Ten Things of Significance

For the Ten Things of Thankful I am doing another Ten Things of Significance post at the request of my daughter.

This bank book and pair of glasses belonged to my grandfather on my Dad's side.  The first entry was 1915 and the last was 1960.

This very small purse belonged to my Mother's Mom.  The purse was given to passed on to me.  It is about 6" long and 5" wide.  I'm not sure when she got it or for what occasion.

One has to wonder why this very old turtle shell was kept and passed on in the family.  The family lore is that my maternal grandfather gave my grandmother a little turtle.  (It is about 1-1/2" big.) Apparently it was a treasured memory for my grandmother.  I would like to know the whole story.

This very old tea kettle was given to us by my in-laws because they knew I liked old things.  We are not sure if this had actually belonged to their family.  From the way the inside looks, it may have survived a fire.

My paternal grandfather was a barber in his early days.  I remember seeing him shaving in the kitchen, because that was where there was a small window that gave him sufficient light to see well enough to shave himself.  I thought it was interesting to watch him sharpen his razor on the leather strop. The razor is well used and has a nick on the blade.  

These items belonged to my paternal grandmother.  She loved to sit in a rocker right next to their old radio, which was one of those that stood several feet tall from the floor.  She sat there and listened to the Yankees play, and used her magnifying glass to read the sports page of the newspaper.  (When she was in her 70's she had to have one of her eyes removed, we think because of a tumor.)

My mother saved a few of my baby clothes for me.  I have a photo of me wearing this little lined wool bonnet.

The first Christmas after my husband and I got married, we were able to purchase a Christmas tree but had very little money left for ornaments.  We went into a little craft store. A kind lady there told us that we could put some tiny plastic beads in a muffin tin and bake them in an oven for a few minutes to make ornaments.  We made several of these and also shaped some of the beads into a star.  We strung some popcorn and cranberries and had a most beautiful first Christmas together.

My husband was the first in his family to be able to go to a university.  In preparation for his freshman year, he made this beautiful pine filing box so he would have some place for handouts, etc. from his classes.  The box has been used in numerous ways since that time.

I bought this 1883 cookbook many years ago and have enjoyed trying some of the recipes.  There are many handwritten recipes and newspaper clippings that have been slipped in between the pages making it all the more interesting.  In the back of the book are useful hints such as the one to stop an earache which brought many a chuckle to my family.  (Needless to say we never tried that remedy!)

Friday Four Fill-in-Fun

Friday Four Filll-in-Fun is a blog hop from Feeling Beachie.  There are four sentences that require one filling in the blanks.

1.  I hate going to very noisy restaurants because it is very difficult for me to hear the conversations of my friends.

2.  I want more people to have increased tolerance for those of different cultural backgrounds and religious beliefs and less tendency to judge.

3.  I have regifted items that are brand new, with the price tags and labels still on them from garage sales or thrift stores, depending on the occasion for the gift.

4.  Praying first thing in the morning is the secret to being able to handle things that arise during the day in the best possible way.

I made this pillow in 1980.  This quotation is very similar to the anonymous quotation, "Life is fragile, handle with prayer."  For years I had this pillow displayed on our sofa, but it has been "retired" because I was afraid the tatting would wear out.  The message has not been "retired."

Friday Four Fill-in-Fun

Finish the Sentence Friday: My first job

The prompt this week for the Finish the Sentence Friday blog hop is "My first job..."

We had moved to a valley in Northwest Oregon the summer before, but that summer my brother and I had helped herd the sheep our Dad bought, and it wasn't for pay and pay wasn't expected.  Farm kids were expected to help their family with the chores.

I was now finishing out first year at the little two-room school, and I began hearing how kids earned their own money by picking strawberries in the summer.  The father of one of the girls at the school had strawberry fields and needed pickers.  Even though I was only eight years old and would be turning nine later in the year, I was allowed to pick.  I was very excited about being able to earn some money.

