Throwback Thursday: Two Boys on a Blanket

Child on left—“Look up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s…”

That's my caption. Finish it or create your own in the comments.

Memory Monday: A New Year's Poem

My Grandmother

A NEW YEAR’S POEM

I have used the picture of my grandmother before. The more I think about her, the more I wish that I had known her. She married in 1910, but didn’t have her first child until 1917 (my father). How she loved her son. When my dad talked about her, you could hear the love in his voice for her, even though she died when he was only nine years old. From what I know about her, she had a strong faith (as did her parents).

Recently, I came across a poem that was written before she was born. The poem is from a book titled Verses for Christmas and the New Year. And it was written in 1885, and since she was born in the early 1890s, her mother might have even read it to her.

NEW YEAR'S WISHES FOR THE CHILDREN.

Give yourself to Jesus, darling,

   While the Year is new;

Place your hand in His, and let Him

   Lead you safely through.

Then how blest the Year will be,

   Spent in Jesu's company!

I send my love to Someone,

   With wishes kind and true;

I pray to God for Someone,

   I know He hears me, too.

Now don't you guess, my darling,

   That Someone must be you?

I can imagine my grandmother holding my daddy in her lap, snuggling close to her longed-for child and reciting this to him. And that warms my heart.

Throwback Thursday: Three Women in Front of a Tree

From my "old and known" file:

Lady on the right-“Hurry up and take the picture. We want to decorate the tree for Christmas.

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments.

Merry Christmas

Memory Monday: Another Multi-Generational Decoration

ANOTHER MULTI-GENERATIONAL DECORATION

Nearly 50 years ago (wow, that is a long time), I worked at K-Mart. At Christmas time that year, they had some music boxes that looked like angels surrounding and playing an organ. I bought one for me, then one each for my mother and mother-in-law. I loved mine and they said they loved theirs (hey, they are family, so what else could these dear ladies say?). Anyway, through the years, these two women passed away and their Christmas decorations have been passed down. I’m not sure if the one that is pictured above was mine or one of theirs. I do know that for two generations, we enjoyed them.

When my children were old enough, they like to play with the one I had. I don’t know how many times we wound it up and listened to it play “Silent Night.” This made three generations that have enjoyed this cute piece of Christmas.

Now my new granddaughter loves it. This makes four generations that have listened to it. I’m not sure if it will last to a fifth generation. If you look closely at the picture, you can see that one of the little angels at the top of the organ has lost its wings, while the other one has lost half of its. The angel “playing” the organ has not only lost its wings too but (and what you can’t see) also its right hand. The bench has been glued at least once and needs to be repaired again. The vases on the sides of the keyboard have lost their greenery and while the candleholders half way up the sides have lost their candles. Also what you can’t see if the left side where the blue plastic panel behind the filigree fell down and is lying under the music mechanism. Still, THE MUSIC FROM THIS MUSIC BOX SOUND GREAT! Most music boxes I’ve owned have become “tinny” after a while. This one is still beautiful sounding after all this time and use.

The other day, my granddaughter pulled it in front of her, placed a finger on either side of the angel on the bench, and “played” the organ as the music box slowly unwound. She loves it.

I will do my best to fix and glue together this piece of our family’s Christmas decorations so my granddaughter can play with it again next year (and several more years after that). Maybe, just maybe, with enough glue, it will last to the fifth generation of our family.

Throwback Thursday: Boy in Fancy Dress

From my "old and known" file: 

“Think I’ll be a lawyer when I grow up. I already know how to dress the part.”

Memory Monday: Yet Another Look at What My Daughter Eats

My daughter, more than 30 years ago

AND YET ANOTHER LOOK AT WHAT MY DAUGHTER EATS

I love the picture above. My mother made the red dress that my daughter is wearing. Mother sewed the dress after she saw the white pinafore that I had made and embroidered. That little covering took 30 days to complete and left me with callouses on my index finger and thumb where I held the needle, but it was so worth it. My only regret is that by the time my granddaughter came to live with my daughter and son-in-law, she had already outgrown the pinafore. Oh well, I’ll just keep it for the next generation.

