Another Reason For Pictures

I am still uncovering some pictures that my mother had in a little 4"x7" scrapbook. I knew I had them somewhere. I started looking for a picture of my sister Juanita a few days ago. I found one. It's a group picture, it will have to do. They were all black and white and chock full of love and history as well as insight into some of the stories my mother used to tell.
My mother was raised close to Cherokee, Iowa on a farm that had originally belonged to my Great Grandfather Nathan Hayes. He gave it to  my grandmother, Lulu E. Hayes Banister for a wedding present. She had married my grandfather, G.D. Banister son of G.W. Banister one of the original settlers of Cherokee, Iowa.
It happened that my father being single  was looking for work. The Depression was in full swing. My grandfather hired him for a hired hand around the farm. Dad had experience doing farm work in what he used to call The Dakotas. He helped thrash oats and picked corn and a general farm hand. You see my father was raised by his elderly grandmother due to his mother's very early death and his father being a victim of a stroke. He was a determined young man and vowed to finish high school. That he did at the age of 27. He had to work to pay for his clothes and food. When he had enough he would go back to school. He was part of the Cherokee basket ball team which he was very proud. My brother still has the Year Book with his picture in it. When his money ran out he would go back to work. That's just how much an education meant to him.
Well, in those days a hired hand was part of the family and ate meals with the family at the kitchen table. The kitchen had a west window that allowed the sun to shine on my mother's auburn hair. He told me one day that he fell in love with that beautiful woman with the sun glowing in her red hair. I'm sure that the sun made the red more red when it was directly shining on it.
Here are some pictures of the two people that ended up being my parents for many many years.
My brother, Keith R. Johnson and my father look so much alike. This picture looks like he is at a park pavilion, note the picnic basket in the background. My daughter mentioned that she would always recognize his posture. He stood like that even in his older age.

The next picture asks many questions. He is wearing an apron which he did in latter years as a lineotype operator at the Cherokee Daily Times newspaper, but I cannot determine exactly what he is doing in this photo. Again he and my brother are mirror images.
My father's birthday will be soon in January. He was born in 1903. He was nine years older than my mother. This picture of her makes me smile. There are many pictures of her always wearing a hat. Note pants and high heel shoes. She was making a fashion statement that's for sure. (I have a feeling that my grandparents were not impressed.)
And the last picture is of them together. Very much in love.
He lived to be 75 and my mother lived until she was 90.

Christmas When I Was A Small Child

When I was a small child I lived in an old farm house. It had a roof and windows and kept the rain and wind out. However, it had little else. No air conditioning, no calking around the windows to keep the dirt and cold out on windy days. The walls were not insulated with anything but perhaps some plaster over the fragile thin slats of wood that were beneath layers and layers of wallpaper.

LuAnne
8 months

My father hated rodents worse than my mother and was constantly warring the battle of intruding mice. He would find their holes that they had successfully chewed through from inside the walls and cover them with the lids of tin cans. I can still see him using tiny nails to try to inconspicuously as possible keep them out.
When it was Christmas time as far back as I can remember we had some kind of tree. I remember once it was a scrub bush type tree. I remember that because of some grumbling/murmering discussion about it between my mother and father. I was so young that I couldn't understand what the problem was, I loved that little scrub tree.
I also remember we had no tree stand. My father again, with his trusty saw and hammer and nails would make one to surround the tree. It always looked to me like wooden feet. Mother would always cover up the "feet" with a clean white sheet.
If you have read very many of my childhood memories, you will remember how very poor we were, but there always seemed to be a dime for a box of silver tinsel. I can remember my mother teaching me just how to hang it on the tree to cover the barest parts. When we were through, you could not see through the "holes." We had bubble lights that had a mind of their own. Often my dad left the lights on the tree even though they didn't work, because during the day they were pretty. Different colors of yellow, green, and reddish orange as I remember. Mother tried so very hard to keep her glass ornaments safe year to year. However, each year it seemed that she had less and less to choose from.
 She had "rags" that were pieces of old sheets that she wrapped some of her favorites with, but she also saved some of the peach wrappers when she canned peaches. She used some of those to protect her treasures also.  There were no paper towels in those days that I knew of.
That's it except for the star topper. I don't even remember what it looked like now, it's been so very long ago. But I do remember it was a star.
I can remember the very "lean" years, not with sadness at all, but with so much love that I was always surrounded with. Christmas was one  purchased gift and one homemade gift and church. And don't forget our stockings on Christmas morning which always had an orange and some peanuts in the shell and Christmas hard candy in them.
 We were taught from our very young ages that Christmas was not about gifts, but about kindness to others, and the Christian meaning of the beginning of Christmas. We knew the Biblical story of the birth of Baby Jesus by heart by the time we were 6 or 7 at the oldest.
Over the years my parents finances and circumstances improved. The trees became more lush, some flocked, some with pine cones, and some were artificial during the end of their lives.
I can remember the last tree that they had they used over and over again. I was never disappointed because it remained the same year to year. It was home when I walked in the door.
That's what I remember; home. Not fancy, not a very warm house when I was a child, but warm hugs and lots of laughter. Christmas.