Family Tree

Almost all family trees have their unusually branches…..those members that are just a little different……some call them black sheep of the family……..some call them the skeletons ………..and some are just called eccentric. I would like to tell you about three of my family tree members that are just a little different from the norm.

They are my grandmother’s three brothers……..or my three great uncles……their names were Ray, John, and Paul. Now all three passed away when I was a little girl about the age of eight…..so this is being told from an eight-year-old’s point of view.

All three uncles never married and lived together on the old homestead, as my grandmother use to call their farm. Several times every year we went to see the Uncles. First thing that I can remember are the steps leading up the porch. They were very old rickety wooden steps. Leaning to the right. The third step from the top had a small hole in it…..just big enough for a small foot to fit through. Once on the porch (which also leans to the right) in the far right corner were two golden eyes belong to an old yeller dog.. Looking back on it now, I can see that they were the eyes of a very sick old dog not the eye of a wild animal waiting to devour little children as my dad always told us they were..

Like so many older farm houses when you enter the door you enter into the kitchen. Hanging on the wall immediately to the right of the door was an old time telephone. The type that you had to crank and the receiver was on a long cord but the mouthpiece was stationary on the phone on the wall. I don’t remember every seeing anyone use it but I also don’t remember seeing any other phones in the house.

The kitchen looked like it could have been use on Little House on the Prairie. At the sink was a hand pumped faucet with a glass of water to prime it. And the stove was an old wood burning stove. One of the uncles kept getting up to stoke it. There were never enough chairs for all people to sit down, so the kids had to stand. They had no television or radio. Playing euchre was their only form of entertainment. And of course only the adults would get to play. So now the kids are left to stand with nothing to do. If I haven’t mention it before there were no toys to play with either. I am not sure that my great-uncles even knew that the children existed.

Once in a while, if we were there for a long time, my mom would tell us we could go in the next room and sit if we were getting tired of standing. There was never any light in that room and I am not even sure what the room was supposed to be. In one corner was a rope bed. Yes an old fashion rope bed. Made of a frame with rope stretched across it , both vertically and horizontally with a mattress filled with corn husk on top of the ropes, None of us every wanted to sit on that. Our only other choice was a love seat covered with a horse hide. I being a horse lover found this also a place I did not want to sit on. So I still had no place to sit.

That is all that I can really remember about my great uncles, except for the great love that they had for each other. As they each passed away the others were left to grieve. I don’t remember in what order that they died or how each of them died, but I do remember that one of them died after falling out of the hay loft in the barn after drinking a gallon of moonshine.

Although it would seem that going to the uncles for a visit was never a good time, I liked to good……….it was always fun to listen to the stories that they took about the farm……..and there was always a feeling of being welcomed.

Light and Darkness!

An astrophysicist explained how he was able to see a black hole in the darkness of space. He said, "Imagine a boy in a black tuxedo. The boy is the black hole. Now imagine he's twirling with a girl in a white dress. The girl is the light from a nearby star. now imagine the girl and boy are in a dark room, the room is the vast darkness of space. How do you locate the boy dressed in black if he's dancing in a dark room?"

You look for the girl in white. The light gives away the dark.

Darkness can't hide. Not forever Not even in the vastness of space.

No matter how fast light travels the darkness is there before it. Waiting.

Aquarium Fashion

The hottest and latest thing in fashion is Aquarium clothing. Shark & Shark has come out with a new line of fashion that is also living habitat for fish. The first and most popular item was the bra. Made of a super duper rubber plastic for extra strength so it will not tear, it is a two-sided bra that hooks in the front. This bra is then filled with sparkling fresh water and live minnows. These minnows are raised especially for the bras. They are breed to be mini-minnows. The minnows are put in the bra and it is sealed. Now what makes this so wonderful, is that the person wearing the bra heats the water with their own body heat and provides oxygen by their body movements. A person wearing this bra will benefit from a massage by the minnows swimming around and rubbing against their body; like a thousand little fingers massaging them. A person can even personally design their own bra by choosing what will go in with the minnows; such as seed weed and other vegetation.

There is also a line of aquarium hats. Image a derby hat with a seahorse swim around in it and a little treasure chest in the middle. Or how about a sailor hat with a mini whale in it.

Also available are aquarium shoes. One can either choose between ones that look like plastic bags tied to your feet or big fish bowls held on with suspenders around your legs. In both kinds the fish that are use are called feet feeders. As you wear these shoes the fish give you a pedicure, nibbling off all your dry skin, leaving your feet smooth and clean.

Word of warning: With all the Aquarium Wear, one can not wear in freezing weather because the water will freeze.

Shrew vs Elephant

The shrew is the smallest of all mammals. The elephant is the largest. They share the same number of heartbeats before their respective tickers wear out. The shrew lives only two years, the elephant as much as sixty. The moral of the story? Save your movements. Don't waste them. The second you use up all those heartbeats, that's the second you'll topple over dead.

Silk

Wearing silk is like playing with fire, and therefore the fabric should not be found in a good Christian's closet. This is only my personal opinion, mind you. But consider the fact that Hollywood stars wear silk, and it is common knowledge that many of them have the morals of a tomcat on Viagra. Better to wear nylon and sweat like a Swede in a sauna than be seduced by silk. And as if avoiding temptation were not reason enough for not wearing silk, then consider that fabric's origins. What woman in her right mind would wear a dress mad from caterpillar secretions?

What if?

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.