. We knew we were in deep trouble! Then she asked, ‘Where did you get those matches?’ We told her about going to Larry’s house and taking them out of the cupboard. Then she made us tell Larry’s mom what we did. That was awful! I don’t know how my twin brother Gayle felt, but I can tell you I felt like the biggest criminal in the world and I would go straight to jail for what I did! I vaguely remember that Dolores, Larry’s mom, wasn’t too upset and that we were just kids. That is NOT how my mom felt however. We had to clean up the mess. Well, first we had to apologize to Douglas and Larry for what we did, then we cleaned up the mess and we got spanked and we were grounded! We never did anything like ever again!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #8

Story #8 - The Tree House and I nearly lost my finger!
Have you ever played in a tree house?

We didn’t have any huge trees on our property where I grew up. So, my dad decided to build a “Crows’ Nest.” You might wonder just exactly what a Crows’ Nest is. It’s a tree house built on top of a telephone pole. The term Crows Next comes from a ship where there is a lookout on the main mast and the sailors could look out and see across the water and look out for other ships or find land on the horizon.

My dad got a telephone pole and dug a hole and set it in concrete. It was very stable. I can’t remember exactly how tall the pole was. When you are 7 or 8 years old it probably looked 15 feet tall! It probably was only about 10 feet tall. My dad built a tree house. It had four walls and I think it had two open windows. The windows were just famed in and left open. The tree house was probably about 5-feet square and 5-feet tall. He built the floor first and then the walls and roof. He cut a trap door in the floor so we could go in and out of it. It had a rope we had to climb up into it. I remember my two older brothers Geoffrey and Douglas could climb that rope pretty quick. I think my twin brother Gayle did too. I had a little harder time climbing in and out. My dad put a few pole rungs in the pole so I could climb part way. I remember it being so much fun to be up in the Crows Nest! We could see everywhere! It was so cool! The rope was about 1-inch thick. We had a knot tied at the bottom and would put a piece of 2-inch pipe that was about 18-inches long through the knothole. It was about 3 feet above the ground. We would swing and it was fun!

One day I was swinging on the pipe swing. My mom called us in for dinner. My mom did not like us being late for dinner. When my dad came home he expected dinner on the table at 5:00p.m. So I decided I would hang upside and drop from the pipe onto the ground and that’s what I did. What I didn’t count on was the pipe slipping 'out of the rope knot' and falling to the ground. I remember vividly letting go of the rope and hanging from my knees upside down and letting my hands fall to the ground and then my feet. “OUCH!” I remember my hands were on the ground and the next second the pipe crashed down on top of my finger. It was my ring finger on my left hand, the one where you wear a wedding band. I thought my finger was cut off! My finger was bleeding. The bone was showing and I screamed and cried and ran into the house. The cut was just above the middle knuckle on my finger. My mom looked at it and cleaned it up and rushed me down to the clinic. I had not cut off my finger. But when you think about it, there is only a little bit of skin covering your fingers so there is not much protection covering the bone in your fingers.

I was pretty lucky my finger wasn’t broken or cut off. The cut was about 1-inch long. I remember getting a shot to numb my finger and feeling the vibration of the needle going in and out sewing the cut closed. I didn’t watch the doc sew it up. He put a bandage on it and we went home. I remember it throbbed when the numbness wore off. I had to wear my finger bandaged for a while. It didn’t keep me from playing though! I still have the scar today and I do remember how it got it!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl-Story #7

Story #7 - Collecting Coke Bottles for penny candy
We did not get an allowance when I was a little girl growing up. My father worked hard and mom made everything. My brothers and I would collect coke bottles and turn them into the store. I am trying to remember how much we got per bottle. I think it was 2 cents. It did not just have to be coke bottles it could be any soda pop bottle. The coke bottles were more plentiful. We would look along side the road or in the ditches for the bottles. People were careless and threw trash out of their cars onto the ground or roadside. There was a store called Fields Grocery about half a mile down the road from where we lived. We would walk down to the store and turn in the coke bottles. We could get the money or get candy in exchange. Well since we rarely ever got store bought candy, I always took the candy! Back then candy was only one cent or two cents. A candy bar was 5 cents. A coke cost 10 cents. A loaf of bread was 25 cents and a gallon of milk was 50 cents. If I turned in three coke bottles, that was worth six cents. That bought a lot of candy!