Now, back to the purpose of this article. My daughter went to an Asian dessert restaurant and tried something new. She writes about it. Here’s a link to her blog:
 You Ate What? Bingsu: A Korean Dessert

I hope you’ll check it out. What do you think of this dish? Are you daring? Would you like to try it?

What is the “most interesting” dessert you have ever tried? Did you eat it more than once?

Throwback Thursday: Women in Front of a Car

From my "old and known" file

LADY IN THE MIDDLE—That’s right ladies. Just keep smiling and they’ll never know that you didn’t want to come visiting.

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments.

Memory Monday: The Tradition of the Christmas Present Ornaments

THE TRADITION OF THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT ORNAMENTS

When my husband was five years old, he wanted a watch. His parents told him that he had to learn to tell time before they would get him one, so he went to his grandmother and she taught him. At Christmas, he had a package under the tree with a red, loopy ribbon bow on it. As you probably already guessed, the package contained a watch. But there is more to the story—something that affects what my family does today. His mother saved that red, loopy ribbon bow and put it on his “main” Christmas present the next year, and the year after, and the year after, for as long as she lived.

My husband and I dated for two years before we married. During that time, they put a blue package ornament on my present from them and continued to do so as long as my mother-in-law lived.

After her death, my father-in-law gave us their Christmas decorations and he just used the 12-inch ceramic Christmas tree that his mother had given his wife. That red, loopy ribbon bow and the blue package ornament were among the things he gave us. We kept up the tradition of using those package ornaments through the years.

We were married about ten years when our daughter was born. We bought her a Holly Hobby package decoration to keep the tradition going. When our son was born, we got a green and white stick horse for his “main” present.

My husband was five when the red, loopy ribbon bow first appeared on his present, so it has seen about 65 Christmases. We’ve been married for 44 years, so my blue ornament has been used about 45 times. Holly Hobby and the stick horse have been on presents for more than 30 years each. When our daughter married over 10 years ago, we got her husband a snowman for his package decoration. It has been on his packages ever since.

The next generation has come along with our granddaughter. Last year—her first Christmas with us, we got her a pink heart to attach to her present. We will be using it again this year.

Oh, there is one more thing about the present ornaments. We never put names on these presents. Everyone knows by the ornament who gets the present and everyone knows that the present came from us.

One of these days, we will have to pass down these package decorations to the next generation. I have every faith that our children will keep the tradition going.

Throwback Thursday: A Couple's Formal Picture

From my old pictures file:

WOMAN—If I stand taller, do you think I’ll look 5 pounds thinner?

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments below.

Memory Monday: Our Christmas Tree

3 generations around the Christmas tree in 1982

OUR CHRISTMAS TREE

It is that time of the year!!! I love the last two months of the year. And this year is even better. First of all, by Thanksgiving weekend, I already had all my Christmas shopping done. Then the day after Thanksgiving, my husband and I got out the tree and the decorations. I spent the afternoon putting on the ornaments. Now, this is my favorite part of my favorite time of the year. I have never been one to want a themed tree—like snowflakes or teddy bears—or one that was color-coordinated—like silver and blue or gold and red. No, my trees have always been memory ones.

I didn’t really plan it that way. It’s just the way it happened and I liked it, so I continued doing it. Both sets of our parents always had lights and tinsel garlands on their tree. I can’t remember if they gave us any of those, but I do know that we couldn’t afford to buy ornaments—I was a college student and my husband had only a part-time job. We didn’t have the internet at that time, so I tried to figure out what we could do to decorate a tree. Months before Christmas, I figured out that we could save the shells from the eggs we used for breakfast and use them for ornaments. I would poke holes in the end of each egg and blow the egg yolks and whites out into a bowl. I almost blew my eardrums out doing this because I didn’t know until much later that I should have inserted a skewer and broken up the yolk before I tried to blow it out that little hole at the end. Still, I saved about four dozen intact shells. My husband and I dyed the shells with Easter egg dye the night of the only night launch by NASA. We used those egg ornaments for several years, then slowly started to replace them. Still, they were special, and for the last 44 years, we have had at least one eggshell ornament on our Christmas tree each year.

