Now they call it harassment. I thought it was a way of life.

I had a long talk with my son today.  Not the young one, the older one who will no doubt put me  in Shady Pines someday.  The subject of the "Me To" movement came up and I was explaining to him that when I was newly divorced and in the work force needing to make a living it was what it was.  Back then women were supposed to stay home and if a divorce was your lot you should quickly find another husband.  When I mentioned that I was paid less then the men in the work place for the same exact work or sometimes more work because the men had families to support, he could not believe it.

When I left my husband, I immediately went to work because I needed a place to live and food for the table.  I applied for welfare, but was turned down because I worked.  I could not get a medical card because I worked.  There were no programs to help me because I was eligible for child support.  Of course there was no child support forthcoming, but since I was eligible I was out of luck.  No stipend for child care either because I had a husband who did not pay child support.  I am happy to say that has changed.  Well, not for me, because my kids are all grown and gone, but for other women.

Back in the early 1970's I went to work at the Holidome which was owned by Holiday Inn.  Fancy place with an indoor pool and poolside rooms.  Top notch back in the day.  There were 2 cooks.  I do not remember the other cooks name, but it seems like it was George.  Our duties were the same.  We cooked orders for the clientele.  George had a helper so mostly he just smoked (and you could have a cigarette dangling out of your mouth and a spatula in your other hand and that was alright back then) and told his helper what to do.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that they were both paid more per hour than I was.  I say surprised, but not really.  Back then it was expected.  Men were superior to women and they had families to support.  I had 5 kids at home, but that was irrelevant.  What really frosted my cookie was when I found out that the boy who made salads earned more than I did.  He was hired after me and called in sick at least once a week.  That meant I had my work and his work to do for $2.00 an hour less than he made.

I talked to many people about starting some sort of union so pay was more equitable and sick days could actually be earned, but all that ever got me was laughed at.  It was a lot easier to get a  husband then to get a day or 2 paid vacation.  When I first started the restaurant jobs we got free meals, but then the owners decided we were eating them out of house and home so we could buy our meals at a reduced rate, but if we sat down to eat them we had to clock out.  Having a pizza delivered was out of the question as was bringing a sack lunch.  We either paid or starved until we got home where food was free.  Although free in not to say it was free.  Just cheaper then eating at work.

I bartended a while and was also a waitress in a bar.  Now if you think my ass was not grabbed on a regular basis you are nuttier than bat shit!  It went with the territory.  If a woman worked in a bar it was because she wanted a husband or a sugar daddy or at the very least a one night stand.  Being friendly brought tips and I needed tips, but not that badly.  A drunk in a bar is not what I wanted out of life.  When the bell tolled midnight I just wanted to jump in my car and race home to my bed...alone.  I did not last very long in the bar setting.

The point I am trying to make here is that sexual harassment has been around as long as I can remember.  The "glass ceiling"  has always existed and it was not until I left the work place that there were improvements made.  I am happy for the women who have made strides, but let me clue you and them in on something, it is still alive and well in suburbia.  After my husband passed I was left to handle all the household repairs and maintenance.  First order of business was to have the septic tank pumped.  Being new to this I got out my yellow pages and called the first one listed.  And here he came.

Short, greasy and with a definite attitude.  He jerked the lid off and informed me that it was dirty and nasty.  (Concrete lid covered with dirt on top of a riser where there were spider webs.)  Where was my husband and why was he not there?  Let's see, after he died he quit caring about the septic tank!  The $100 fee I was quoted immediately jumped to $150.  He informed me that it needed pumped every 6 months.  I paid him and never called them again.  I have a nice guy now who comes every 2 or 3 years.  Just one of the ways he discriminated.

Want my car worked on?  I get several estimates and if they ask about my husband, I don't call back.  There are shops out there who will discount because I am a widow.  And they repair what I want repaired and don't pad the bill.

It is no fun being a widow in this world of men, but more women are making it better for me.  I appreciate that.  But do not kid yourself into believing that we are on equal footing with the male population because they want us to be.  It is dog eat dog world out there and you can bet your sweet ass on one thing and that is I am no longer going to cow tow to the mean spirited little men I deal with on a regular basis.  If I pay they are going to treat me fair.

Life goes on.

Santa used to be on radar!

