A CITY GIRL'S FARM MEMORIES

Painting by Ben Viegers

I love farmers and their way of life. My sister married into a farm family and got to find out first hand what it was like. I would go visit her on weekends and stay with her for a few weeks in the Summer. My memories center around their old barn for the most part. They sold milk in those large aluminum milk containers, to a dairy truck that came by every day to pick it up. I would go watch the milk process as they milked each cow and fed them. It was nice and quiet in the barn and very early in the morning, so you could still smell the dew on the grass when you walked up to the barn. Inside it was warm and lit by kerosene lamps, with their nice pleasant glow. There was this nice smell of hay and sweet, creamy milk. I would always drink a glass as they poured into into the containers.

There was one little cow that got personal attention. My Sister's Mother in law would get a little black, three legged stool, and pull up to the cow, all the time telling her what a good and nice cow she was. I could tell this was more than just a cow to her. She loved this cow and really enjoyed milking her. She asked me once if I wanted to see the star in the cow's teats and I leaned over to see. She sprayed my face full of warm milk. LOL. That's not the only trick she pulled on me. I was very gullible about farm things.

I did try chopping cotton one time. I was told to chop, leave a hoe's width and then chop again, It ended up looking so neat. I was very proud of myself. I also developed a really painful set of blisters on my hands. But the memory is still good.
I also picked cotton that Summer. I picked and picked,,,,cut hands and fingers, dragging that long heavy, cotton bag. By the end of the first day, I just knew I had made a fortune. My bag had a lot in it. We stepped up to the scales and weighed. I picked twenty lbs.. After all that hard work....everyone else had picked at least two hundred and some had a whole lot more, even the little kids outpicked me. I was just no good at this and retired the next day. There had to be a better way of earning movie money. They tell me a really good picker could pick three or four hundred lbs in a day. I don't know how they did it. I guess hungry children at home are a great motivator.

My first experience with a vegetable garden, brought the kind of embarrassing story you just don't want floating around the family and retold often. My sister had to go to town and in those days, "go to town", could take all day. They bought groceries, paid bills, got animal feed, visited the farm store for any necessary farm supplies, picked up their checks at the dairy, went to the drug store etc. They had to make sure they got all the supplies they needed because they only made the trip about every two weeks. I was told to go to the garden and pick some turnip greens and make some corn bread for supper. Now I knew how to cook fairly well at an early age but I didn't know how to harvest vegetables. I went out to the garden and pulled a good mess of greens, and gathered a few green onions.

I made the best dinner. I cleaned those beautiful white turnips and chopped them up, added the well washed greens, fried a piece of salt pork and added that along with some onion and made the corn bread. I felt really proud. My Sister and her husband came home all tired and hungry. I set the table, piled bowls high with the greens and juice, brought out cold glasses of milk and my pretty, brown and crusty cornbread...and then my brother in law took his first bite. He took another bite and looked at me. "Where did you get these greens" he asked..."On the first row in the garden", I said...he started to laugh and then my Sister joined in...I couldn't figure why they were laughing. Then he told me I had picked a nice mess of white radishes. I cooked the radishes and the tops, just the way you do turnip greens. But they ate the resulting greens, bless them and even said for radishes they weren't so bad...LOL....I guess if you are starving, anything taste good.

GROWING OLDER AND BETTER

That is a picture of the Beautiful MS Gulf Coast. Where I have lived since 1970 and it is this sight that people come from miles around to see. I am blessed to be living here and very grateful. It is hard to be unhappy for long, in a place like this. There is something about the splashing waves and the crying of the Seagulls, that just restores your soul and brings peace.

I started this blog on growing older and how I deal with it, in an effort to put growing older in perspective. I wanted to share my memories and maybe touch a common chord with others about growing older. Growing old is not for sissies that's for sure. Sharing your feelings with others who may be trying to come to grips with the same things you are, does help. I try not to live in the past, but I find my mind wonders back there from time to time, back to good memories. That is not to say, that I don't have bad ones, I do, but they are not the ones that define me.

I find that after all is said and done, I have had a good life. I have regrets of course, things I could have handled better but you can't change things by beating yourself up. We need to stop throwing up camp around our mistakes and move on. Looking back on the "could have, should haves" is no way to spend the precious time we are given. We never know what lies beyond the mountain, till we reach the other side, so I'll just keep on practicing until I
get it right.

