Stick Horse Cowgirls

I feel wistful.   At age 68, I am now truly an orphan.   My parents have been gone several years now, my father-in-law, too.   This left my mother-in-law to reside next door to me, in her own little abode.   She and I, single women out in the country, did well together.   I would work too hard all day, usually stopping in to see her a few minutes before plopping down exhausted at my own home.   Sometimes I would guiltily slink past her little trailer, too tired for conversation but knowing she had been alone all day and feeling I should have spared her that few minutes of companionship—selfish me. She has been gone a couple of weeks now and I have not yet felt any authentic mourning.   I am not sure what that will look like, as I am a fairly stoic person, but I feel it looming around behind me as I go through each day, as if it will overtake at some unexpected moment. As I was shopping for groceries today, the thought of her absence came, pr...

I loved V’s post on vintage recipes .  I knew MawMaw—knew V’s other grandmother, too.  Elsie, I must say, was a character—a Wonder Woman.  She was a kind, intelligent woman who could have been really something in today’s world of more opportunity for women—she raised a wonderful son mostly on her own.  Now that I am “of an age” to appreciate what her life was, my hat is off to her.  V has written about her before and must again. But the topic of recipes and meals with grandmothers is what I want to talk about. Both my grandmothers came from country stock.  My paternal Grandmother, Lyda, was accustomed to cooking for farm hands.  She was a humdinger of a cook, too. When we would go to Lyda’s house for Sunday dinner, the re would ALWAYS be these things:  Fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, mashed potatoes, a salad and angel food cake with canned peaches, homemade  biscuits (I don’t remember rolls) and a variety of vegetables.  Th...

I just finished reading “ The Help ” by Kathryn Stockett.  This book is written mostly from the perspective of black maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 60’s—just my era.  I could not put this book down.  I identified with so much in it.  This is an uncomfortable subject for me.  It was our life back then, but looking at it from 21st Century eyes, I see just all kinds of vestiges of slavery in the way our society was structured those days.  It is, as I say, “uncomfortable.”  Still, it is history, and I”m going to tell you what my life was like in this respect. My father was a lawyer—Southern country lawyer.  I remember him going to court in the summer time in blue and white seersucker suits and light (white or “light buck”) shoes.  This was not unusual for attorneys of the day.  Courtrooms were hot, and a dark suit would have probably been unbearable.  I also saw lawyers back then with straw “panama” hats, although my d...

When I was a girl, V and I spent many Saturdays in our town’s “downtown.”  Going downtown in the late 50’s and the 60’s was a fairly-big deal, as we lived out in the suburbs.  Back then, one “dressed” to go downtown: I remember my mother putting on a dress, stockings and heels to go.  We kids never wore our play clothes to go downtown.  This photo to the left is of my hometown in the late 50’s.  If you look closely, you’ll see that the women were all in dresses or skirts with hose…no jeans or even dress slacks on women downtown in those days. There was a ritual for most of my trips to town with V; always on Saturday, and sometimes several times in one month.  V’s mother never learned to drive.  Her father, a newspaper printer by weekday, was a pool shark on Saturdays!  He spent his Saturdays in the pool hall downtown, so either he’d take us to town or (more often) he would drop V’s mother and us kids off at V’s aunt’s house, where we would gath...

Yeah, it’s French.  And, yeah, I’m faking it—I can’t speak French, at least not yet, but it’s the phrase that came to mind this morning.  See?  I know a little… I found myself wanting to write.  But about what?  Those of us in Blogdom know that one way to get a post done is to sit at the keyboard and let our fingers do the walking…mine just seemed to take off. I thought about taking off on a comment that Vickie of Sand Flat Farm made on my last post on cussing, no less.  Her point is that we are growing “numb” to things…yes, that’s a post all right.  But this morning I don’t feel like soap box ranting (do I hear a collective sigh of relief?).  Vickie’s inspiration will wait on another day.  No, I think I feel like just reporting.  On life.  When V first dragged me into blogging and we were considering names for our blog, one of the first names my cynical mind came up with was “As if You Care!”   But I find that I do c...