Later as my husband’s grandmother and parents passed down some of their ornaments, our trees became memory Christmas tree with each of those ornaments hanging on our tree. Then, our children made ornaments in school that we just had to add to our tree. A great-aunt and her daughter sent our children some very special ornaments that still hang on our tree. I made some ceramic ornaments, among several other homemade ones, when I was in my “crafty stage.” When our daughter married and moved out, she took a few of her ornaments and a couple of our egg ones, as well.

When our son was in grade school, he saw one of those Hallmark ads about getting a special ornament each year. He asked if we could do that, too. For those, we tried to select things that were important to him each year—like Boy Scouts, computers, and cats. A couple of years ago, he moved into a new apartment and I passed on his special ornaments, but I also gave him a couple of our egg ornaments.

This year, we are starting a new group of memory ornaments on our tree. As I have said before, our daughter and her husband are adopting a two-year-old girl. I have already started her ornament collection, dating the back of each one. This year’s ornament is a see-through snowman because she loves “nowmen.” And Grandmommy has to get her little darling what she wants.

Throwback Thursday: Children with a Birthday Cake

From my "old and unknown" file:

Little boy: “I can fix it. She’ll never know I took a bite.”

That was my caption. What's yours? Let me know in the comments.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Memory Monday: What I Give Thanks For

My father, grandfather, and step-grandmother

WHAT I GIVE THANKS FOR

I love Thanksgiving and not just because of the turkey. Actually, we don’t have turkey. We have smoked meat. Last year, it was brisket and ribs. This year, it is pulled pork. See, we are equal opportunity meat-eaters—as long as we can smoke it on my son’s Traeger smoker. Now with that explained, let me share what I love about Thanksgiving. It is the THANKSGIVING. There is so much to be thankful for—the memories of those who have gone before me, leaving lessons lovingly taught about right and wrong, about helping, sharing, and giving, lessons lived out before me in the lives of my parents, grandparents, assorted aunts and uncles, as well as the stories passed down about those who lived before me. The lessons I value most  deal with faith. I have been blessed to have seen the faith of my parents. I loved to hear the way my father prayed, especially in his later years and the way my mother always spoke about how God had blessed her in simple little ways, like how He washed her car when He sent rain.

I am thankful that my father, as well as a large number of other men in my family, took up arms and fought for our country. My father is pictured above in his Army Air Corp uniform during WWII. I have family who also fought for America through the years, including a number who fought for our freedom from England in the American Revolution. There are also several of my generation who have served in our military, and for them, I am also thankful.

I am thankful for my wonderful husband of 44 years and the way he cherishes me, the way he takes care of the house so I can have time to write, and the way has been a wonderful father and example to our children through the years.

I am thankful for the generations that are coming after me—our son and our daughter, along with her husband and daughter. There is so much thankfulness in my heart for our granddaughter and the privilege and blessing of taking care of her while her parents work.

There are so many more blessings for which I’m thankful—things that God pours out on my family and me every day of my life. Thank you, God, for loving me, for blessing me, for Jesus. Thank You.

What fills your heart with thankfulness as Thanksgiving Day approaches (and every day)?

Throwback Thursday: A Man with Bananas

From my "Old and Unknown" Files

Man holding bananas: “Yep, my job is to feed the monkeys.”

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments below.