Along the way I have learned not to sweat the small stuff, and it truly is mostly small stuff we stress over. I try to find something I can feel good about each day and if the day is not perfect, that's okay. God never promised us an easy journey, just a soft landing. I have a deep emotional bond to my dysfunctional life. LOL...so I sure don't plan on checking out any time soon.

SMELLS THAT BRING BACK A MEMORY

Painting by Michael Bingham

Once in a while, there is a sweet smell that wafts in so softly, I'm not sure if it is real or a memory. The smell of lavender comes out of nowhere. I will be reading in my chair by the window or lying in bed, after the lights are out, and there it is. I am sure there is an explanation for this, but I don't know what it is. It triggers a very distant memory of bright white, clean sheets hanging in the Sun on a clothesline. I think it is my Aunt's clean linens I am remembering. Although I can no longer see the face clearly, I still remember scraps of things, from that time spent with an Aunt. I stayed with her during the Summer, because she lived in the country and I loved it. I think of her, when I smell lavender.


The smell of brown sugar reminds me of Saturday mornings and my Mama's homemade caramel rolls. Since Mama worked hard all week as a spinner in a cotton mill, this was the only time we got to spend with her. We were allowed to have coffee to go with our rolls, if we put more milk than coffee in the cup. The smell of that brown sugar and hot, buttery smell, was more than I could bear. I loved her homemade rolls.

Billy says there was a large, red clay, pit down from where our home is now, when he was a child. After it rains, you can sometimes smell the clay...That triggers a memory for me. We used to play on a large red clay, hill, when I was growing up....That hill is huge in my memory but it probably wasn't all that big. We took large cardboard boxes and flattened them out and slid down that hill on our stomachs, rather like those lucky enough to have snow will do with their sleds. Our cardboard sleds were great to us. We didn't know about snow,,,being born in Mississippi...but we knew that a red clay hill was shiny and slick from all the years of kids sliding down it. After a rain, we had to wait for the Sun to bake it again, but in the South, that happens quickly. We would play on that hill all Summer.


The smell of Old Spice shaving lotion, always reminds me of an Uncle. We called him Uncle Dude. I think he got that name because he raised horses and trained them. He would put me up on a horses back once the horse got used to the blanket and lead me around in the fenced in area where he trained his horses. Mama would have killed him if she had known about it. He said I was so light, the horse hardly knew I was there and it got them use to having a rider. I don't know about that, I just thought it was fun. I can smell that Old Spice today, every time I am around horses.

Certain smells brings back pictures as clear as photographs of scenes. Like the smell of cedar brings back my Grandmother's cedar chest to my mind. They have left the conscious mind but they are not forgotten. As long as we have our memories, people and places live on. Maybe we never forget anything. There is no proof that we forget. Maybe it is all still there just waiting for a smell, a taste or sound, to bring it all back.

OPEN DOORS

"The Open Door" A lovely painting by Shirley Reade


Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
~T.S. Eliot

MEMORIES OF MY GRANDMOTHER

I remember very little about my Daddy's Mother. She died when I was young. I do remember her giving me and my sister, those little Hershey kisses in the shape of a teardrop, wrapped in silver tinfoil. She always had these for us. She kept them in a cedar chest with all her treasures. They were in a beautiful tin box that had these embossed birds, in jewel tones, on the top. I didn't know they were embossed at the time, but looking back as an adult, I can remember that box. It was beautiful. The candy always had the taste and smell of cedar. We loved to visit her, not because of the candy but because she was so sweet and caring. Even as kids, we knew this was a special lady. I wish I knew more about her. It is a big loss to me to have so few Grandmother memories. My Mother's Mama died before I was born and I don't recall ever meeting her Daddy. He might have been dead too. We never talked about him.

They tell me, my Grandfather was never the same after Grandmother's death. He lived with us for a while but one day, he just wasn't there. Daddy said he had to put him in a place where they could help him because he couldn't be left alone and both Daddy and Mama worked. I missed him and I understood why he missed my Grandmother so much. She had a lovely, serene way about her. A delicate way of talking and walking, and she dressed always in these soft, pastel colors. A real Southern lady.