Life was not all bad back in the long ago days of raising children.  The one part I took advantage of was when they finally got Santa on radar.  The kids were always excited on Christmas Eve because they knew all they had to do was go to sleep and Santa would pop in and leave them presents.  Now I kind of resented the fact that I had busted my ass to buy presents and some fat fart was getting all the credit.  So I devised a way to actually turn the table so I could get a little credit for myself.

When the weather man would come on and show the tiny Santa and his tinier reindeer, they were inevitably clear up in Montana or somewhere just as distant.  I would carefully explain to the kids that they should go ahead and go to bed and I would keep watch and if they happened to notice I was gone it was probably because I had made arrangements to meet him in Nebraska or some where because no way in hell was I going to not let them have Christmas and there would be presents under the tree from that rascal or by God I would know the reason why.  So they went to bed and slept the sleep of children who could always depend on mother.

Now in all likely hood, had they awoken and gone to check under the tree and found me missing, I was probably at the bar just down the street for a quick beer or at the liquor store at the other corner replenishing my "will to live."  But either way, there was always a pile under the tree for each of them and I had the satisfaction of knowing there were 5 little kids who loved me and were grateful that I had stayed up all night to make sure Santa came through for them!  I was a damn good liar back in those days, but now I am not so good at it.

But then I really don't need to do it any more!  I may stay up tomorrow night just to see where Santa is and relive the days when a hairy old man in a red suit was something I really wanted to see.  I have my brother Jake to thank for ripping my belief in Santa to shreds.  I in turn twisted the knife in my sister Donna, she in Mary, and when the veil fell from the eyes of Dorothy our childhood was over and we transitioned into a family who celebrated Christmas for the birth of the Christ Child.

Everyone except my father, who was an atheist.

Merry Christmas from Liberal, Kansas!

I do not remember the year, but it must have been about 1966.  Sam was barely walking and he was born in 1965.  We had been living in Garden City, but Duane (I some times refer to him as Earl, but he was always Duane to me.  Earl Duane if I was pissed.) and his brother decided they were expanding the tree trimming business so we were in Liberal.  Duane had found a farm house outside of town that was abandoned.  He made a deal with the owner to fix it up and make it livable and we would not need to pay rent until it was done.  We would buy all the cleaning supplies, wall paper and paint.

I have always been handy with soap, water, wall paper and paint, so that became my job, along with raising the kids, so the deal was struck.  I am sure none of you are going to know what I am talking about when I tell you how we got water to the house.  Ever see a windmill?  That is a pump with a shaft that goes up a tower to a giant blade.  When you want water, you loosen the brake and the blades begin to turn causing the apparatus that goes down into the well to go up and down, thus pumping water up the pipe and into the big holding tank above (and for the life of me I can not remember what that tank is called.).  There was no top on this tank so I am sure it was good clean water.  Water then flows from the tank into the pipes in the house by the gravity concept.  It was important that the tank stay full so there was water pressure.  All that is irrelevant to anything except that is the way we got water.

At that time we had the 4 oldest kids, Debbie 4, Patty 3, Dona  2 and Sam 1. The first item of business was to move into the house and set up sleeping quarters in the front room for the kids.  The furnace was also gravity operating on the concept that heat always rises.  The furnace was located in the basement and I do not recall ever going down there.  I think it was propane.  The vent was in the middle of the front room and the kids all learned very young to not walk on the furnace vent and if you look at the bottom of their feet you will probably find little squares where each one learned their lesson the hard way.

I vaguely recall that we moved in during the summer so by the time Christmas was upon us we were fairly settled into our new home.  I had finished our bedroom, the kids room, the front room and was starting the kitchen when Christmas time came.  Duane went to the "shelter belt" and cut down an evergreen tree, which ticked off the farmer, but oh well.  Decorations consisted of popcorn on a string, some red and green colored papers cut and glued and linked together and tinsel.  I do not know what Santa brought that year, but I do know he brought Sam a blue elephant on wheels and it was designed for him to set on it and move with his feet.  Would have been nice had it worked that way, but he was scared shitless of it.  Every time he seen it he went into screaming and crying fits like it was going to eat him.  We mostly kept it hidden and the only time it came out was when the girls wanted to torment him, which was often.

As I recall, winter was mild in Liberal since it was down in the southwest corner of Kansas.  I do not recall where they came from, but we had chickens which stayed in one of the out buildings.  I also recall we had a little black dog who brought me one of the chickens and laid it at the back door.  I do not recall ever seeing that dog again.

