Remembering
Remembering
I’ve finished my book, Along the Back Roads of Yesterday. It will be in the hands of the printer by week’s end. Now that it has been put to bed, I am starting another one. This morning I’ve been sitting in front of this monitor listing notes for the new book. I’ve been remembering. Nostalgia has awakened within me. Creaky front proch swings. Aunt Ivia’s apron strings, grandmother’s mantle clock ticking on the top of her piano, the ice box with its “drip, drip, drip”, the big red barn, robin’s nests, chasing shadows, a sleek blue roan donkey, big black mules, raisin-filled cookies as big as a blue willow plate, fresh buttered bread, fluffy buttermilk biscuits, birds, butterflies and bees, summer showers, freckled-faced summers, the smell of rain drops on a dusty road, the dipper and the water bucket, old Ring, my dog, my two little brothers, my childhood friends and the adventures we shared with donkeys, dogs, mules, storms, the pleasure of hard work, neighbors, dreams, disappointments, memories, the joys and heartaches of growing up in the 1940′s and early 1950′s, etc.
Nostalgia – - – can we go back again? I think so. I’[ll write about them.
Two bored boys
The summer of 1946 I had not yet turned 12.
It was a hot sizzling day much like today, without a breeze.
My friend, Henry, said, “I’m bored out of my skull.”
“Me too,” I said. “We gotta think of sumthin to do. We could pick up cigarette butts along the road and roll a smoke.”
Henry said, “Nope. We already tried that yesterday and all it did was make hot smoke and flames that shot down our throats.”
“This is one of those boring days,” I said.
Shy Guy’s Message to the Troops
I remember
My great aunt Ivia had a small blackboard on her kitchen wall, she would write thoughts, quotes, etc. on the this little board. This one I remember well.
“Not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued.” Socrates
Edumacation is like Education only Funner
I heard about good eats. They’re food with scientific explanations.
I work at home. It’s a good thing, I can’t work anywhere’s else.
I have a good family life. My family tree is growing at both ends, like ancestry.
If you want to get published, write a book.
Those are bits of advise from the admin of this site. Read ‘em and get busy writin’!
Mark Twain said
My grandfather had a love affair with the writings of Mark Twain. He often reminded me of this quote by Mark Twain. “Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”
Memory clilp
I’m sitting here in front of my monitor trying to put the finishing touches to an article. I’ve hit a bump; my mind has sloughed off and turned off my creative juices. In my minds foggy memory, all I can see and hear is my high school English teacher harping about sentence structure. Every day I spent her class, I was convinced she served water at the Stonehenge construction site.
Here is today
Here is today. Tomorrow waits. Yesterday is gone.
I’m waiting for
I’m waiting for a warm summer evening and a slice of cool juicy watermelon.
Two boys clip a donkey
Spring isn’t far away. With spring out comes the clippers to clip horse, mules and donkeys.
My memory kicked in:
A muggy Tuesday morning in the summer of 1943 , the year I was nine years old, Dad had four large black mules tied to the hitchrack in front of the barn. He roached their manes using a special pair of roaching shears. After that chore, he turned them out, then sharpened the shears.
My friend, Henry, and I had nothing to do, so we decided to clip the grey donkey. Electricity had not yet come to our part of the county. Each of us, armed with a pair of sheep shears, set about to clip theunsuspecting long-haired donkey. Those sheep shears were way to big for our nine-year old hands. We whacked, cut, and trimed that donkey’s long hair. Talk about one sorry-looking animal! We stepped back to admire the results of our efforts. Henry said, “Oris, that looks like crap.”
Henry went to the harness room and came back with Dad’s roaching shears. I went to the house and looked in Mom’s Singer treadle sewing machine and found her dress making shears. We spent another hour fine-tuning that donkeys “sorry”-looking clip job. That wasn’t the end of the story!
Mom got into he act and so did Dad. The way that woman carried on you’d have thought using her dress-making shears to clip a donkey was a mortal sin. Dad felt the same way about his roaching shears. His language was colorful and peppered with threats to do bodily harm if ever I used his shears again.
As usual, Henry got off easy and blamed it on me.
