My First Swimsuit

I will never forget my first swim suit. It was so pretty. It was a one piece made of turquoise and white cotton.
Our swimming pool was an old horse trough by the pump. My mom would put water in it and let the sun warm it, then my brother and I could splash around in it. The trough was made of an old bathtub made of cast iron with little feet that had sunk into the ground. The bottom of the trough was rough from age and water and was rusty looking.
One day our telephone rang and my mother said, “Well I guess that would be ok”. She soon hung up and said, “Well Lu Anne this is going to be a fun day for you. You are going to a town pool to go swimming with some of the church kids“. Well that sounded fun, so my mom braided my hair so tight I could hardly shut my eyes. Then I put on my suit. It was too tight, the bottom was very very thin from being in the rough trough. Oh well, I thought, it was ok.
Well, the group picked me up and we drove about ten miles to a town called Holstein, Iowa that had a public swimming pool. My senses started kicking in big time. All I could smell was bleach like my mom put in the white clothes when she did laundry. It was almost overwhelming. The bottom of the pool was painted blue and it was very slippery. the water was really deep. It was four deep at the most shallow. All I could do was lower myself into the water and walk around the wall because I couldn’t swim. While I was walking around I noticed the other girl’s swim suits, they were fancy and fit them well. They made my suit look very bad. I never went swimming at a public pool again until I was a freshman in high school. I took swimming lessons then and I really wasn’t a very good swimmer, but I need credit for giving it a run for my money.

The picture of this bathtub does not give ours justice and I don't know if Keith got to go with me that afternoon or not. This may rouse some of his memories

Noah's Ark In Missouri

Since the time I was a little girl I had definite likes and dislikes. The dislikes were mice, and wasps and bees. My mom would laugh and say they were just singing their songs and buzzing along and I should just ignore them; they were happy and I should be happy too. As far as that story went it was just a bunch of baloney.
One day I ventured out on the limb and asked my mom if God was really as smart as she thought He was. She held her tongue and asked me what I meant. I replied, “Well, if God was really smart, He would have not had Noah put two wasps and two bees and two mice on the ark.” Now I am sure if one of my kids had said that to me I probably would have burst out laughing, but Mother didn’t. She kept her calm way about her, but she did explain that everything was put on earth for a reason. I do remember when she told me that the bees give us honey, I told her that I could skip honey and eat jam or jelly. That time she did smile. I would have a feeling that when my mother went to bed at night and said her prayers she asked for strength to take care of the little girl that He had given to her to take care of for Him.
This afternoon when I took Maggiemae out for her walk, there were the bumblebees. I grumbled to myself, just once I would love for spring to come and not have the bumblebees come with it. As I walked along and smiled at Maggie as she investigated everything, I also saw the beautiful orioles and the buzzing hummingbirds. I have to get busy and refill the feeders. Fran put out the oranges for the orioles and reminded me that my beloved hummingbirds were out of food. I am really glad that God in all of His wisdom did the Noah’s Ark thing. It reached clear to Missouri! I have tried off and on all afternoon to take pictures of the hummingbirds, orioles, and the doves, all to no avail. So here you have a picture of an orange after an oriole just now looked at it and decided to eat it later. I even took this picture through the screen on the porch so I wouldn't scare them away. Oh well. The finches are pretty, aren’t they?