By the time spring arrived the house was in pretty good shape.  Every room had been gone through and cleaned, the wood work painted, walls newly wall papered  and the floors sealed.  I only had the bathroom left and was finishing pasting the trim around the top of the kitchen sealing when the landlord paid a call to see how the work was coming.  He was very impressed!  He walked slowly through each room noting the clean windows, the wall paper, the paint and praised my work.  The next day we got out eviction notice.  Seems his son was taking a wife and this would be the perfect place for them to live.  Talk about luck!

Back in those days we traveled light.  It was easier and cheaper to just leave the furniture and scrounge up new, then it was to load it and spend the gas money moving back and forth.  By the end of the next week we were living on the edge of town in a 3 room house with a huge back lot where I could grow a garden and a garage where I could keep my chickens.  For some reason the owner had painted every room black.  That was weird so the first order of the day was to drag out the paint brushes and spruce up the place.  The first swipe across the door post proved to be a rude awakening.  The place was almost devoured by termites!  It soon became apparent that what we saw was what we got in that house.  But I was always an optimist so I settled in.

I bought 100 straight run chickens and kept them in the garage.  In 2 months they were butchering size and I rented a locker in town.  75 fryers went in the locker.  The garden produced and I finished filling the locker with corn on the cob cut off the cob.  I was ready for winter!  The locker burned down and the man had no insurance.  All that work was wasted.  Then there was a windstorm and anything else we had was gone.  At some point the chickens that were in the garage  all ended up dead.  I called the sheriff and low and behold two boys in the neighborhood were found to have killed the chickens just for fun !

Debbie had started kindergarten some where along that time.  We decided we had enough of Liberal and we moved on.  Not sure where to, but if I think about it, I am sure I will remember.  That may have been when we moved back to Garden City. Or maybe that was when I moved to Hutchinson.  I need to think about this.

For now, I think I will get another cup of coffee and maybe run through the shower.  I am sure of one thing, the sun is up and the geese want out of their house.  Tomorrow is my anniversary.  I think I will bake me a cake.

But what about the rest of us?

I see people dashing about in the stores with thier carts loaded with gifts.  Christmas music is blaring over the intercom and seems to spur them into a fever of shopping.  I continue to the fabric section because I need 2 yards of blue gingham for an order.  Nothing else.  The lady at the measuring table folds the 2 yards and lays the ticket on top of it.  As she pushes it towards me she smiles brightly and says "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays " or some such nonsense.  "Thanks", I mutter, ;not bothering to return the greeting.  I am glad she is in the holiday spirit.  I almost wished I could be.  But I am not and there is very little chance I will get into it.

Don't get me wrong on the Christmas thing.  I love Christmas.  I love the baby Jesus and the wise men and all that.  What I don't love is the commercialism that has taken it from a religious  holiday to a shopping frenzy and Santa Claus trying to out do each other.  I like to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and put a roof over everyone's head.  But I am not going shopping.  I am not buying presents.  Just not buying into the whole thing.

Several years back I gave away all my Christmas decorations.  All the outside lights went also.  And along with the trinkets and baubles went any  appearance of adhereing to the Christmas season frivolities.  Now don't get me wrong.  I celebrate Christmas, but I do it at church and it is for the birth of Jesus and all the symbolism asscoiated with that.  I do not buy presents and I do not want presents bought for me.  For most of my adult life I bought for a Christmas list that was 45 people long and I enjoyed doing it.  Then one year I looked around and I did not know who had given me what, nor did I remember what I gave anyone else.  Consquently it was the same year my husband died.  I made the turkey and the ham just like years before, but it was not the same.

I may have just lived long enough and seen enough to become jaded, but it is what it is.  I can not judge those who continue to fight the crowds nor do I want to.  By the same token, I do not want you to judge me.    I like to be alone, not that I am anti social, I just  like solitude.  Christmas seems to bring all my sad thoughts to the front and every year it gets harder and harder to cope with the holiday season.  Do I remember a time when I really enjoyed Christmas?  Not really.  I suppose when the kids were little and I could surprise them with Santa Claus things, I was happy.  But even then I remember how hard I had to work to do that.  I guess life has just never came easy for me in that aspect.

So Christmas will come in 4 days.  But before Christmas comes, I have an anniversary.  Kenny and I would have celebrated  34 years together on December 23.  So there you go.  Another thing I can do alone.

