A few views from down home....

Just a few shots from home...above the railroad us children walked to and from school.  Below, Roger and my brother walking ahead of me as we walk back up to where our old home was.

All have been posted before...below is the barn we pass on the way to the old place.  This farm before our old homeplace is where Roger and I spent a 1 1/2 yrs durning our younger days.  It is my favorite place on earth.

I hope you enjoy the photos.

I hope that someday I feel secure enough about Roger's health to drive down there again.

So many times when I am on Youtube in the video below pops up and it makes me homesick...that is what led to me posting a few pics from home.

Home to the hills

As we travel down the road that drives away and will follow us back home, no words can express how it feels as the mountains rise up to meet us....it has rained recently. Some highways are still wet, while other places show a few puddles. With an overcast sky, the sun only shows itself briefly a time or two. With no sun, the mountains are a richer green than they might appear otherwise....and in distant places there is a mist.

There is a mental mist that settles over me. Tears come to my eyes, but I blame them on my bangs getting in my eyes. It has been almost four years since I have been embraced by these green, green mountains of my youth.

I wonder what makes us the way we are. Of us children, I think I still feel a part of this land more than any of my other siblings that have moved away. For sure of the girls....my brother that lives close to Sarah feels much the same as me, but I am not sure it claims him as much as it does me. At other times, I think it is even more so with him.
So much has changed in some ways....in physical ways. The road by home has been paved....even the old rocky hill is paved. That is almost a miracle. Prior to paving, it was almost like trying to a car up a set of steps. No exaggeration. And if your car wasn't dirty when you turned down the road, by the time you drive a mile...it would have a thick coat of dust on it.

There are homes built in fields that I once played in...barns have burned down...fences have been removed. Other places have been taken over by a wild growth of weeds, bushes, and briars.

But the things that matter have not changed. People are still good neighbors, they are glad to see you, and willing to give a helping hand.

I must admit I hate seeing houses in fields I once was free to roam, but I still love the good hearted people that make up the majority of the population.
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We have been in Tennessee the past few days....I wrote the above and took those pictures the day I got there. I have been on line a few times, but never for very long and not on my on computer, so I did not mess with trying to post it till now.

Memories......

If you don't like bluegrass, you may not like the videos in this post...but they fill my heart with memories...not so much the entire songs, as phrases from them. So listen if you want, or don't...they do have the bluegrass instruments, but don't sound like what I used to think of as bluegrass. So give them a chance if you dare.


These are views I have pasted before, but ran across them last night when I was trying to upload some more of the photos that I deleted a couple years ago. Then, we were watching a couple shows on PBS tonight....the last one was one of the guy above, the one that sings second and plays mandolin. His name is Sam Bush and he used to play with New Grass Revival...now a mandolin is a lonesome sounding instrument to me. And I love them...and the whole tone of this song pulls at my heart.

See that line of trees in the photo below...it is the creek in the picture above...and when I was a kid and it rained a lot...the creek would flood and cover that whole field...and if it didn't flood a lot all the crawdad holes would have water bubbling up out of them....

Have you seen crawdad holes? I will try to think and take a photo of some when I go home. But for now check here...that field would have them all over...and when the water was bubbling, it was not uncommon for me to get down on my hands and knees and take a drink. I don't know if anyone else did it, but I think they did. How we didn't catch some awful disease, I do not know. Must have been God watching over us.
We are planning on going down as soon as it gets good and warm, but hopefully before the heat of summer....and the Lorelei and her mommy and daddy might drive down, too.

Speaking of them, they did come today. First they stopped at a bank in Terre Haute to close an account they had there...Sarah said when they went in Lorelei started just crying, wanting to see her Papaw and Mamaw...

And from there they ran by the hospital there to see new baby on Jeremy's side of the family...and all the time they were there she was wanting to come see Mamaw and Papaw. She comes in here just like a big girl....as if she owns the place....she for sure owns our heart. Sometimes I just hate for her to grow up, but I know that is the plan...and really I wouldn't want her to stay a child...it is so fun watch her learn how to do things and to see her figure things out. It is sort of that she just changes so much in the few days we don't see her.
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I am posting this song...you may or may not have heard of Ralph Stanley...well this one is from his son. While I have never been a big fan of Ralph Stanley, Sr.....I love this one by his son, Ralph Stanley, II It has that lonesome sound to it that I am in tonight. He was on the first show we watched tonight...or at least appeared to sing this song for his dad. In this song, the Carter that is mentioned is his uncle.

