Why Do We Always Have To Have.....

I don’t think Mother was any different than any other mother. Mothers enjoy telling stories that involve their children. Mothers especially enjoy telling those stories to their children.
When I was growing up as a teenager, our household was quite routine oriented. Mom’s parents lived with us, mom and dad both worked, Keith and I both went to school. Sounds pretty boring, doesn’t it; well it was not.
Mom hired her cousin to care for her parents while she worked at the Mental Health Institute as a psychiatric aide.
If my memory serves me right, dad always ate All Bran cereal. He often poured hot water on it to soften it. I think Mom worked from 2:30 to 11:00P.M. so she was home when Dad left for work and when Keith and I left for school. No, I don’t remember what Keith and I ate for breakfast, probably something traditional like cereal or toast. I don’t remember her frying eggs and bacon. Anyway, evidently Keith thought that life was really boring in the mornings and asked Mom, “why do we always have to have cereal in the morning.” Mom just looked at him and said, “Well we don’t, what would you rather have?” Well that kind of caught Keith off guard and said, “Well, I would like to have tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.” Mom fixed what he wanted. I am sure about the soup, not for sure about the sandwiches. Keith ate his “new” breakfast and never asked for it again.
Mother told that story over and over again. This story happened after Keith had asked Mom why we always had to have potatoes for supper. She told him because that’s what Dad wanted, therefore, that’s what would be on the table. That question was never asked again, either.

Where's My Socks?

This winter Mike stayed with us. He lives over twenty miles away and the price of gas was four dollars a gallon. His furnace quit and a multitude of problems. I cooked for him, did his laundry, and I hate to admit it I cleaned his room. Because of another person in the house, I had lots to do. I did laundry several times a week, the dishwasher was started every day, and on it goes.
This spring Mike moved back home. There is little laundry to do, not very much cooking, and few dishes.
This morning Fran asked, “Where’s my socks?”
I thought about making up a story, but the truth is, The Truth. Fran and I joined a gym and got a puppy. Those two activities are lots more fun than laundry and more time consuming than doing Mike’s laundry and cleaning.
Sorry Fran, you may have to go back to bachelor days and do your own laundry and putting away; Maggiemae and I are busy.

Making Plum Jelly

When I was nine years old I was watching my mother can vegetables. I asked my mother if I could help. She said it was too dangerous because she was using a pressure cooker. I asked if there was anything I could can that didn’t need a pressure cooker. She said yes, jelly did not need to be canned in a pressure cooker. She was busy and went to her work and didn’t tell me anything else. I had watched her go to the garden and pick vegetables, put them in jars, add water and put them in the canner for awhile then they were done. I figured I could make jelly pretty simple too.
I got a big dishpan and went to the timber and picked a lot of plums. A whole big bunch of plums. I ate some and they were so good, I just knew that they would make yummy jelly.
I brought the plums to my mother. She had a look on her face like she would like to strangle me. She was so busy. But she said, ‘Ok, you have to do what I tell you, or you can’t make jelly” I agreed. First you have to wash all the plums and check for bugs and bad spots. I knew there were no bugs, because I hated bugs. I did what she asked. Then she said I had to take a knife and take all the pits out of them. That took a really long time because she wouldn’t let me use a sharp knife. Then the plums had to be put on the stove and cooked with some water on a slow heat until the skins became loose from the fruit. She did that for me. I had to stay in the kitchen though and watch that they didn’t scorch. Once I started this, she wouldn’t let me go play and have her finish the project.
Then the cooked plums had to be put through a sieve. The colander had a heavy wooden thing that I had to use to force the cooked plums through the holes. That was so much work, I didn’t think I was ever going to get through. My mother talked me through it, but she did none of the work. Then she gave me cheesecloth to put in the colander to strain any little bit of pulp from the liquid. She said the liquid had to be so clear you could see through it. I strained and strained and finally she gave the ok to start making jelly.
Mother measured the amount of liquid and the amount of sugar that it needed, then the cooking process was started all over again for the juice.
While the juice was cooking she informed me that I had to wash pint canning jars. When I was done washing and rinsing them in really hot water, then she showed me how to put the rings and lids in pans to cook so that when the jelly was done I could put it in the jars and put the lids and rings on to seal them.
When I was done washing jars, mother said “You had better pay attention, this jelly is starting to simmer and we don’t want it to scorch or get too thick.” She showed me how to use a cup with cold water in it and to put a silver spoon in the hot jelly to see if it was coating the spoon. If it coated the spoon I could drop some of the jelly in the cold water to test it to see if it was just right. When that was done then she showed me how to use the funnel to pour the hot jelly into the jars, and how to clean the jars so they would seal.
I was done making jelly just as she was finishing up supper. I was exhausted. I had made about fifty pints of plum jelly. It was delicious, however, I never asked to do that again, even though my dad praised me for the hard work.