If I could turn back time....that's a song, you know.

That is a song and if I wasn't so lazy I would go to youtube and then paste the link here, but basically I am pretty lazy in that department.  Pretty lazy in most departments actually.  But I can let my mind drift back in time and I am thinking my life would have been so different if I had do overs.  Course I would have been screwed in the beginning because I picked the wrong family!  Sadly back in the picking days, I did not even know I had a choice, so I just got born into the one fate set me down into that day.  So for the first 15 or 16 years I was happy.  You know the old saying, "Bloom where you are planted."  I bloomed where I was planted and then I found out there were other gardens that actually got watered on a regular basis.  Even got a little fertilizer from time to time.  Those were the kids that turned into jocks, cheerleaders, musicians, brainiacs, and such.

Sadly I wandered through high school without ever actually participating.  I knew my future would be to wed some hardworking man and raise kids.  I flunked cooking and I flunked sewing, so the hard working men were out.  They wanted a woman who could actually do something.  You know, a helpmate of sorts.  I guess the saying "Poor people have poor ways" comes in to play here.  I am not sure my dad ever went to school at all so an education was not very important to him.  Mother had graduated at the top of her class, but it didn't help much on the farm so she married dad who was a farmhand for my grandmother.

My dad's occupation was listed on the census rolls as "farm worker" and mother was "house wife."  And that was a good thing, but sadly father liked to drink.  He also fought the mechanical advancement in the agricultural movement.  He was one of the last to give up is horses and only then because they died.  His productive years were pretty well over at that time.  We became just simple folk and mother cleaned houses for a living.  It was a good honest wage.

A side note here is that I do not ever remember a firearm in our home.  Jake hunted rabbits with a sling shot.  There just never was a gun, nor was there ever a discussion about a gun.  There was corn liquor of some sort in the fridge and dad made hot toddy's when he had a cold.  I think he had a cold for all of his life.  If he was in a good mood he would let us sip a taste of the hot toddy from a teaspoon . I have often thought I would like to have  a hot toddy again just to see if it was as good as I thought it was back then.  Seems like it was a shot of liquor, boiling water and I am sure some sugar.

I digressed there, didn't I?  So if I had it to do all over again, I would.  But this time I would study very hard.  I would not even look at boys and I sure as hell would not have drunk that home-brew LaVeta Bankey gave me in my sophomore year.  I would not have dated that guy named Gene who brought me a satin pillow case home from Germany.  I would not have dropped out of school and ran away to Louisiana with a couple friends in my senior year.  I would have been so good.  So very, very good.  And I would have went to church every Sunday and memorized all my bible verses.  I would have been a missionary like I wanted to be when I was 15.   Hell, I might have changed my name to Teresa and been a Catholic and fed the hungry in Calcutta slums.  But I didn't.

Instead I set here like butter wouldn't melt in my mouth and dispense my wisdom not telling anyone that experience is your best teacher.   As you sow, so shall you reap is a favorite passage of mine from somewhere in the Bible.  Nothing wakes you up like a good dose of "sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.."

Now back to the subject, if I could turn back time.  I can't.  Try getting that toothpaste back in the tube.  Water under the bridge.  Things like that come to mind.  I have had some very good talks with God and while he does not answer loud enough for me to hear, he does answer.  And he has me believing that I really am not such a bad person and I will have another chance.  What did not kill me has made me strong and I hope I can help someone else along the way at some point.  Guess we will see.

And Christmas is almost here again!

It is almost 5:00 AM.  Coffee is perking.  The cat is fighting me for the keyboard and life is good.  I woke up a while ago and thought back to the Christmas seasons on 5th street.  I was divorced with my little nest full of babies and they always expected Santa to come.  I was not much into church back then.  Kind of hard to work God in when I was working a full time job and 2 part time jobs to put food on the table.  I did make sure the kids got on the bus for church every Sunday.  At least most of the time.  OK.  Some of the time,  but that was a rough time for me.

So anyway, I tried to have money put aside for Christmas, and usually did.  If not there was always the credit card and that was used more often then not for Christmas.  Nothing else. I recall the first year.  I really thought Duane would come and help me, but he didn't.  I ended up the afternoon of Christmas Eve doing the shopping for Santa.  Talk about a joke.  The shelves were bare and pickings were very slim, but I ended up with my car loaded.  Not sure anyone got anything they wanted, but they did get to unwrap presents on Christmas Day.  I vowed that the next year would be better and it was, kind of.