It Takes Two Squirt Bottles

Two pets doesn’t seem excessive for two adults to have in one house. It wouldn’t have seemed excessive just one short month ago.
As most of you know, Maggiemae came to live with us just a month ago. In that month she has learned some hard rules. She has learned, where she can and cannot sleep and what rooms she can go in and where she can’t. She also has learned who feeds her, who walks her and who plays with her. Those are two different people. She has learned that Fran spoils her and then gets upset with her when she acts spoiled. She learns that Lu gets up early with her in the morning and goes outside with her, Fran does not. In the time she has learned that we are not going to abandon her. I think that was the most difficult lesson for her to learn. Every time we left she thought it was for the last time, she would actually cry like a human when Fran put on his shirt. When we took her to get her spade, she just about lost her mind.
Maggie seemed to give us one thing at a time to deal with regarding her behavior. This week is barking. She has been barking at everything, everyone and nothing. She barks to hear herself bark and that is driving me nuts. So I looked on the computer and it said to get a spray bottle of water and spray her when she barked for nothing. So, Mertie, my cockatiel has a spray bottle that I put Listerine and water mixture in to kill mites. She loses feathers if I don’t spray her on a regular basis. So I emptied out the Listerine water and rinsed the bottle well and put in straight water. Maggie barked and I got out the spray bottle and aimed. Now I am here to tell you that that dog took off one hundred miles an hour. Her little bottom was swaying from side to side and she hid under Fran’s legs while he was sitting at the computer. She didn’t bark again. Then she barked again this afternoon, again I got out the bottle. She stopped barking and went to play with her toys. Well I got on the computer and told Melanie how smart I was, I told company we had and on and on. Well, tonight, Maggie just started barking. She had been pottied, fed, watered, played with etc. I showed her the spray bottle. Did I forget to tell you that I had not even had to spray her with water? Anyway I showed her the bottle. It did not deter her. She barked even louder and on and then I did it. I sprayed her with the water. She looked at me as if to say, “Did you expect me to quit barking because of that?” I got the giggles so bad, I almost lost some body functions. I ended up in a fetal position and Fran says, “Oh this is going to do a lot of good if you laugh when you point that bottle at her” “I am so disappointed. I had to put Maggie out on the porch. That’s what she wanted; just to be outside so she can watch the neighbors. I am not giving up on the spray bottle therapy, but I also know that Maggie is pretty darn smart, or at least she thinks she is. I think this house will be a two spray bottle house from now on.

Still In The Fifties (cont)

Like I said, we went to the sock hop Saturday night. I had a ball. I never saw so many poodle skirts and bobbi socks and little tennis shoes. The neck scarf was the feature accessory so when I got up to sing, they called me Mrs. Fifties. Everyone said, “Oh I remember putting my hair up on rollers, and I said, “Yes, but it didn’t take forty five minutes.” Everyone laughed.
Only one person remembered wearing a dog collar on her anklet, only one person had her hair in a big bouffant lacquered down. And one man I had to help who doesn’t smoke, roll an empty cigarette package in his shirt sleeve. Every one had fun and they danced more than usual. They loved the Puppy Love song. I think to tell the truth, they needed a slow song to dance to. The fifties had a lot of what we used to call “fast dances.”
They had a hula hoop contest, no winners in the sixty something age group. The youngsters could do it. No one in their sixties wanted to get in on the bubble blowing contest. False teeth do present a problem sometimes. And absolutely no one wanted to get in the limbo contest. One lady said she didn’t know if Medicare would pay for the ambulance in that situation.
As a side note, my hair hasn’t looked this good in a long time. Long live rollers!!

Still In The Fifties Tonight

Fran and I are going to a “sock hop” tonight at the club where we sing. What a big tado about nothing, right? Wrong. There is a lot of work singing the right songs and wearing the right earrings, and the right get up that we used to wear.
First of all I wanted to wear a full circle skirt like I used to wear and a couple of can cans. After I searched the internet under vintage and antique (I am beginning to hate those two words) I discovered that I needed some real cash to buy what the computer called “costumes.” So Fran drove me to several flea markets. I thought to myself after we had “visited” several of them that I had not realized how young the people are that work at flea markets and antique stores. When I asked for can cans one of them said, “Can what?”
So time was running short and I decided I would wear pedal pushers and anklets and rollers in my hair with a scarf tied around them. Fran did not have a hissy, but gently said, “Why don’t you just wear a scarf?” He is not one to draw attention to himself, so he is not getting into the fifties dress up thing. So, of course, I did not have any pedal pushers, but I did have some blue jean capris, and some red tennis shoes that I bought at Walmart for three dollars years ago that nobody else wanted. So I am sitting here in front of the computer, exhausted from rolling my hair up in rollers, and tying the ugliest scarf around them red and yellow). I have ludicrous earrings that hang down to my shoulders. I am very disappointed though because the collar on my only long white shirt is not stiff enough to stand up like we used to wear them. I am going to post a picture of me in 1959 and one in 2009. There is very little similarity and personally I think I look much better in 1959. Why wouldn’t I, I was only fifteen!!!
I am going to sing a Patsy Cline song tonight called, “He Called Me Baby” and a Paul Anka song, called, “Puppy Love.” My luck every one has chosen the same songs and so I will have to sing something else. One thing about it, I generally sing songs from the fifties anyway, so I am all set.
I don’t know about you, but I loved the fifties. The most horrible thing I can remember doing is four of us sharing a beer. Now that is down right felonious!