Out Of The Box: Part 2

Our house used to be so quiet it was on the verge of boring. Fran and I entertained ourselves by watching television, singing, and playing computer games. I enjoyed reading and talking on the telephone, but that was about it. Then one day, Miss Maggiemae came wagging her tail joyfully into our lives and everything changed. I no longer sit in my chair and fall asleep. I no longer take a nap on the couch. The pain of pounds per inch per paw (ppipp) is horrible. I am completely out of my comfort level because I have to watch the news in the living room. Maggiemae doesn’t like me to sit at the kitchen table. Those of you that knew me as a young mother are probably going “What?!!!” I cannot believe how spoiled this little waif is becoming and in such a short length of time.
Let’s talk about the change in Fran. This morning he was holding Maggiemae in his lap while he watched the news at the kitchen table. I was typing this and he started to laugh and I asked him what was so funny. He said, “She just pulled your afghan off your chair. Look at her, isn’t she cute?”
Maggie is not house trained, I am. I take her outside every two hours however, Maggiemae cries and whines to go out all the time. I have to take her in case she really has to go. She wants to play with a little limb she has found out there and with Alex, Fran’s sheltie. Thinking outside the box for these old people is exhausting, but it is definitely not boring. I can remember when the “box” was actually quite comfortable.

We Actually Had Tin Cans

When I was growing up, we actually had tin cans. I don’t remember plastic being the majority of anything to tell the truth. We didn’t have ice cream buckets that were made of plastic, we made the ice cream ourselves. Sodas, or pop as we called it in Iowa were always in glass bottles and so was ketchup and mustard.
The A&W served their root beer in glass mugs. The other day I posted an article of Mom baking for the store in Cherokee. On the shelf behind her, was a can or two of pork and beans. I am sure they were in a tin can or at least a tin coated steel can. I can remember if my brother and I had string and two clean tin cans we could make a wonderful telephone (we thought). Now days most of our cans are aluminum. I think the majority of people now recycle those. I am not sure if it is to protect our earth, or to get some money back from our original purchase.
The other day at the gym, I needed to rest, so I picked up a magazine. It gives you an idea of the age group at my gym, when the stack of magazines on the table, was “Reminisce.” As I was flipping pages, I found a box of Linit Starch and recognized almost everything in the pictures they were showing, right down to an article about aprons similar to the one I wrote the other day. I cannot imagine enjoying the “Reminisce” magazine. I used to read this to my residents in the nursing home.
The other day Fran and I were going to go to the grocery store after going to the gym. I said, “Don’t forget the minced ham.”. He’s only one year younger than I am. He said, “What’s that?” That one little question, inspired a half hour conversation between the two of us. He laughed and laughed, whether he really did know what minced ham was, or that he was able to get my dander up, I will never know. It’s kind of like a tin can, is it real or does it just look like the real thing.
Those of you that read this blog, I would love to have you post a comment telling me that you remember minced ham; that would make me feel so much better.

