Good Old Days - Christmas

Tis the season-------with all the hustle and bustle. It bring back memories of Christmases from my past.

As I have mentioned before money in our house was not to be found, so when it came to decorating for the holidays one would find that most of the decorations were homemade. I would estimate that in my life time I have made miles and miles of the construction paper garland.........you know the one......where you cut strips of red and green construction paper and glue interlocking circles of alternating color together. Not only did we use this at home to decorate the tree but I also remember having to make the same garland in school to decorate the classroom.

We would also make decorations for the tree out of construction paper, glue and glitter. Mom would be cleaning up the glitter still in May.

My favorite decorations were the ones on the window. Mom would melt wax in a six department cupcake pan and then add different food coloring. She would cut out stencils out of wax paper and then with sponges we would hold the stencils on the windows and dab the wax on to make pictures. Course when you have kids doing the dabbing and they fail to hold the stencil still the outcome always looked like a blob of wax.......because that is what it was. But it was fun doing it and we had different colors of the blobs. Poor Mom had to scrap it off after the holidays.

The decorations were probably some of the worst looking ones on earth but the memories are some of the best.

In present day holidays I don't decorate at all ....... not even a tree.

Back To The Good Old Days

Let's go back to the "Good Old Days" again.

I love the month of October. Not only is it my birth month but it also is the beginning of fall. With fall comes some of God's most beautiful work with colors.

Some of the ways that we use to enjoy this time of year were hayrides and hickory nut hunting. Hickory nuts are a sweet nut....excellent for the up and coming holiday baking. After the first frost and the trees would drop their nuts; our family, my two uncles and their family and my grandfather would go to the woods to hunt for the hickory nuts. Since the woods were behind the cow pasture, we would take a tractor pulling either a mud boat or a manure spreader. Both implements were scary to ride; but that just made it all the more fun. The mud boat was like a hugh wooden sled. We would put buckets upside down on it to sit on but when we hit bumps (which was often) it could knock you right off the mud boat. The manure spreader is just what the name saids (use to spread manure) It was like a wagon with chains in the bottom and prongs at the back. When turned on the chains would move the manure to the back where the prongs would throw the manure off in the field. When we used it for hickory nut hunting we would put planks across to sit on and made sure no one turned it on. We rode around in it like a pile of shit. lol

Off to the woods to find hickory nuts. The trees were not hard to find because the trunk of the tree were shaggy and could be seen at a distance. When we found a tree, we would park the tractor and every one would grab a bucket and start to pick up hickory nuts. Now over 50% of the nuts that you found had worm holes in and were no good........but they still had a use. We use to throw the wormy nuts at each other. Finding the nuts was not easy to do. You had to look under logs and stones and leaves..........in thistle, weeds and poison ivy. My uncle Paul would unhook the tractor and put a metal bucket on his head and used the tractor to bump the tree to get the tree to drop some more nuts. But not thinking ahead.........as the nuts dropped and hit the bucket on his head it made such a racket Uncle Paul always ended up with a headache.

Some times I would take a toy out to the woods and hide it to see if I could find it the next year when we went hickory nut hunting. I would put it under a fallen tree or a big rock or just bury it by a tree. Some times I would find it the next year and some times not. If the toy was plastic it was just dirty but if it was metal it was all rusty. (Actually I would take one of my brothers toys..........didn't want to loose any of mine).

At the end of the day we would all head back on the mud boat or the manure spreader, all covered with thistles and burrs. All the way home we would be picking them off of each other. When we got back we would lay the nut out on old screen doors to dry. A couple weeks later we would peel the outer layer off the nut and let them dry some more. Then my mom would crack the nuts in a bench vice and have a big bowl of them. Grandma and Grandpa would come over and pick out the nut meat. Mom would have all the nuts she needed for holiday baking.

Now if you wanted to have a pound of hickory nuts it would cost you about $18.00 and you would have none of the fun.

From your local reporter Zoom Zoom

Friendship

"Oh, the comfort,
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person;
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but to pour them all out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together,
knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them keeping what is worth keeping,
and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away."

How true! It is an inexpressible comfort to have that kind of friend, that kind of love-relationship with other people. Then one never needs to worry that others will be looking for hidden meanings, wrong emphases, sly inflections in what we say or do. Openly and honestly we can deal with people, and we will accord others the same gracious love and friendship. What is worth keeping, we will cherish. What is not will be blown away by the breath of kindness.

Zoom Zoom

Plastic Surgery for Our Pets

The latest trend today is having plastic surgery on our pets. We, as a society, are after the perfect life; which includes are pets. In our struggles to achieve this perfection, we are now trying to come up with the perfect pet. Is it so important how we look much less how our pets look, that we elect to have unnecessary surgery done to the body that God has given us? Do we really know more then God? Did he not give us this body for a reason? It is bad enough that we choose this for ourselves but now we are forcing this on to our pets. Just because we want the perfect bred of dog. Soon we will try to make a poodle out of a pit bull. What gives us the right to play God with another living creature: to cause them harm; to make choices for them. I am sure that the animals themselves would never choose unnecessary surgery.