Memory Monday: Voting in Our Family

My Mother

VOTING IN OUR FAMILY

A number of years ago—after my father passed away, my mother moved to the same town where my family and I lived. I remember asking her about voting. She told me that my father and she had never voted and she didn’t plan to now. I thought how sad never to feel a part of the larger happening of our country.
Do you remember how you looked forward to getting old enough to finally vote? I do. The thing was that when I was 19 or 20, the voting age changed from 21 to 18, so the “first time” I could vote passed me by. The first time I got to vote, I was just one of lots of others that were voting. OK, I got over that—kinda.
Through the years, my husband and I have always voted—well, to be completely honest, there were a few school election/budget votes we forgot about. After we had children, we always took them with us, even into the voting booths and showed them how we marked our ballots, then put them into the voting machines. For years, our daughter called it “boting.”
Now that we have a two-year-old granddaughter (and get to watch her while her parents work), we decided to take her with us when we voted earlier this month. We talked about it from the time her daddy brought her before work until we left to go “bote”—yes, she used the same word our daughter had years before, even though we tried to get her to say “vote.” We had planned to vote about 10 in the morning, knowing from past experience that would be the least busy time, and we, and our little granddaughter, would get in and out quickly. We were in for a rude awakening. The parking lot was filled (that had never happened before). When we peeked inside, we were told that the line waiting to vote was at least an hour long. No way could we keep our little precious corralled that long, especially as lunch (and nap) time was approaching. We started to leave when she got really upset. She kept calling out to vote—or in her words “bote.” All the way home, she cried out to bote. We ended up waiting for her mother to pick her up, then we voted—the line was so long we still had to wait an hour. I think our daughter took her to vote with her, so our little one didn’t totally miss out on voting day.
I just hope our granddaughter keeps her enthusiasm for voting and does it every time she can once she is old enough to do it.

Throwback Thursday: Veteran's Day

This week's Old and Unknown Picture:

To all our veterans on this Veterans’ Day, thank you for your service.

Feel free to leave Veteran's Day thoughts in the comments below.

Memory Monday: Food and Clothing Part 2

My Great-Great Grandfather

FOOD AND CLOTHING PART 2

Last week, I shared what a man would eat in sixty years according to the magazine Facts for Farmers, also the Family Circle from 1865. The picture above is my great-great grandfather. He was born in 1801 and died in 1881, so he would have eaten a bit more food that was listed last week. Today, I am sharing—from the same article—how much fabric it would take to cloth the same gentleman back then. When you think about what we wear today—lots of tees, shorts, and jeans, it seems almost impossible for one person to use that much fabric for his or her clothes even in sixty years. Here is the second part of that article:

We estimate that a full-dressed man carries about fifty yards of cloth upon his body, or at least it has taken so many square yards of Cloth to make the following garments:

one under and one over shirt and drawers, eight yards; vest, with all its inside and out, four yards; coat, overcoat, and cloak, 32 yards; the handkerchiefs in the coat and cloak pockets, two yards; pants, lined, four yards.

Then we may add a night-shirt, four yards, and morning wrapper, 10 yards, and we have 64 yards for a single suit. Allow six of these suits a year—of some garments he will want more, and some less than six, but take that as an average, and we have 384 yards for the gentleman's wardrobe one year. Multiply that by sixty years, and two have 23,040 yards of cloth, which appears a fair allowance, as we throw out the ten years of childhood.

With these garments be will want each year two pair of boots, two pair of shoes, two pair of slippers, two pair of rubbers or overshoes-480 pairs. With these he will wear sixty dozen pairs of stockings and (four hats a year) 240 hats.

I will say nothing about the yards of cloth that he will want about his toilet and table, his carpets and curtains, and his bed, with its daily change of bedding; but you can imagine it would make a large spread. The great question for consideration, in an agricultural point of view, is this: Could such a consumer of earth's products produce as much as he consumed, with all industry applied during life, or would he be dependent upon the labor of others?

I don’t know about you, but I’ll stick to the tees, jeans, crocs, and an occasional jacket. What about you?

Throwback Thursday: Boy on a Car

From my "old and unknown files":

Boy: This makes a fun slide, but you got to watch out that your britches don’t get caught on the trunk handle

That was my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments.

Memory Monday: Food and Clothing Part 1

My Great-great Aunt and Uncle

FOOD AND CLOTHING PART 1

I chose the picture above because the couple looks to in their seventies or so, but they would have been in their thirties in 1865, in their prime, working hard as farmers. This ties in with a most interesting article I found in a book from that time titled Facts for Farmers, also the Family Circle. Today, everyone seems to be concerned about what they eat—carbs, fats, proteins and how to balance them all. In the article below, it doesn’t seem that the people in the mid-19^th Century worried so much about all that. Just look at what an average man who lives to the age of 70 years old would eat in a lifetime. Makes one stop and think about how much we eat today (but then we might not work as hard as they did back then). By the way, I’m not sure what some of these things are.

