A Quickie Tonite…

Unfortunately not the ‘quickie’ I would have been tempted to have back in the day but a quick post.

I went out to my Cuz’s today and worked on painting the bedroom that I had started on before I moved back to Norman.  I finished putting up the ‘country crown molding’ and painted the walls.  I was too whipped out to do the cove molding Cuz and Bro had decided would fancy up the country crown just a tad so I will go back tomorrow or Thursday to cut and trim out the crown. I’ll take the camera so I can post photos for y’all to see.  Anyway I’m so whipped out I’m going to bed early (for me) but I didn’t want to miss putting up a post… So here, for your enjoyment and edification, are some photos I took with my phone of a Harley that was parked at WalMart a couple of days ago.

Cropped up a photo so you could for sure see the pearl handled six-shooter.  Mounted on both sides of the Harley, dressed out with the fringed and studded saddlebags, but what caught my eye were the pearl handled six-shooters almost exactly like the ones I had when I was a kid. Wish I had had the time to wait and get a look at the rider. 

Only in Oklahoma!!!  Or maybe Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, or California… ?

My Grandparents On My Daddy's Side...

These are my grandparents on my daddy’s side… I have a few memories of Papa Bill but Mammy Gardner died the summer after I was born so I have no memories of her. I remember Papa Bill had to use a cane to help him walk and I remember Aunt Annie shaving him with a straight razor. 

This photo was probably taken about the time that daddy left home for John E. Brown College.  Top row left to right… First up is Aunt Annie.  She lived to be 99 and she loved to tat and rode the Greyhound bus back and forth between Okla. City and Tennessee and Jonesboro, Arkansas until she was in her late 80’s and she would get to know everybody on that bus every time she’d go for a trip to visit whichever kin folk she was going to see. 

Next to her was my Uncle George Gardner.  I don’t remember a lot about him.  He was the oldest of the boys and he and his wife, Aunt Gertrude, lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  I remember visiting their home one time. They had a wonderful screened in porch and we got to ride the cog railway up Lookout Mountain.

Of course back in the early 50’s it didn’t look near this fancy. When you got up to the top you could go to here:

Lover’s Leap.  While nobody I know ever leaped I can remember that you were supposed to be able to see Alabama, Georgia and, of course, Tennessee.  I ‘borrowed’ these images from a Chattanooga web site.

Next to Uncle George was my daddy.  I’ll do a post on him later.

Aunt Adderine was on daddy’s left.  She was the oldest of the girls. She and her husband, Newt Kimbro, lived in OKC and ran a gas station.  One of my favorite memories is that they had a Model T Ford that they drove until they retired and went back to Tennessee.  When Aunt Addie and Uncle Newt would come over to the house for a visit my little brother and I would beg to get to ride on the running board up the street to the stop sign when they left to go home… all of three houses up the block but it was so fun for us.

Seated from the left is my Aunt Sally.  I think I loved her more than all the rest of my aunts on daddy’s side because she was one salty lady.  She was more of a rebel because she met, fell in love with and married an Italian man.  Even worse than, please take no offense, marrying a “wop” was she became a Catholic because that was his religion.  Not being prejudiced but that is the first time I ever heard that word in relation to Uncle Tony or anyone else and the only time I heard it was when daddy was upset with something that Uncle Tony had done or something that dad perceived he had done.   Mother would always say, “ Now, Stearns…’’ He’d get a handle on what ever it was and take into consideration that momma was telling him in her gentle way not to talk that way in front of us kids.

When I was 16 and we went to Wartrace, Tennessee, for our family reunion I got to go home with Aunt Sally and Uncle Tony and my two girl cousins, Sally Ann and Linda to Chicago!!! A huge town where trains were on rails up above the roads and all kinds of places that we didn’t go to…  Mostly we just stayed at the house or go to friends of Sally Ann’s or be pestered or pestering Linda since she was younger than we were.  They also had two of the most handsome brothers that were older than we were and pretty much didn’t want to be bothered by punk sisters and cousin.  After visiting for a week I got to ride the train from Chicago to Okla.City all by myself.  Boy was I “grown up”!