Who made us God?

I ask you are looks all that important?

From your roaming reporter. Zoom Zoom

A Second Look at "The Good Old Days"

Let's take another look at "The Good Old Days."

A lot of my childhood was spent with my grandparents and extended family. Each set of grandparents were unique and special. On my mother side my grandparents were strict, disciplined, and all about material goods. Before the depression they were quite wealthy but lost a lot in the depression; which in my opinion turned my grandmother into a bitter person. On my father's side, my grandparents were almost the complete opposite. They were all about their grandchildren and having fun; even though they were only poor dirt farmers. We spent most of our time with my father's parents. My father had two brothers and each of them had children of their own. Now it was a tradition to celebrate everybody's birthday and all the holidays together. This tradition ensured that we were together at least once every weekend if not more. When we got together it was just a big party. In the summer we would play kick ball........everyone would play.......from Grandpa to the youngest grand kid. There would be sandwiches, and cakes and ice cream. When I was young it truly was a Good Old Day time of my life. And then as I got older and started to see that they were not as good as I thought that they were. Grown ups bickering......little back stabling comments. Not the big happy family that I thought we were. And as they kids grew and got married the family suffered even more squabbles. Soon it was hard to find a time to get together for Christmas alone, much less for birthdays. As soon as Grandpa and Grandma pasted away so did all the get together. Ah........The Good Old Days!

From your roaming reporter Zoom Zoom.

A look at the "Good Old Days"

Hello from your roaming reporter Zoom Zoom.

Today we are going to take a look at what people call the "Good Old Days". We all have those fond childhood memories and for the most part they are good memories.........but are they all that good?

Back in my Good Old Days businesses weren't open 24 hours a day.......which in turn forced you to spend more time at home with your family and extended family. Looking back I can now say that I came from a low income family........very low. Although at the time I was none the wiser.

Let's look at toys. Being a low income family we did not have store bought toys. Toys were either made from items around the house or we used imagination. For example one of our favorite game was to slide down the old wood stairs at my Grandparents old farm house on your butt. No great skill needed for that......right? Just start at the top of the stair, sit on your butt and slide down to the bottom. Looking back I am not so sure what made that so fun. Maybe it was the skill of trying to miss the little nail that stuck up dead center out of the fourth to the last step. If you didn't miss it you got a good scrape on one of your butt cheeks. Then you have to tell your parents what you were doing sliding down the steps when they had told you not to. AH......The Good Old Days!

Then there was the button game. For this game you needed more than one kid to play with you. We would sit on that famous stairway that we loved to slide down and one of us would have a button hidden in our hands behind our back. Someone who was chosen previously would come in and try to tell which one was hiding the button. Now you have a bunch of kids -- ages ranging from 3 to 9 ---- trying to keep a straight face and not giggle to let the guesser know who had the button. It didn't take no rocket scientist to figure it out. Ah .... The Good Old Days!

That brings us to the game of water thimble. Line up all the kids --- again the same group of kids; ages 3 to 9. Each kid is asked to think of a color and the the chosen one take a thimble of water and goes down the line trying to guess each kid's color. If the chosen one guessed the correct color he then throws the water in the thimble into the face of that kid and that kid then becomes the new chosen one. Now the thimble was fun and lasted maybe one round and then we would substitute a drinking glass. And the drinking glass would last maybe another two rounds and then we substituted a pan. So by the end of the game we were soaking wet and in trouble. Ah....The Good Old Days!

Our toys were homemade. We made tractors out of wooden spools, tacks, rubber bands and toothpicks. Put two tacks on the end of a wooden spool, lace the rubber band around the tacks and lace it through the hole. On the other side of the spool stick the toothpick through the rubber band. Wrap the rubber band with the toothpick, set it on the floor and watch it go. AH ... The Good Old Days

Time to go.... Will have to continue tomorrow on "The Good Old Days"

From your roaming reporter Zoom Zoom

First Time

Hi! Not sure what I am doing trying to write a blog; but with autumn fast approaching I felt it my duty to warn the world of the impending danger of the serial killer spider.

Little is known of him but his handy work is everywhere------in the corner of the ceilings, between the glass panes of the window, under the work bench, even in the newly mown grass. As he sets his traps to allure the harem of the insect world to his parlor. Then he quickly wraps them in a cocoon for his late night snack with milk and honey. Quickly making a flying carpet web to journey to another secret location.

So beware lest you fall under his spell and end up his late night Dave Letterman snack.

This is your roaming reporter Zoom Zoom.