THE FOOD AND CLOTHING A MAN MAY CONSUME IN A LIFETIME.

Alex Soyer's "Modern Housewife" gives the following calculation as the probable amount of food that an epicure of seventy years might have consumed. "Supposing his gastronomic performances to commence at ten years, he will make 65,700 breakfasts, dinners, and suppers, to say nothing of luncheons and extra feastings.

To supply the epicure's table for sixty years, Soyer calculates he will require 80 oxen, 200 sheep, 100 calves, 200 lambs, 50 pigs; in poultry, 1,200 fowls, 300 turkeys, 150 geese, 400 ducklings, 263 pigeons; 1,400 partridges, pheasants, and grouse; 600 woodcocks and snipes; 600 wild ducks, widgeon, and teal; 450 plovers, ruffs, and reeves; 800 quails, ortolans, and dotterels, and a few guillemots and other foreign birds; also 500 hares and rabbits, 40 deer, 120 Guinea-fowl, 10 peacocks, and 360 wild-fowls.

In the way of fish, 120 turbot, 140 salmon, 120 cod, 260 trout, 400 mackerel, 300 whitings, 800 soles and slips, 400 flounders, 400 red mullet, 209 eels, 150 haddocks, 400 herrings, 5,000 smelts, and some hundred thou sand of those delicious, silvery whitebait, besides a few hundred species of fresh-water fishes.

In shell-fish, 20 turtle, 30,000 oysters, 1,500 lobsters or crabs, 300,000 prawns, shrimps, sardines, and anchovies.

In the way of fruit, about 500 lbs. of grapes, 360 lbs. of pineapples, 600 peaches, 1,400 apricots, 240 melons, and some hundred thousand plums, green-gages, ap ples, pears, and some millions of cherries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, mulberries, and an abundance of other small fruit, viz., walnuts, chestnuts ,dry figs, and plums.

In vegetables of all kinds, 5,475 lbs. weight, and about 2,434 lbs. of butter, 684 lbs. of cheese, 21,000 eggs, 800 tongues.

Of bread, 41 tons, half a ton of salt and pepper, near 21 tons of sugar.

His drink during the same period may be set down as follows: 49 hogsheads of wine; 18,683 gallons of beer, 584 gallons of spirits, 342 gallons of liqueur, 2,3941 gallons of coffee, cocoa, tea, etc., and 304 gallons of milk, 2,736 gallons of water.

This mass of food in sixty years amounts to no less than 831 tons weight of meat, farinaceous food and vegetables, etc., out of which I have named in detail the probable delicacies that would be selected by an epicure through life.

But observe that I did not count the first ten years of his life, at the beginning of which he lived upon pap, bread and milk, etc., also a little meat, the expense of which I add to the age from then to twenty, as no one can really be called an epicure before that age; it will thus make the expenses more equal as regards the calculation.

The following is the list of what I consider his daily meals:

"BREAKFAST.—Three-quarters of a pint of coffee, four ounces of bread, one ounce of butter, two eggs, or four ounces of meat, or four ounces of fish.

"LUNCH.—Two ounces of bread, two ounces of meat, or poultry, or game, two ounces of vegetables, and a half pint of beer, or a glass of wine.

"DINNER.—Half a pint of soup, a quarter of a pound of fish, half a pound of meat, a quarter of a pound of poultry, a quarter of a pound of savory dishes or game, two ounces of vegetables, two ounces of bread, two ounces of pastry or roasts, half an ounce of cheese, a quarter of a pound of fruit, one pint of wine, one glass of liqueur, one cup of coffee or tea; at night one glass of spirits and water."

But then again, if we totaled up how much we each eat in a lifetime, we might not be so different from our ancestors. Or we might be eating more. Although, eating 800 tongues in any lifetime (at least for me) would just not happen.

Next week, I will have Part 2 where I show how much clothing it took for a lifetime.

Throwback Thursday: The Grumpy Girl

From my "old and unknown file":

Little Girl: “No stand! Want candy!!!”

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments.