Christmas mood....

We were coming home from Sarah's today, and happened to have the radio on and this song happened to come on...

I so would love to be home one more time in my life when a few inches of snow is on ground....the photo below is of our childhood home. I can remember wishing we had ornaments to really decorate that blue spruce out front for Christmas. We were lucky to have any to go on our Christmas tree....let alone to decorate outside. We had a strand or two of the big multicolored lights and a few of the shiny ball ornaments...I don't ever remember getting to buy any new ones.

However, I can remember cutting a star out of cardboard and wrapping it in aluminum foil to put on the spruce...I think about this every year...and I never fail to think about how we saved wrapping paper from year to year. And I think of gathering pine cones and painting them with gold and silver paint. Thinking about that now, I would love to know where the paint came from and why we had it. It was in little bottles...maybe a couple inches tall. I wonder if they had been model paint...but even if they were, that still does not explain why we had them.

But don't feel sorry or sad for me...having a childhood like this has made even simple things so much more enjoyable. I buy a few new Christmas ornaments every year, and probably get twice the enjoyment from it that most people do.
Anyway, all that is going through my mind, and thinking how I have lived in the small town I live in now for 30 years...even with living here that long, Tennessee is still home.

And I would love to go back to Tennessee to live, but I could never willingly move farther way from Lorelei....nor her mommy either. It is bad enough when the kids move away by choice or with work and jobs...but I don't think I could willingly move away from them. Our one daughter lives on the west coast, but at least we have hopes of her someday moving back closer to home.

Right now I get sort of teary-eyed after leaving Lorelei...she is such a bright part of our life. She is always so glad to see us...right now she is at the age where Mamaw and Papaw can do no wrong...and honestly she can't either;-)

Going back....

My brother Neal has wanted me to try to write this for a long time...it is hard to do and do it right but here goes. This is the house of our nearest neighbor when I grew up. It is as it was when I grew up....this is not a good picture of it. I don't have one...this is just a cropped portion of another one. It was the home of V and V....both their names did begin with V. What are the chances of that?

I don't quite know where to begin...maybe I will say that every now and then, mom and I would walk out there to visit. I know we sometimes stopped to visit in the summer, usually just for a few minutes then. I think we were more apt to go visit in the cooler months. Maybe because mom did not have quite the work to do in the winter.

Going there was like stepping back in time. You just cannot imagine...my words are inadequate. The first thing that always hit me was just how gray the atmosphere was...and I actually think a lot of things were gray. You walked into the what would normally be the living room, and there was the gray floor....I don't know if it was a gray linoleum or if it was actually gray floorboards. The room had little in it...I don't think it had a couch....but I am not positive. It seems there was something to sit on, just not a sofa as we think of them. What was in there was the horses bridle...I don't remember if the rest of the harness was there, but that always struck me odd for the bridle to be there.

We would go through another room, at one time I am sure it was meant for a dining room, but we just passed through it and I know on the one side of the room was a bed. Now, what is funny, we would close the door between that room and the living room...and we would pass through it into the kitchen...again the door closed behind us.

The kitchen is where they lived...they had an a-m radio and a single light bulb hanging down in the middle of the room. I know the table was set in front of the window that faced our house...and I know there was a cook stove in there. The wood burning kind. But I don't remember much else about it other than the walls were covered with newspapers and cardboard, and a calender of course. I would set listening to the talk...talk about crops, gardening, etc.

They did not have running water...they had a well outside where they got their water--the kind you lower a bucket down and bring it up one bucket at a time. She did have a wringer washer...considering everything, I think she must have been lucky to have it. And they had an outhouse...which some college kids stole one weekend. I am sure they probably did not even realize anyone actually lived in the house....my brothers had to go find it and retrieve it....and no, they were not involved in taking it.

Another thing, they didn't drive, didn't have a car. The post office and store were about a mile away. I honestly don't know if this part is true, or if it just seemed to me that Mr. V walked down to the store and post office every weekday...at the least every other day. But he would try to time it to catch rides from neighbors...going or coming. And though he did go most days, Mrs. V very seldom left the home. At the most they might come out to our house and visit. If they had to go to an actual town they would find someone to give them a ride. It goes without saying that they did not have a phone...if they needed to make a phone call, they came and used ours.