This is getting long so I’ll save the rest for tomorrow…  See you then if you can stand it!

Let’s Start An Ongoing Story…

I decided that it would be fun to do a story about me… from the beginning.  A watch me grow story.  I think it will be a fun way for you to get to know me.  You all know that I do better story-telling when I have photos to work off of so let’s start here.

My mom and dad met back shortly after the earth was formed,  back in the olden days, at John E. Brown College in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.  Dad was born and raised in Tennessee and mom was born and raised in Texas.  My granddaddy and grandmother Venable moved to Gentry, Arkansas, when the children were still in school.  Mom was the oldest of  six children, five of whom lived to adulthood.  Dad was the fifth child of nine, one of which died as a child.  Mom used to say that she didn’t stand a chance when it came to dad… he was spoiled by his older sisters before she ever met him.  Dad would just laugh, sort of embarrassedly, but you knew he loved the attention.

   My dad worked in the dairy at the school to help pay for his education.  He got his degree in bookkeeping.

Mom worked in the cafeteria at the college to help pay her way through her last two years of high school and her two years of college.  She got her degree in general education.  Her plan was to teach until she met my dad and did, in fact, teach for a year in a one room school, first through eighth grade before they married.

This photo wasn’t dated but I figure it was around the time or shortly before they were married.  Back in the day most get-togethers were reunions around marryin’ or buryin’ times so this was probably a pretty special date for them.  John E. Brown College was a non-denominational Christian school and in the Twenties it wasn’t proper for a young lady and a young gentleman to do the public displays of affection and at the College they weren’t even allowed to hold hands.  They would sit out on the grounds of the school after class and visit, always in groups, and mom and dad would sit kind of back to back so they could touch.  That was okay, but no hand holding or necking like yard trash that you see on campuses and in the malls nowadays.

This photo, if the number on the license plate is correct, was taken the year I was born… the fifth of their six children.  You will get to meet my sibs along the way and their children and grandchildren.

After all, I have sixty five years to cover… I have to figure out something to write about!  James Michener I’m not.

Just A Snippet...

I thought I'd better get a little something up in case I'm too tired after the game this evening to post. OU's first game is tonight and it's only on pay-per-view. A good friend called and said she was buying it and did I/we want to come watch it with her. My folks didn't raise no fools and since I didn't have to pay for it I said, "You bet!!!" Carol decided she'd like to see it, too, and she even whipped up some tortilla roll-ups for snacking.

Now to the snippet.

A friend dropped by yesterday for a visit and in the conversation said she was going to dinner at her mom and dad's and asked what we were going to do for our dinner. I told her we were going to have scraps... She looked at me oddly and I said, "you know, left-overs." The light then dawned on her and she said she had never heard left-overs called scraps.

How about it? I was raised with both phrases and I just wondered if it would be confusing for anyone else in my world. Some of the best meals we had were scraps and bits of other meals when mom would clean out the refrigerator. You notice I didn't date myself even more by saying ice box.

Scraps or left-overs or either or both?

Questions And Odds And Ends…

I got to thinking about the way I’ve tended toward blogging and decided to ask you all a couple of questions…

The first one I was wondering about is if you enjoy me answering your comments and if you come back to see if I’ve answered your questions or responded to your comments.  I don’t mind doing it if that’s one of the things that you look forward to or come back to check out or if you check when you come to read the next post.  I’ll keep it up if you want but if it is an exercise in futility I’ll just do the random comment or write a post if there is something someone would like an explanation about such as a ‘chunk floater’.

The next question is do you have any preferences about the things I write about such as more growing up stories, more flower and garden photos and stories or more dog stories?  I plan to continue writing about all of the above but if there is more interest in one or the other I can write more about whatever subjects.