Memory Monday: A Typical Wednesday and What We Eat

My Grandparents on Their Wedding Day

A TYPICAL WEDNESDAY AND WHAT WE EAT

Wednesday mornings are busy times at our house. My husband and I always go grocery shopping together—that is, after he’s had breakfast out with some of the people from his Sunday School Class. (I sleep in and am usually just about to have breakfast when he returns home. My favorite breakfast—Breakfast tacos, store-bought, of course.)

Well, with breakfast taken care of, we go and get our groceries. On the way home, we often stop by Subway (or some other favorite place) and get lunch to take home.

For supper, my husband usually has cereal from a box (since he didn’t have it for breakfast. I look around the fridge or cabinet and find something to nuke in the microwave. AHH, the joys of fixing food from my family.

It was so-o-o-o different years ago (like in the early years of my grandparents’ marriage. They married in 1910). No wonder the women didn’t work outside the home then—they didn’t have the time. Just look at what a cook book has for the menu for a typical Wednesday. This is from Five Cent Meals, copyright 1914.

BREAKFAST

RICE GRIDDLE CAKES
FETED BACON STRIPS
BANANAS
COFFEE—MILK

Rice Griddle Cakes

34 cup boiled rice 2 tablespoons drippings

2 cups flour 5 teaspoons baking powder

1¼ cup liquid 1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons sugar

Mix the dry ingredients. Add rice to the liquid ingredients. An egg may be added. Combine with the dry and beat well. Cook by tablespoonfuls the same as other griddle cakes.

Preparing the Meal

Make griddle cakes and start the first griddle full to cooking. Make the coffee, slice and fry the bacon, and set the table, attending to the cooking of the cakes at the same time, and when they are finished serve the breakfast.

Extra Baking

Before starting to cook the noon meal mix the bread and set it to rise. It will be ready for the second kneading soon after lunch, and can be baked before time for the evening meal. Make cinnamon rolls as well as bread. If coal or wood fire is used, plan to keep the top of the stove full while fire is going. Leave no empty space in the oven while it is hot.

LUNCH

SPLIT PEA LOAF

SLICED TOMATOES

BREAD WITH OLEO

TEA—MILK

Split Pea Loaf

4 cups split peas, cooked 1 beaten egg

2 cups bread crumbs 1 teaspoon minced onion

1 tablespoon minced parsley, celery, or other flavoring as

desired. Salt and pepper to taste.

Mix all the ingredients together. If too soft to hold its shape add more bread crumbs. If too dry, add milk, water or another egg. Form into loaf. Brown in oven.

Preparing the Meal

Use split peas cooked on Tuesday. A half hour before meal time, make loaf and put in oven to brown. Slice the tomatoes. Set the table and make the tea.

DINNER

Wednesday

BAKED CROQUETTES

BAKED POTATOES

HOT CINNAMON ROLLS

BANANAS WITH LEMON JUICE
LEMONADE

Baked Croquettes

3 cups chopped meat 1 teaspoon onion juice

3 cups bread crumbs 1 teaspoon salt

2 cups thick white sauce Pepper to taste

Make a white sauce by stirring ½ cup flour into ¼ cup melted fat, cook till frothy, then add slowly 2 cups milk or water, or the two mixed, stirring all the time, and cook again till thick, stirring till smooth.

Add cooked meat—beef, mutton, veal or pork—and bread crumbs. Mix well, form into croquettes about 3 inches long, lay them in greased pan, and set in hot oven to brown.

Bananas with Lemon Juice

Slice 4 bananas, sprinkle with brown sugar and lemon

juice.

Preparing the Meal

Put six potatoes for dinner and four for tomorrow's lunch in oven one hour before meal time, while bread is still baking. Croquettes and cinnamon rolls (see page 16) may be baked together about ½ hour before meal time. Set the table, prepare the bananas and lemonade.

The exciting part of this menu is that the next day for breakfast is that FARINA MUSH WITH TOP MILK is at the top of the menu. YUM!!! Really, please let me go shopping again tomorrow and have a McDonald’s Egg White Delight with sausage instead of Canadian Bacon and an caramel iced coffee.