Neal and I were talking earlier, as long as we knew him he never worked a regular job. He was in the army at one time, but probably only for a short period...he did not retire from it. They had a small garden, and raised a patch of tobacco. His dad had a tractor and would do the initial plowing...you know where you plow deep and turn the ground over after it has gone through the winter. He had a horse to do the rest of the plowing with...

They were strange...even for down there at that time and place. Their doors were always locked...unless they were sitting on their front porch. They were locked if they were in the house...night and day. If they were out in the garden at the side of the house, the doors were locked. Mrs. V's dad had to stay with them for a while, and they would lock the doors on him and leave him locked in. My dad would go out to visit him and they would have to yell through the door. Then dad remember we had an old skeleton key and took it, and could unlock the door. I don't remember their reaction to that. Her dad was not strange...and neither was his dad....so don't know why they were so strange.

She would see some of us kids out, and hide behind the chimney or an outbuilding...and would peek around the corner at us. At other times, she would go on about her business, and would speak if we were close enough.

Everyone was always good to them...there was always someone to help him load his tobacco and take it to market...even though he always found an excuse not to help anyone. He would condemn television, but yet when they came to our house to visit, if it was on he could not take his eyes off it.

Even though we lived by them all those years, there were things about them that will always puzzle me.

I am leaving out somethings...maybe my brother will comment and tell about them...like Roxie their horse. Right now I am running out of steam and need to close and post this.

Tennessee pastures

From the pastures of Tennessee...be sure and click to get the full effect.

Christmas memories

I have not sewn a stitch today--but I did make another batch of Fantasy Fudge. Actually a double batch. And it turned out good for the first time in ages. I wanted some to give to a couple friends...but don't know when I am going to get it to the one. I called her and she was not home..so maybe she went to some of her kids' homes for the holidays.

Husband stayed home today with a sinus infection. He did not sleep hardly any last night and kept the rest of us up most of the night with his coughing. He doesn't go back to work till the day after Christmas.

Christmas is almost here...and I haven't found any hard candy so far. Hard candy, apples and oranges are such a part of my Christmas memories. Mommy and daddy always bought a bushel of red delicious apples and a bushel of oranges every Christmas that I can remember. I was not crazy about the apples, and today I care even less for red delicious. But I remember loving the oranges, or to be more specific the juice from them.

And we usually got at least one new jigsaw puzzle at Christmas...to this day I love jigsaw puzzles. If not for the kitties I would have one out right now.

We always hung up an actual sock Christmas eve and would get up and find hard candy, nuts, and apples and oranges in them. And when I was small, I always got a cap buster. Mom would hide it some where and I would usually hunt and search till I found it...let the noise begin! And our tradition was to have fire crackers on Christmas eve, and it must have been fairly popular for us to be able to get them every year. I have never heard of any one else that did this besides my brothers and their friends. Of course I was always out with them.

We always shot off the biggest part of them after dark, then the next day we would hunt the area for ones that had not exploded. We would do one of two things with them...break one in half, light it if it still had powder, and drop it on a solid surface such as the sidewalk, and stomp on it. That would cause it to go off as if you had lit it the regular way.

The other thing we did was collect all we could find, and unroll them. If they had powder we collected it...I don't remember how many it would take. We would drill a hole in a chunk of wood and make some kind of cork, or find something else we could plug closed. My dad actually had dynamite fuse from when they dug the basement to our house....

We would beg a length or two from him, and use it to light our homemade explosive device! We had a blast seeing what we could actually do with the powder...if it was too big of a piece of wood nothing..I know we used other stuff...but I don't recall what. And I don't recall the results. I just remember us running to get behind cover. We really never had anything that was that big or dangerous--wouldn't have wanted it to go off in our hand, of course but it was nothing to worry about.

That would scare people to death now. Also think of how a kid can't have a knife at school...and I understand but it is still a sad situation. When I was a kid, all boys had pocket knives. For years when I worked at the orchard, I carried a knife and was just as apt to have it with me at the grocery store or Walmart as to not. It just went in my pocket.

Now I am finally getting used to carrying a purse again...for a long time I felt naked without my wallet in my back pocket. And every now and then I will pay for something and forget and put it in my hip pocket still...

Well, I am slowly but surely getting sleepy so will sign off for the night.....