Reading V’s recent post about our childhood sure stirred up memories.  She’s right.  Summer was divine.  While school was always enjoyable for me, summer was the zenith of the year.  We never went to school into June, and we did not return to school until the day after Labor Day, so we had a full three months off.  Summer had a whole different rhythm of life than the rest of the year.  Now that I am an adult, I don’t get to experience that change in beat (although V does, being a school employee). My passion for reading dates from my early childhood; I’ve been reading since before I went to school.  There came a time when I could not find anything in my school’s library to read because I had read everything that was of remote interest to me.  For sure, I had read all the books on horses, dogs and native Americans, both fiction and nonfiction.  When I was a child there was no such thing in our area as branch libraries.  The library d...

In the early 1960’s my father took a civilian attorney position with the Air Force, which maintains a base about 20 miles north of our home.  He worked on contracts and other legal matters for their Titan II Missile Program, which I suppose is no longer “classified,” especially since one of the silos blew up in Damascus, Arkansas in 1980. Naturally, my father rubbed elbows with the Air Force brass, and he loved to linger at the Officer’s Club.  Although I never met any of them, my brother and I became vicariously acquainted with these guys, hearing stories of “Colonel” this or “Major” that.  There was one colonel who was not a p articular favorite of my father’s and, I gather, others in the office felt the same way.  We would hear tales of this man’s arrogance and boasting.  One day the Colonel came in with a new boast.  He had purchased a Volkswagen, later called a “Beetle.”  These little cars were a rarity to us,  and I am sure the guys at ...

I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but some things just are what they are. Truth is truth, and if it’s part of the story, then so be it. My people are country folk.  My grandmother, Gertrude, (I’ve written about her before here ) had two sisters, Anis (yes, that’s right, “Anis,” and she’s another story…) and Dona (pronounced with a long “o,”) but always called “Donnie.”  Gertie was the eldest girl; Donnie was the youngest.  And you could tell. Gertie was a “take charge” type of girl, being big sister and without a mother by age 12.  Donnie, on the other hand was, as we used to say, “nervous” and “high-strung.” Gertie was upright and moral—to a “t.”  Donnie, on the other hand, took up with Fred, a previously-married man with children—remember, we’re talking the early 1920-s, here.  Donnie and Fred eloped, eschewing the traditional church wedding, probably because they knew that folks were looking askance at them.  Not the least of all, Gertie....

Last night was an “active” meteorological night, as spring nights often are in this state.  I was up just a tad later than usual watching the weather.  We are too far out in the country to have weather sirens.  I am thankful for our television weather coverage. I phoned MIL to ask if she would like to join me—she declined, stalwart that she is.  We missed the tornado activity, it moving through on the opposite side of our city, leaving some devastation in its path.  As I write this, it is early morning and I am only getting a smattering of reports, but it seems that there was damage and perhaps death in some parts of our state.  Every spring’s business here.  Growing up, I used to talk to my California cousins when they came to visit, wondering how they could possibly make through each day when their state was slated to fall off the continent at any moment.  "You’ll be carried off by a tornado before that happens!” was their frequent rej...

This is a post about a post.  My mother-in-law posted the other day at Immigrant Daughter , and in it she revealed something I only just discovered while reading it.  She did not make much of this in her post but, as you will see, I have been pondering it ever since I read it.  Here’s the much-shortened version of the back story:  My father-in-law (now gone from us for two years) was born out of wedlock in Indiana in 1924.  He was raised in foster homes, and his story is one of extremes: tragedy and redemption.  This is one of my favorite pictures of him, in my breakfast room, holding my cat.  You can read more about him on Immigrant Daughter .  He married MIL in 1949. When he was grown, with his own family (maybe in his 50’s??), he found his blood family.  After he was given to the foster system as an infant, his parents had married and had two sons—his full brothers.  His parents had both died by the time he located the family. ...