Throwback Thursday: Man and Woman Smiling and Staring at the Camera

From my "old and known" files:

Man: Keep smiling. I don’t know who they are, but just keep smiling.

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments.

Memory Monday: The Tale of the Veil

My Wedding

THE TALE OF THE VEIL

My husband and I were married in the 1970s. My mother made my dress and veil. Five years later, we bought a house and took all the things that had been stored at both sets of parents’ houses. Sometime later, I unpacked the dress and veil. Unfortunately the crown of the veil had been crushed beyond repair. So when our daughter got older and wanted to place dress-up, I let her use a lacy top and the crushed veil when she wanted to play bride. We played it over and over so many times. As she got older, we put away those make-believe clothes and they stayed packed away for many years.

After our children moved out, my husband got his study back and I got the third bedroom for my library. The one thing I made sure to do was make a corner into a grandchild’s play area, including make-believe clothes. The time has come to take that old, worn veil out again. My granddaughter has worn it a couple of times. But she is just two and I see her wearing it many more times as she plays at Granddaddy and Grandmommy’s house.

I look forward to telling her how her great-grandmother made the veil for Grandmommy (and show her our wedding pictures in the albums), then how her mommy played with it. Just think—four generations have had their hands on that bit of fabric and netting.

I like tales that link the generations in our family.

Throwback Thursday: Girl with a Cat

From my Old and Unknown File:

"It’s my cat, and if I want to name it 'Dog,' I can!"

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments below.

Memory Monday: Things My Grandmother Might Have Done

My Daddy as a Toddler

THINGS MY GRANDMOTHER MIGHT HAVE DONE

Maybe because I never knew my maternal grandmother (she died when my dad was nine years old), I like looking at books that were written after she married my grandfather. I like to see what she might have read or been told about housekeeping and cooking. One of the books I have used is titled Putman’s Household Hints and it was written in 1916—the year before my dad was born.

I would like to share a few of the things from that book. I really like the last one and might try it the next time my gravy is pale.

Soup poured through a cloth will have all the fat removed.

Place salt in the oven under the baking tins and the contents will not scorch on the bottom.

Never use bread and meat knives around the heat as it will temper the edges.

In cases of emergency, when it is necessary to cut fresh bread and the knife refuses to work proper ly, heat the knife and the bread will cut easily. To do this often, however, is death to the knife.

A teaspoonful of cornstarch added to a cupful of salt and mixed thoroughly will keep salt from sticking in damp weather.

When serving butter in cubes, if a small piece of the paper in which the butter is wrapped is placed over the blade of the knife with which the butter is being cut the edge will be smooth and even.

If a quantity of browned flour is kept on hand for making gravy, a great deal of time will be saved.

When gravy does not brown pour into it a table spoonful of coffee. It will brown immediately and contain no taste of coffee. This is quicker than browning flour when in a hurry.

How many of these hints have you heard of before? Which ones do you think you will try?

Throwback Thursday: Children in a Wagon

From my "Old and Unknown File":

"Think we can get another half dozen kids in the wagon?"

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments below.

Memory Monday: Child's Chair

Little Blue Chair

A Child's Chair with a History and Maybe a Future

I won’t say our family members are hoarders, but some of the things we keep are used for generations. My husband was an only child, and his mother saved a number of things from his childhood—his story books, his metal trucks, his small record player with records, his little cowboy boots (which no one after him ever wore), his porcelain potty (not the chair, just the bowl), as well as several other things, including the chair above.

Now my mother didn’t save as much, but then there were four of us girls. I still have my last doll which my daughter played with when she was a little girl (see post about the LAST DOLL), a few books that I got through a Weekly Readers Book Club subscription, and a stuffed Jolly Green doll (well, this last one I finally threw away a couple of years ago because it was literally falling apart, maybe because it was over fifty years old).

I guess I have passed on the saving/hoarding gene to my daughter. It showed up in her at an early age. Once when I told her to clean her room, she hauled a large trash bag into the living room filled with books, toys, and trash. When I asked if it needed to go to the dumpster or put with what we would sell in a garage sale, she let me know it was neither—it was what she was saving for her children. Now you have to understand that at the time she was probably only in the second or third grade, so I figure she had heard me say the same thing “way too many times” about something I was saving for my grandchildren.