Every morning about 6:00 a.m. I stood waiting alongside the road with my lunch pail waiting for the farmer or his wife to come by in their truck to get me.  I just hopped in the back of the pickup bed, sat down next to other children and had a bumpy ride on the gravel roads leading to the strawberry farm.  It was fun, because it was a new experience and I didn't quite know what to expect.

The wages were not very much, compared to now, but each day I would figure out how much money I would get paid at the end of the season.  The wages then were 35 cents per carrier.  A carrier contained six quart-size boxes.

The strawberry farm where I picked had two different kinds of strawberries, Marshalls and Hoods.  I personally liked the taste of the Marshalls, because they were much sweeter.  The Hoods ripened a little later than the Marshalls, so I had a longer picking season.

The row boss made sure that the pickers kept on task and picked a clean row.  Picking a clean row meant to not miss any berries and to pick off any rotten berries and toss them on the ground behind you.  I especially didn't care for this last part, because if we had a particularly rainy June, the berries would begin to rot and mold and become quite squishy!  If these bad berries were left on the vines, they would touch good berries and cause them to get moldy too.

We picked until noon, ate our lunches and then about three in the afternoon were picked by our parents or a neighbor.  We didn't pick every day, because sometimes it was too rainy to pick, and at other times we needed to wait for berries to ripen a few days.

Although picking strawberries was hard on my back, it was in the strawberry fields where I first started developing work ethics.  I also came to appreciate the work ethics of the families of migrant workers, many of whom are extremely fast pickers!

I found a wonderful article titled Historic Marshall Strawberries at Green Gardening with Ann Lovejoy.





    

Six Sentence Story: Pound

Here is the link to the Six Sentence Story blog hop.  The word prompt today is pound.

The sound of the striking of metal upon metal could be heard as it reverberated across the hilly, northwest farm land.

The rusty and sometimes broken barbwire fencing on the large farm could not be counted upon to keep any animals where they belonged, so the two milk cows were staked out to graze the sweet grass, and a goat was tethered and staked out to browse wild blackberry bushes, tall thistles, and stinging nettles along the small creek that ran through the farm.

There were wooden, paneled pig pens that were secured midway and at the corners by metal fence posts.  They needed to be moved periodically after the soil had gotten too muddy from the pigs rooting.

If the bearer of the sledge hammer, whether the farmer or one of his children, didn't pound the stakes and posts deep enough into firm ground, animals could find their freedom at any time of the day or night!  After all, the grass is always sweeter on the other side of the fence, or in this case, outside the grazing or browsing area.

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday - Lost Dragonfly

Lost Dragonfly

Quite a few years ago I waited patiently and then moved in to take a picture of a dragonfly in a grassy meadow, only to see it fly away to another spot before I could take the photo.  Eventually after many attempts, I got the photo I wanted.

So you can imagine how surprised I was one morning last week to see this large dragonfly resting on a post in the backyard of a home in town in a well populated city.  There is a river mile away, so maybe it just distracted and decided to visit the city.  There just wasn't any patience or effort involved in taking this photo.  For all you entomologists, enjoy!

Haiku: Squirrels' Country Playground

Old oak trees arching

Over shady lane below

Squirrels' country playground

@Patricia E Brockett

Hope of Forgiveness

The challenge for this post was to write a poem, prose, or other writing using the 12 words given at sundayswhirligig.blogspot.de.  This is Whirligig 14.


The two brothers were beginning to talk to each other again after long years of silence.  They each remembered the time and the place when they parted ways determined not to discuss the subject again, nor to call or visit. The head can store unkind words hastily blurted into the air and hold onto them until they infect the whole being.  

Everything hinged on one brother apologizing to the other.  People who knew them both looked on misty-eyed, hoping there could be a reconciliation while they were still in this world and that these otherwise good men wouldn't carry their hardened hearts to the grave and beyond.  This was the place, here, now, nowhere else, for a brotherly embrace with each knowing what the other wanted to say.  With love, the words would follow.