I remember that they sold two cinnamon hot sticks for 5 cents. They were cinnamon lollipops were red, square shaped and on a stick. They were hot as the cinnamon kind of burned like Red Hots. Red Hots were candies they sold too that came in a box and they cost 5 cents. They were cinnamon flavored and red in color and shaped like red beads or dots. It was a fun daring other kids to keep their cinnamon lollipop in their mouth as long as they could without taking it out. I could never leave it in my mouth for more than one minute. My eyes would water, my tongue burned and I had to breathe!

Some of my favorite candy was wax lips, teeth or the mustache; they came out during Halloween. Another wax candy was little soda pop bottles that were about 2-inches tall and less than ½ an inch wide. They had flavored liquid inside. They were 5 cents for a little six-pack in a soda carton. They were cute and fun to eat and drink. The wax was edible but we mostly chewed it and then spit it out when we were tired of chewing it. It was like chewing gum. I also liked the ‘dots’. They were dots of candy on paper. The paper was 1 -1/2-inches wide and 4 inches long. They had one flavor on each sheet. There would be about 5 dots across the paper and about 10 to 12 rows long. The orange dots were orange flavored and pink was cherry flavored. I used to pretend they were pills. I would play doctor and the dots were pills you could take. They also had two for 1 cent candy. I often got that kind because I got more candy! Zero was one of my favorite candy bars. They also had little penny tootsie rolls and other penny candy. A large Tootsie Roll was five cents.

My dad liked Almond Joy and Mounds candy bars. One day he brought an Almond Joy candy bar home for me. I tasted it and ‘yuck’ I spit it out! I did not like the taste of coconut! He laughed! I don’t know how old I was before I finally liked the taste of coconut. But now, I love eating Almond Joys and Mounds candy bars! I would have to say that today my favorite candy bar is either 5th Avenue or a Butterfinger. They taste a lot alike. Yummy!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl-cont'd

Story #6 - Swinging from the Pear Trees just like Tarzan
My father, your great grandfather Douglas Bates, worked as a Civil Engineer at Holloman Air Force Base. When he and my mother and the two little boys Geoffrey and Douglas Jr. moved west, he found employment at the Air Base. ( When he was a young married man and they lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania he worked in carpentry and was very good at it. My dad always enjoyed working with his hands and was very good.) When he had time when he came home from work out at the base, he helped a friend of his work on his house that was about half a mile up the road from where we lived. Then my dad decided he wanted to build some houses and make extra money to support his family. For a couple of years, every day after he got home from his full time job on the base he built 3 houses on the acreage we owned behind our house. We owned 3 acres and only lived on ¾ of an acre.

In the back of the acreage off on the west side, we had about six pear trees growing. My brothers and I had a lot of fun playing in those pear trees. The trees were only about 8 feet tall. The six trees were planted somewhat close together. Their branches are not too thick. Pear trees are somewhat flimsy, but when you’re only about 7 years old, the branches hold up pretty good. I was quite a tomboy when I was young. I had two older brothers and a twin brother and no sisters. Now you can see why I was not a prissy little girl. I wanted to be a boy like my brothers and often acted like a boy. How unladylike! I was pretty good at climbing trees. By the way, my mom, your grandmother, told me that she was also a tomboy when she was a girl, up until she turned 14. I was a tomboy until I turned 13.

I kept getting braver and braver trying to swing from one branch to another. I had seen the movie ‘Tarzan’ on television (it was in black and white, color TV. had not come around yet). In my mind I thought I could swing just as good as Tarzan could. I would reach out as far as I could and grab a branch in the neighboring tree. That was way fun! Well, one day I was just a little over confident and did not watch my step as good as I should have. I missed a step on one branch while reaching over my head for another branch and fell out of the tree! I had been about 6 feet up in the tree and now I was on my back on the ground. I had the wind knocked out of me! The one remaining hand that was holding onto a branch suddenly was ripped loose when my foot stepped off the branch that I was standing on. I got scrapped up on my arms and legs. I was wearing shorts and that didn’t offer any protection to my bare legs. Nobody was around to help me. I got up off the ground and cried all the way home. It was a wonder I did not get any of my teeth knocked out or break my arm or leg or neck!