That year I splurged and bought each of the girls a bike and Sam a trike.  By the end of Christmas Day every tire on the bikes was flat.  I heard the rumor that Sam did it because he was jealous that he did not get one, but Lord only knows what the truth was in that case.  The next year they got Susie for Christmas, the gift of a failed reconciliation.  At least they did not flatten her and she was actually kind of cute.  Debbie, Patty, and Dona wanted to take her for "show and tell" and Sam just wanted her gone.  Take her to school and leave her was fine with him.

Christmas Dinner was varied.  Sometimes it was turkey and all that stuff.  Once it was ham.  One year I let the kids choose and we had corn dogs.  I can not eat a corn dog now without thinking back to that day.  I made red chile once.  I think Coloradans call it chile beans.  I did not know what green chile was back then.

Time kind of runs together back in those days.  Seems like I was always in a money crunch, but that is what 5 kids and no education will do for you.  If I had it to do over again, I would, but there would be some rules laid down on the first date.  I strongly suspect I would not have had 5 kids, but I am not sure which ones I would send back.  In later years they had welfare programs, to help with mothers like me, but at that time it was either sink or swim.  I paid $15 a week for child care and I had some doozies.  Ida May was a friend of mom's.  She always had a pocket full of candy for the kids.  She also had a full beard so they were afraid of her.  Mrs. McIvers lasted a few months.  Then there was a lady on 6th street, but her kids were meaner than shit!  I finally found Mrs Benson, who moved across town to be close.  At the time she seemed like the answer, but now I hear horror stories.  We did survive though.

Back to Christmas.  Christmas of 2002 found Kenneth in Colorado Springs on life support.  He had been in the hospital since Thanksgiving.  Our 20th Anniversary was December 23, so I spent the night at Semper Care.  I spent a lot of nights there .  Christmas was pretty sad that year.  He died the end of January 30, 2003. Christmas has never been the same since.  Probably never will be.  Seems I always get weepy this time of year.  Hell, it seems the older I get the more weepy I get.  I tried dating a couple times, but that did not turn out well.  The first one died about the time I got to really know him.  The second one was just a jerk.  There are a lot of those out there, so I am giving up on that.

There is no tree in my house.  No decorations.  I will spend Christmas Eve at church for the morning service and the evening service.  That is how I want it.  I think this Christmas I may get out the box of cards I got when Kenny passed and read them one more time.  I have not opened that box since he died.  I may go through Mother's box also.  But who knows.  This may be the year I do something wild and crazy.  I do know that unless it snows, I will be taking a long walk along the ditch.  It is quiet there.

Surely we will talk again between now and then, but just in case, I am going to tell you

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year and grab all the happiness you can while you can!

I was married to an ostrich and never knew it.

The light of dawn, or in this case, the light of way before dawn is very enlightening.  I woke up at
4 AM this morning to begin the tedious task of sorting through my mind.  It is normally a scary process and today was no different.  Like many times before, I thought about my brother and how he died.  But this morning I also thought of my first husband and how he handled Jake's death.

It had been a few weeks since Jake's passing and I mentioned something about the event to Earl Duane, my first husband.  His response was simple.  "I don't think about it.  I pretend he has gone to another town and I will see him when he comes back or we go there."  Such a simple premise.  I often envied him of the ability to just ignore reality.  I wished often that I had taken lessons from him.  It has been 52 years and it is just as fresh in my mind today as it was back then.  I see him in the hospital bed in McPherson, Kansas, with his head propped up and his sandy hair falling across his forehead.  The scar on his right cheek was vivid.  He had no bandages because he was too injured to bandage.  He passed on October 31, 1965.  My dad had passed in February of the same year. 

I am not good at dates and can not tell you what day most of my family died, but Jake was like an extension of myself.  I do not know why I woke up with this on my mind, I just know it was not the first time and will probably not be the last time.  I do not remember any of my marriage dates except for Kenny.  Let me tell you, when I had to come up with all those dates for the social security I was one busy little girl!  I was on the phone with the Bureau of Vital Statistics for probably an hour while the man researched  the various marriages and divorces and separations and such. 