The third question… You all know that I like to string beads and make pretties to wear, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and such. Would you find it interesting or offensive if I occasionally put photos up of something that I’ve made for sale.  I don’t want, especially in this economy, anyone to feel I’m pressuring you to buy something.  Carol told me that she can fix me up a related site to post my little artsy stuff if need be but I thought I’d ask what you all think.

This little girl wants your input.

Thanks and talk to you tomorrow!

Hi Folks!!!

Decided that the smart thing to do was to write before the storms hit.  We’ve got thunderstorms with high wind gusts (60-75 mph) preceding the storms coming across the Okla. City area towards Norman.  No tornadoes are in the storm but we are gonna get a chunk floater for about 15 or 20 minutes then the storm front will pass on by us and keep on going east.

I don’t know with all that has been going on (and not going on) this summer if I told you all that I’ve moved from the country back to Norman.  I love my cousin and being out in the country but I found that what I didn’t like was driving for an hour to visit friends and other family.  I’ve still got some things to move and I’m doing some painting for my Cuz and my Bro but I’m in Norman now.  I went to the country earlier today and painted the ceiling in the bedroom we are working on re-doing, packed up another load in the pick-up and took some photos of the garden so I could wind up my vegetable garden reporting for this year

This is the last squash and about the last of the tomatoes.  I took this last week when I was out there to do some stuff and to get a load to bring back to Norman.

Okra is, however, a different story…

The okra plants are still putting on blooms which, in turn, means more okra… mmmmmm.

These okra buds and flower are taller than me.  These I can still reach but just barely.  That means that they are more than 6 1/2  feet tall. 

The electricity just went off (7:15 p.m.) but I still have some power in my computer so I’m just going to continue to write.  Since I’m writing this off-line I don’t need the internet back up until I post and the weather man said that the gust front and the rain has only been lasting 20 to 30 minutes, start to finish.

Meanwhile, back to the ranch…

You can’t hardly tell it, but that’s me in the lower left corner.  The okra plants behind me are over seven feet tall.  Either going to have to get the Bro out to cut them or Cuz or I will have to take a step stool or a ladder to harvest the tallest of the plants.

The tomatoes are just about gone… the heat that the okra thrives on pretty much wiped out the tomato vines.

The marigolds we planted with the tomatoes are still blooming…

As are the zinnias.  You can tell how hot the sun has been here in Oklahoma by the looks of this flower… beautiful pinks with the sun and heat faded lower petals almost white. The squash plants have adios’d this world for this year.  This is the part of gardening that is hardest for me.  Dealing with death, even of the plants, makes my insides hurt.  The squash from both the good day plants and the bad day plants that made it through the summer were very, very good.  They had a thin outer skin that was not tough in the least, even towards the end of their producing time.  They fought squash bugs and survived long after the other squash plants had given up the ghost.  So I thank you Tipper for doing your good day/bad day experiment this year.  I will be trying to learn more about good planting days before garden time next year.

As soon as I can post this it’ll go up…  In the meantime I’ll ‘see’ you all tomorrow.

Power is back on… 8:40 p.m.  Yea!!!

Crap!

Okay.. I’m going to go by California time and pretend that it’s still the 1st of September.  We’ve had an unusual weather occurrence this evening… RAIN.  At last a break in the heat and humidity but it sometimes wreaks havoc with the internet.  I’m here and still up and the rain settled down and went away, the internet is up and my girls are finally relaxed and not trying to crawl all over me because of the thunder.

When it thunders and rains hard Chloe just starts shakin’ and wanting to be close to me or Missy.  We also found out that she settles down a lot quicker, even with the noise of the storm, if we cover her up with a blankie so if we know a storm is coming we always try to have one handy.  SueSue, on the other hand, will try to crawl in my lap, up on my head or anywhere else that she thinks will get her any closer to mom.  I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to type with an angst ridden pup or cat in your lap or on your shoulder or head but I’m here to testify that it is dang difficult. 

So this is my day one of trying to re-form the habit of writing and by taking advantage of  west coast time… I’m just under the wire.

I will do better tomorrow.

I hope.