The cure we got in those days for cuts and abrasions was something called ‘Methiolate.’ OUCH! That stuff burned and stung like no other! My brothers and I hated having that painted on as it almost hurt worse than our injury! They also had a product called ‘Mercurochrome.’ That was so much better as it did not burn. But, my mom said if it didn’t sting it probably didn’t work as good. Oh brother! We all cried many times getting that stuff on! As far as climbing the trees…that little accident falling out didn’t stop me. I kept right on climbing trees and now and then got scrapes, but oh what fun I had!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl-cont'd

Opinion Poll-
Everyone seemed to want bi-weekly posts and so that's what I'll do. In a way that is good I guess as I have not figured out yet, or explored to be more accurate, about a link to 'click on.'
I took off My Favorite Things as I didn't post the whole story, sorry. The 'entire' story is now on! :o)



Story #5 - My favorite things
Do you have a most favorite toy or game you like better than anything else?

When I was little my two most favorite toys were a panda, and a teddy bear. My first stuffed animal was a panda bear. I also liked playing with tea sets. I thought it was fun to have my very own little dishes. I had fun playing with them. By far though, my panda and teddy were my most favorite ever things that I had!

Back to my panda. I named him ‘Snookie.’ I don’t know how I came up with that name, but it just seemed to ‘fit’. My panda was about 10-inches tall and was sewn into a sitting position. It did not stand tall. I ‘dearly loved’ that panda. I’m not sure what happened to it. I do remember though how much I loved that panda bear. When I was 10-years old I got a big tan teddy bear for Christmas! I named him ‘Cookie.’ The name just seemed to ‘fit’ him perfectly.

I have to back up this story to one year earlier. My mother loved to sew and her mom (your great, great grandmother Jane Galbraith Short) was a professional seamstress. She helped to earn a living by sewing for people. My mother also liked to sew. She also ‘loved’ dolls. My mom said that when she was a young girl she loved dolls and would line them all up on her bed and pretend and play ‘school’ with them and read them stories. She loved dressing her dolls!

One year for Christmas she got me a big doll and named her Hepsibah. I did not have a name in mind so I didn’t mind if my mom had a name for the doll. The doll was the size of a one-year old child. She made dresses for it to match dresses she made for me. The only problem was, on Christmas morning when I saw the doll I was ‘so disappointed.’ My mother was so excited she hid behind a chair to see my expression. She loved the doll and thought I would be just as excited. After all, little girls like playing with dolls. Well, not me. I was more of a tomboy and liked boy things more than girly things and dolls. She saw my disappointment when I saw the doll and had picked it up and put it down and looked around to see what else I got for Christmas. It almost broke her heart! I told her how disappointed I was that I got a dumb old doll. Boy, what an ungrateful and horrible child I was! I had no idea how that hurt her and how it disappointed her that I did not like dolls. I guess because she liked dolls, she thought I did too. How wrong she was! (Sorry mom.) I told her that what I really wanted was a big teddy bear and I loved teddy bears.

The very next year for Christmas I got what I wanted! When I looked under the tree to see what I got, I saw this big box. When I opened it, there inside the box was a big, beautiful teddy bear! I grabbed it out of the box and was so thrilled! I hugged my mom and told her how happy I was and that I just loved teddy bears! I knew she got the message! I named him ‘Cookie.’ I loved that bear to death. It was my very best friend. I could hug it, kiss it, and tell all my problems and sorrows as well as happy times to my bear. Cookie just listened and was never critical, he just loved me, or at least I thought so. Its’ magical how only you and your bear can talk to each other and nobody else can hear what your bear is saying to you.I still have that bear today. Cookie has had most of his fur loved off of him, but he’s still my ever faithful bear! He is 46 ½ years old!

An Opinion Poll-please help

I need your opinion---
I would like all of you to comment on whether I should -
1-continue to post 'When Grandma Was A Little Girl... on a biweekly basis
- or -
2-click on a link and read them from there.

Please answer.
-----

I have put together a list of 60 topics so far to write about. I am only on story #16. I thought maybe it might be easier to just click on a link from my blog page and go to the source to read whenever you felt like it. Then Lisa mentioned she likes reading them on the blog and she can copy them and save them if she wants. She thought I should blog and ask your opinion.

Love ya!
Mom :o)