When it was all over , I thanked him profusely for his time as he had been a lot of help.  He knew more about me then most people and his last question to me was "I just want to know, what happened with old Earl."  For some reason that struck me as funny and we both had a good laugh.  But sadly enough, I have often wondered the same thing.  I did envy him his ability to completely disregard any thing that was not what he wanted it to be.  I am sure he did the same thing with our divorce.  He certainly was adroit at ignoring that little sentence about the child support.

Normally I do not talk about him as he is the father of my children and I respect him for that, but he had a different relationship with them from the one he had with me.  As long as we can all separate the man into two parts, we are good to go.  We did talk on occasion and he remembered me as the skinny little thing he married and nothing I did after that mattered.  In his mind I never left.  I was just gone into town to pick up some groceries.

So in closing, I want to say, my life is good.  My home is good, but way to big and way to much work for me.  I want to do something although I am not sure what.  I do know there are big changes coming in the next year.  It is going to start with a giant rummage sale in the Spring and then I will just see where the future takes me.  I have lived over half my life in Colorado.  For the first half it was Kansas.  Do I think about going back?  Sometimes.

For now, I am going to run through the shower and start a new day.  That is the best part of life to me, knowing that each day brings a fresh page and yesterdays are just that.

Now it is tomorrow.

Yesterday Al Franken resigned from the Senate.  That made me very sad.  To be honest, this whole mess has made me stop and rethink and wonder just what in the hell kind of mess we have gotten ourselves into with the "Me to" movement.  I woke up at 4:00 AM with this on my mind.  I guess this is just the one that pushed me over the edge.

You all know most of my story.  I married before I was 20 and had my first baby 2 years later.  That one was the first of 4 born in 4 years and then a short break and the 5th came along.  Sometimes love does not conquer all and I ended up a single mother with no skills with which to support myself and an ex-husband that did not pay child support because he did not want a divorce.  Needless to say he was my first "me to" although I can not say it was so much sexual harassment as just a case of a man trying to hold a woman and keep her in her place.  But that is neither here nor there and it is what it is and ended up in a divorce.  I was awarded $50 a month for 5 kids, but that was back in the day when a man could just move to another state and the child support was not going to follow him.  And that was what he did.

Of course, I had to go to work and the only work I had ever done was restaurant or laundry.  Laundry work is very hot, and very heavy lifting, so I opted for waitress work.  The night shift always had better tips, but I wanted to be home with the kids at night so I approached the boss about training me to be a cook.  That was better.  I guess the first time I ran into blatant sexual harassment was at the Holiday Inn.  It was not really harassment so much as just being paid half as much as the fry cook that I did the same work as and less than the salad boy.  When I complained the boss explained to me that it was just the way it was.  Men had families to take care of so they needed more money.  When I told him I had 5 kids to take care of he told me I should have practiced keeping my legs together.   Back in those days restaurants were not covered by any kind of wage control, so to make the money I needed I worked double shifts.  I went to night school and got a degree in accounting, but I was still a woman and did not make the wages I needed.

I lost count of how many times I was propositioned when I was a waitress and how many men tied the amount of my tip to how friendly I was to them.  Of course I also learned that the wife was prone to just reach over and pick up that tip if I were too friendly to her husband.  It became a balancing act of being just nice enough to the man that he would leave a tip and even nicer to his wife so she would not pick it up.

I am glad that things have changed and women can now actually support themselves.  Too bad I am too damned old to work now.  And I rather resent it when I go to the feed store and load my cart with 50 pound bags while the clerk is over selling a roll of wire to some farmer.  And I hate that I have to tell them at the counter that I need help loading it into my car.  Course when I get home I am on my own,

But back to Al Franken.  I loved him when he was a comedian and was happy when he was elected to the Senate.  I saw the picture where he appeared to be groping that woman and it was clear to me that was something from his comedy days, back when that was considered funny.  I do realize that there is a real problem with some men and their inflated egos',  but I do not think for one minute Al Franken falls in that bunch.  It is sad that we lost him in the shuffle, but I was happy to hear he will still be an activist.  I really expect him to make another run because the people in his home state know the character of the man.  And they know what an asset he is to our party.

So until our government figures it out I am just going to stay in my little house and when I need a repair man, I will call my son, because if I call the repairman, the house call rate doubles.  But that is not because I am a woman living alone, it is just how it is.

The dress code has definitely changed.