But there are some things that have been saved (and used) across the generations. The chair pictured above is one of those things. My husband used it about sixty-five years ago when he was a little boy, only it was a deep rose red then. Years later, our two children (who are both in their thirties now) used it. We have discussed the different colors of the chair lately, but neither one of use can remember when it was repainted blue (there is a layer of white between the red and the blue—how patriotic).

The chair is in use again for the newest generation. Our little two-year-old granddaughter sits on it while she plays in our living room. It is just the right size for her. And as well-built as it is, it should be available for the next generation in about another twenty or twenty-five years (and maybe several more generations after that).

Throwback Thursday: Baby on a Blanket Outside

Ahh! Learning to sunbathe at a young age.

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments.

Memory Monday: Pictures of Family Connected by History

My Great-Grandfather

PICTURES OF FAMILY CONNECTED BY HISTORY

Sometimes as I go through the old family pictures, I tend to lose touch with the people in the pictures. I know who they are, after all, their names are written (sometimes) on the back of the pictures. But after a while of going through them all, they just become photos. I lose the connection to the family unless I have personally known them.

One of the things that has helped me is to try to connect these people with events in history or in the lives of the family members I have known. The man pictured above is my mother’s grandfather on her father’s side of the family. While he was born in Russia in 1872, he came to America in 1892, then settled and married in 1895 while living in Kansas. Now I don’t know what Russia was like in 1872, but I have done enough historical research to know what life was like in Kansas at that time. I can imagine him, his wife (who also migrated from Russia), and their children living and farming on the flat plains of Kansas. I now can get a sense of my great-grandparents, and maybe a little of what my maternal grandmother’s life was like as a small child.

This great-grandfather passed away in 1944—toward the end of the Second World War (and well before I was born). My father and father-in-law both served in that war. I have heard stories from both of these men about growing up in Texas and what life was like at that time. That also helps me to “see” my great-grandfather and the way he might have lived.

While I will never have the connections to people before my grandparents’ generation that I have with the people I have known, talked to, and loved, I can still get a sense of those who came before and maybe, just maybe, be able to pass that on to the generations that come after me.

Throwback Thursday: Woman and Teen Hanging about a Car

     LADY IN CAR—Silly, how many times do I have to tell you that you can’t ride on the running board?

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments.

Memory Monday: Our Ancestors, Us, and a Poem

My husband and I shortly after our honeymoon

OUR ANCESTORS, US, AND A POEM

The other day, I was talking to a clerk at the store where we were shopping. Something came up about marriage. I said we had been married a little over 44 years. The clerk said her parents had been married just over 19 years.

This got me thinking about how many years my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents had been married—which for many of them was a long, long time. These thoughts, in turn, caused me to remember a favorite poem of mine, even though my husband’s name is not John Anderson (see how my mind works).

I’d like to share the poem with you, but first I need to define a few words: jo is sweetheart, brent is smooth or unwrinkled, beld is bald, pow (Scottish, N. England) means head, snaw is snow and canty means cheerful. The poem was written by Robert Burns. He died in 1796, which was years before my grandfather’s great-grandfather was born.

John Anderson my jo, John
John Anderson my jo, John, 

      When we were first acquent,
    Your locks were like the raven, 

      Your bonie brow was brent; 

     But now your brow is beld, John, 

      Your locks are like the snaw, 

     But blessings on your frosty pow, 

      John Anderson, my jo! 

    John Anderson my jo, John, 

      We clamb the hill thegither, 

    And monie a cantie day, John, 

      We've had wi' ane anither; 

    Now we maun totter down, John, 

      And hand in hand we'll go, 

     And sleep thegither at the foot, 

      John Anderson, my jo! 

     I love you, my husband. May God grant us many more years tottering down together.

Throwback Thursday: Little Girl in an Old Walker

Little girl—What do you mean “I have to push it?”

That's my caption. What's yours? Leave it in the comments below.