My Grandma's Slips

I suppose you are wondering why I write so much about my grandmother. I do because she was such an interesting character, she had much to do with shaping my life, but most of all she was the soft version of my mother. She was quiet spoken, had a sense of humor that showed mostly with smiles, had lots of hugs for little girls, and she loved me. She called my little hands paddies. She would show me her hands that were thin and showed the veins. Then she would point out that mine were soft and had dimples where eventually my knuckles would show when I got older and had no veins showing. I look at my hands now and think someday soon I will have hands that look like my grandma’s.
I have mentioned before that my grandma was frugal to say the least. She and grandpa had money, but she wanted to save it in case, “hard times” came again. She often referred to the “dole” and the “poor farm”. The dole of course, was welfare, and the poor farm was located on several acres of public land where poor people went to live. There was nothing worse in my grandmother’s eyes than to have to do that. She came from a wealthy family and that would just not do.
My grandmother had several church or Sunday dresses. She would make them look new by putting new collars on them sometimes, but for the most part if they got worn, she would cut them up, take the sleeves out, shorten them and wear them for slips underneath her house dresses that she wore for every day.
Well, my grandma was a sight sometimes because her house dresses were flowered and so were her homemade slips. As she got older, she would wear the homemade slips to church. My mother would chide my grandma and tell her to wear her good slips. Grandma would be quiet, and I felt sorry for her because mother talked to her like that. But I did notice that Grandma did as she pleased regardless of what mother said and continued to wear the homemade slips.
When my grandmother died my mother found brand new slips she had given her still in the gift boxes and tissue paper probably as a birthday or Christmas gifts. I was with mother when she was going through Grandma’s dresser drawers. She just shook her head, and put the slips in a bag for charity.
I loved my Grandma. I am sure she is in Heaven visiting the other angels and having a good time.

NOTE: This is not only the only picture, but the only time I have seen her laugh. She loved my dad more than anything in the world. He probably said something to her that made her laugh for the picture.

So I Guess I Am A Senior

Today I was thinking about my hometown. I loved it there. Cherokee was about five or six thousand people I guess. Most people knew me or my parents or my grandparents. My brother and sister and I kind of had to watch our p’s and q’s however, just because of that.
When I was thinking about the “old days” I kind of roamed the streets in my mind. I was telling you about the Soda Shoppe the other day. There were actually three stores that had soda fountains, the other two were drug stores, one was Mallory’s which had the best hard ice cream and sugar cones, and the other one was a drug store too. Someone help me I know it started with an M.
I can remember only one shoe store, Delaplane’s. There were clothing stores that sold shoes, but they were really expensive. Mother always bought us good shoes. She thought it was important that our feet were kept in good health like the rest of our body. Delaplane’s had something really cool. It was called a fluoroscope. The person that waited on us measured our feet and took an educated guess by the tool she or he used to measure our feet. Then we got to put on our new shoes, both feet. The fluoroscope stood against the wall just waiting for young customers to show us our bones. Inside our shoes! I still can feel that thrill I used to get just looking at the bones in my feet.
I looked up the fluoroscope today. It was invented in 1924 and discontinued in the 1970’s. The reason it was discontinued was really not because of the x-ray radiation, but because what the machine showed was bones, not soft tissue. The clerk still had to feel with his/her fingers to see if the shoes were a good fit. The fluoroscope was a fifties gimmick. As I read along, there was an article that said, “If you are a senior, you will remember the fluoroscope. Well that’s all I have to say about that. Comments are welcome on this post. I would really like to know what the drug store was called that was on the corner kitty corner from the Soda Shoppe.