Thinking back to when I was a little kid back on Strong Street and I must admit, we definitely dressed a little different than the kids today.  Jake always wore overalls.  So did dad.  Church dress meant clean overalls.  As little girls, my sisters and myself always wore dresses.  As the poor family in town we were given a lot of "hand me downs" and that was good.  Josephine handed hers down to me and I handed mine down to Donna, Donna to Mary, and Mary to Dorothy.  By the time they got down to Dorothy they were pretty tattered.  But when one of the ladies from town showed up with a bag of clothes that her daughters had outgrown it was like a gift from heaven.  These were clothes that were brand new to our system.  Sometimes there were even shoes which was really great.

The way the shoe thing worked was we each got a new pair of shoes for the first day of school and we wore them until we could not get our feet in them any more and then handed them down to the next kid.  Some times we would finish out the last month or so of school barefooted.  I liked that best.  I hated shoes.  We had 2 choices for shoes; black or brown.  I think I was in 7th grade when I found out there was another choice.  That was "saddle oxfords" and they were for the very rich kids.  Those were white with either brown or black through the center part of the shoe  hence the name "saddle oxford".  If you owned a pair of those you had to put white polish on the white part and that was just a waste of money as far as we were concerned.

I know I have told you about how mother used to save feed sacks that were pretty fabric and make us dresses.  I told you how I thought my name was Gooch when I was a kid.  Now I want to tell you something off the cuff here.  I sell on ebay and several years back a lady gave me a big pile of those feed sacks to sell.  I think there were probably 40 or 50 one yard pieces.  They brought some very good bids.  One of them I sold to a lady in Korea for $48.00 plus shipping.  The lowest priced one brought $9.99.  That is for 1 square yard pieces of fabric.  Made some good money on that lot.

Jeans or slacks were NEVER worn.  Girls wore dresses.  That is what we wore.  Even in the summer there were no shorts.  Dresses.  That was it.  We played in the dirt and made mud pies in dresses.  We always kept the dress that was in the best shape for our "Sunday go to meeting dress."  No wearing the everyday dress to church.  That would have been sacrilegious.  We could shinny up the ladder to the hayloft and watch the cat giving birth in a pile of hay in our everyday dress.  We could pick corn and throw it on the wagon in our everyday dress.  But you know something?  I can not remember any dress I ever owned except one my Aunt Helen gave me when I was in 6th grade.  It was store bought and was a grayish green everglaze cotton fabric and it had a tie at the neck which had 2 white daisy's on it.  I wore that damn dress until it almost cut me in half.

When dresses got to the point that they were pretty much thread bare, the went to the rag bag.  Periodically  mother would empty the rag bag and take her scissors and cut out any good fabric.  This was then cut into strips and each strip had a slit cut in each end.  The strips were then laced together through the slits and rolled into a big ball.  When enough big balls were rolled up, they were taken to the weaver lady who would weave them into a rug.  The rug was probably 8-10 feet long and roughly 28-30 inches wide.  They were beautiful and I still like to make them today.  Back then the weaver lady charged $2.00- $3.00 to make and they were very sturdy and wore forever.

Back to the shoe thing.  I am sure we had socks.  I know for sure Josephine did because they came up to her knees and when she got out of sight of the house, she rolled them down so here legs were bare.  She always was a dicey female.  Oh, and we always had to wear a slip!  Our dresses were always cotton, so there was no danger of a boy seeing through and lusting after us, but we were always afraid that if we did not have our slip on that someone would know.  A bra was never anything that I ever needed because I just never had any boobs to speak of.

I must tell you, mother always wore a hat to church.  Well, any time she dressed up she wore a  hat.  Women were expected to cover their head in church.  She could have walked in stark naked and caused less of a stir then what would have happened had she not worn her hat.  Oh, and that damned hat pin was good for getting our attention should our shallow little minds wander!

Funny, looking back, that I remember so little about clothes when I was little.  I guess back then we were more worried about starving to death than about freezing to death.  I want you to know it could get cold back in those days.  But we could make snow ice cream with out fear of radiation fall out.  Course we knew not to eat the yellow snow.  We could snap an icicle off the eaves and suck on that and convince our selves that it was good and filled us up.  I would dry up and blow away now before I would eat an icicle.  God only knows what is in our atmosphere today and he ain't talking.

So, I don't know just what the point of this was when I started writing tonight, but I am pretty sure I am done.  Going to be a long day tomorrow.  Hope I have time to get my naps in before Jeopardy.  In the mean time, just be kind to each other.  You never know what kind of burden the other guy is carrying.

Peace out!