OLD BOYFRIENDS AND CHOCOLATE

Oh sure. Now I have your attention. What is it about chocolate that just makes all women a little crazy. I will totally desert a diet, for a piece of chocolate. I once went out with this boy who came to my door bearing a box of chocolates and a bunch of wildflowers, even though I wasn't really "in to him" as they say nowadays. But he turned my head with my favorite two things. Pure manipulation on his part and my best friend, who was cupid to everyone. He turned out to be really nice though and I dated him for a while. He did have a big drawback for me and I know it is a shallow thing but he was working for his Dad who owned the local funeral parlor. As cute as he was and as nice, I just could not get past that part. I hope he married someone who appreciated him and wasn't quite as shallow and squeamish as me.

I can't reflect on old boyfriends too much on this blog,,you never know who might be reading and some things are just best left to the past. Besides, I found the one who God probably intended for me, but when I get to Heaven, I am going to ask God a few questions.

Like, why this man can not ever find anything in his closet when it is right their in front of him? Why does he constantly keep tyring to have the last word, when he knows it just ain't gonna happen? Why does he stand and stare at meat in the grocery store? What fascinates him so much? I swear the last time we were in there, he stood for five minutes looking at meat while I shopped. Then, I looked over and there were two other men,,in total rapture over the meat case...So if women are attracted to chocolate and just like looking at it, even when we can't have it,,(that perpetual diet thing),,,,then I guess men feel the same addiction about meat. No wonder we have trouble understanding one another.

SMELLS THAT BRING BACK A MEMEORY

Once in a while, there is a sweet smell that wafts in so softly, I'm not sure if it is real or a memory. The smell of lavender comes out of nowhere. I will be reading in my chair by the window or lying in bed, after the lights are out, and there it is. I am sure there is an explanation for this, but I don't know what it is. It triggers a very distant memory of bright white, clean sheets hanging in the Sun on a clothesline. I think it is my Aunt's clean linens I am remembering. Although I can no longer see the face clearly, I still remember scraps of things, from that time spent with an Aunt. I stayed with her during the Summer, because she lived in the country and I loved it. I think of her, when I smell lavender.


The smell of brown sugar reminds me of Saturday mornings and my Mama's homemade caramel rolls. Since Mama worked hard all week as a spinner in a cotton mill, this was the only time we got to spend with her. We were allowed to have coffee to go with our rolls, if we put more milk than coffee in the cup. The smell of that brown sugar and hot, buttery smell, was more than I could bear. I loved her homemade rolls.

Billy says there was a large, red clay, pit down from where our home is now, when he was a child. After it rains, you can sometimes smell the clay...That triggers a memory for me. We used to play on a large red clay, hill, when I was growing up....That hill is huge in my memory but it probably wasn't all that big. We took large cardboard boxes and flattened them out and slid down that hill on our stomachs, rather like those lucky enough to have snow will do with their sleds. Our cardboard sleds were great to us. We didn't know about snow,,,being born in Mississippi...but we knew that a red clay hill was shiny and slick from all the years of kids sliding down it. After a rain, we had to wait for the Sun to bake it again, but in the South, that happens quickly. We would play on that hill all Summer.


The smell of Old Spice shaving lotion, always reminds me of an Uncle. We called him Uncle Dude. I think he got that name because he raised horses and trained them. He would put me up on a horses back once the horse got used to the blanket and lead me around in the fenced in area where he trained his horses. Mama would have killed him if she had known about it. He said I was so light, the horse hardly knew I was there and it got them use to having a rider. I don't know about that, I just thought it was fun. I can smell that Old Spice today, every time I am around horses.

Certain smells brings back pictures as clear as photographs of scenes. Like the smell of cedar brings back my Grandmother's cedar chest to my mind. They have left the conscious mind but they are not forgotten. As long as we have our memories, people and places live on. Maybe we never forget anything. There is no proof that we forget. Maybe it is all still there just waiting for a smell, a taste or sound, to bring it all back.

MEMORIES OF ELVIS AND FLOWERS

I have always loved the song "Memories" and Elvis sings it better than anyone. This is a picture of Canterbury bells, a lovely wildflower. I remember playing around these flowers growing up in Mississippi and I'll bet Elvis would remember them too.


Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories, sweetened thru the ages just like wine

Quiet thought come floating down
And settle softly to the ground
Like golden autumn leaves around my feet
I touched them and they burst apart with sweet memories,
Sweet memories

Of holding hands and red bouquets
And twilight trimmed in purple haze
And laughing eyes and simple ways
And quiet nights and gentle days with you

Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories, sweetened thru the ages just like wine,
Memories, memories, sweet memories