Think Out Of The Box

Think out of the box, over the top, whatever, all those current euphemisms are finally becoming useful to me in the last day or two. Other things are happening to me in the last day or two also. These are thoughts like, “what did I used to do when the kids were babies?” I am not babysitting for my grandchildren, my husband and I are proud adoptive parents of a mixed ancestry, tiny, little short almost person, that only occasionally barks.
Her name is Maggie Mae. When you live in the Ozarks, people who have middle names, tend to attach the middle name to the first name to make it one word. So our little one’s name is pronounced Maggiemae.
Maggiemae is for the most part very quiet and sleeps all the time. She did not like her kennel, but when I turned the night light out, she went right to sleep. When Alex, Fran’s sheltie started barking with the neighbor’s dog, she thought she would put her two cent’s worth in. I made dire threats to Alex; that even seemed to work.
Maggiemae seems to know how to use the outside bathroom, however, Mama Lizotte is not used to going outside every two hours.
Maggiemae was supposed to be a lap dog for me, to keep me company when Fran goes fishing etc. Maggie acts like Fran is her long lost friend and will hardly let Fran out of her sight. He put his shirt on this morning to go to the gym and Maggie had a fit. That’s where the “whatever” comes from. Yes, I am a bit jealous.
I needed to give her some liquid medicine this morning she would have nothing to do with it. Fran tried to help me and that didn’t work either. So I took a small spoon of ice cream and let it melt and stirred her medicine in it and she just lapped it right up. It worked with the kids, why not the dog.
I think Maggiemae, at one time was loved, but her owners were just not able to care for her the way she should be. Right now she is “naked” because the groomer had to shear her to the skin because of the matting. To make up for the lack of fur, Maggiemae has a ice cream bucket full of toys that she and Fran play with.

The Drought

When I was a child we lived on a farm that belonged to my grandmother. She rented it to my parents on a cash basis.
This particular year I'm writing about was the most hot and the most dry of my memory.
The crops and the big vegetable garden were burning in the fields. It was so hot it was indescribable. The well was getting low on water, so our baths were once a week, and we all used the same water. Mother used the dishwater to coax some of her vegetables to grow. The garden helped us to survive the winter. I know this sounds like a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, but the story is true. I was a little girl and was used to not having air conditioning, but I can remember complaining to my mother that it was so hot I couldn’t sleep. She said nothing, but made my brother and I a pallet on the floor by the parlor screen door in case a breath of air came in. It had a south exposure so I guess it was possible. Somehow we managed to get through it, but if I had been grown up and in tune with my parents’ facial expressions I am sure I would have seen worry.
One day black clouds came over the trees that surrounded our house, the wind picked up and I thought this was even worse with so much hot air blowing so fiercely. I can remember it felt like my face was drying up it was just that hot.
Then the rain started to come with great big drops of water. Then it started to pour. It rained so hard and the ground was so hard, that it did not absorb into the ground. It ran away from the house and down the hill. It did not rain a short time. It rained long and hard that day. The smell in the air smelled dirty actually. Like when my mom and I would make mud pies. There was little grass left that year.
 My mother, completely out of character was laughing and said, “Get your clothes off, you’re going to have your first shower.” I had no clue what a shower was. But what my mama said in those days we did.Then she put us underneath the eave spout on the porch with a bar of her homemade soap. The water was coming out of the pipe in torrents. It was so cold I was shivering and dancing around. But it was so much fun. I stayed in the water until it quit.
That’s all I remember of the drought. I don’t know if we lost crops, or if the garden failed. I do know that we continued to live on that farm until I was eleven years old. At that time we did move into the small town close by. For the first time in our lives my brother and I came home after school to a house that was empty. My mother had looked for work and found a job working at a grocery store.
I was talking to my cousin about the drought some time ago. She said that my parents had to have some water hauled in. I am sure that was expensive if it had to be on a long term basis. That expense plus many other reasons were a combination of things for moving into town that year.
I will never forget that farm and all of my childhood memories. As the years go by I share all of these memories with my children and grandchildren. Many of them just shake their heads in amazement. They cannot even fathom living without running water and having an indoor bathroom. So the story of sharing bathwater cannot begin to be understood.
As I am writing this little story I sit here and smile to myself because I loved that farm and all of the memories that went with it.