Saturday afternoon activity at my house.

 Yesterday I decided I was hungry for Molasses Cookies.  So I proceeded to make a batch of cookie dough.  Having a lovely Kitchen Aid stand mixer sure makes my life easier.  Thank you, Cindy Kerr Darrow!  Molasses cookies have to set in the refrigerator for at least an hour so the flavors meld.

Now while I was making the dough, Elvira and Icarus were sleeping soundly in my chair.  They like to do that, you know.

Daisy much prefers to stretch out on her foam mattress .

 

You can see activity at my house has reached a brand new low.  

 Which did not last very long since the smoke detector decided to start beeping and I am really not sure which one of the 6 it was that was beeping at me.  As you know, life is never easy in my world.  The first challenge in this little chore was to find the ladder.  I have 9 foot ceilings which always helps.  After a trip to the tin shed and no luck, I made a trip to the garage with no luck.  So into the closet I went with no luck.  Second trip to all the usual places and there it was where it belonged in the tin shed.

So here I set on Sunday morning.  Some of them take AA and some take D and it seems that I bought a big supply of AAA which fit absolutely nothing.  So I shall give this up until after church when I will go to Sam's and buy battery's , hot dogs and buns, and whatever else I need. 

For the record I want to say my life is good!  The cookies were good!  It is just the batteries that are dead around here.

Peace!

Sad, Sad little dog!

It is apparent that my house is a flop house for all the animals.  Here you see Elvira who is on top of 2 pillows with her head down on the floor.  She appears to be defromed, but she is not.  She is just very damned lazy.

This shows Icarus up on the buffet and the visiting Woody on the bed down below.

Here is Icarus at her finest!

And Icarus and Daisy so tired they are sleeping on a bare, hard floor.  Where did I go wrong? 

I see people with animals all alert and protecting thier masters.  Not so around here.  The geese do occasionally honk, but even they can not be depended upon to rouse me in case of a crazed killer charging my property.  

Well, I guess they do hold the kids down!

And Daisy is good for a laugh!

Life is good.

Sure been hot here lately.

To be real honest, it has been hotter then hell!  My central air keeps the house just the right temperature, which started me to wondering what we did back in the days before air conditioning was an everyday necessity.  I do not remember us even having the luxury of a fan.  When we went to church there were little card board fans in the music racks.  Remember them?  Usually they had some sort of advertising printed on them.  Most often it was from the local mortuary. School started in September usually right after the Kansas State Fair left Hutchinson, Kansas headed for Oklahoma.  By then the summer had lost its grip and fall was near.  School let out in May when it was just starting to get hot, so we did not suffer much in school.

But what about at home?  There were windows on all sides of the house and they were open as far as the could open to get a cross ventilation.  It must have worked because I do no remember being overly hot, ever.  We played under the trees and we could always  sneak off and find a creek some where and dangle our feet in the water and hope an old snapping turtle did not come along.

I can remember momma having a scarf tied around her head to keep the sweat out of her eyes.  What I am neglecting to tell you is that back then we cooked on a wood stove in the kitchen, so we had the added heat of a fire in the stove when it was already hot enough to choke us.  Course I do not remember a lot of cooking going on except on Sundays.  I am not sure what we ate through the week, but we must have eaten something and I am sure mother cooked something.  You can not feed 8 people and not cook.  I do remember mother used to give us a "sugar teet" when we had sugar.  That was our idea of a real treat.  She took a small piece of fabric and put a spoonful of sugar in the center and then pulled up the edges and tied a cord around it.  We chewed on that and thought we really had something. It is amazing that back then I did not even know we were poor, but I look back now in sheer horror.  How did we survive?  Why did we even want to?  My mother had to be the strongest woman in the world to eke an existence for her family out of absolutely nothing.

What amazes me more than anything is that I set here in my air conditioned house with the television playing in the background and my car outside waiting to take me some where.  I have 2 freezers downstairs full of food, money in the bank, clothes in the closet and I think back to Nickerson, Kansas, as the good old days and thank God for giving me those memories.  I only remember being happy.  I do not remember being hot, or cold, or hungry, or lonely.  I have a very happy memory of a coat my mother made out of something she took apart.  It was a bedspread or something and it was a light aqua color.  Dolly Partin had her coat of many colors, but I had my coat of corduroy.  I do not remember much about any other clothes I had, but I am sure I had them.  We wore little dresses back then.  Even when we worked in the fields, we wore dresses.

Yep.  I do not care what anyone thinks, those were my good old days. They were the days when I did not have to worry about anything of anyone.   I have always deluded myself into thinking that it did not matter that we were poor, because everyone was poor, but  that is not true.  People were poor, yes, but we were dirt poor. Facing the reality of that has just taken place in the last few years.  Some times it makes me sad.  I wish I had told my mother what a wonderful job she did when she was here to tell, but I did not.  If I had been just half the woman my mother was I could have changed the world.

Life would be best lived in reverse.

Lou Mercer Words of Wisdom: School lunch

Lou Mercer Words of Wisdom: School lunch: I woke up in the middle of a dream this morning.  It might be more accurate to say "My nightmare woke me up!"  I dreamed it was t...

School lunch

I woke up in the middle of a dream this morning.  It might be more accurate to say "My nightmare woke me up!"  I dreamed it was the first day of school and I was trying to make a check out for school lunches.  I knew I had 5 kids and lunches were $3.29 each, but Patty would not eat meatloaf so I would need to pack her a lunch that day, whatever day that was.  Debbie wanted to take her lunch and she only ate mashed potatoes on home made bread.  Donna, Sam and Susie were happy just to eat.  I was out of cat food and the dogs were barking their heads off about some silly thing or another and I better get out of this bed or I was going to be late for work. I was very relieved to open my eyes and look up at my lavender ceiling and remember that my kids were grown and gone and I was alone here on my acre.  Well, not happy to be alone, but very happy to remember that I had raised my kids and they had raised theirs and school lunches were no longer a daily problem for me to face.  Maybe I was dreaming I was my mother.  God sends me those dreams a lot!

I remember growing up on Strong Street and Mother would be frustrated and she would say "I hope some day you get married and have a bunch of kids and they all behave just like you!"  In later years I was to tell her that the curse worked.  I had  5 kids, just like she did; 1 boy and 4 girls.  I had always thought I was such a sweet little thing growing up, but here were these 5 kids and they were the busiest kids I had ever seen.  What I had done growing up, was called survival and as I look back I guess they were doing the same.

We had run the dirt roads in our bare feet and our idea of fun was a clod fight.
My kids egged the neighbors house.

Jake decided one day to bring his 22 rifle and see how close he could come to the top of my head.
My kids took 10 month old Susie down to Cow Creek to baptize her one night before I got home from work.

I watched a Black Widow spider hatch babies behind the door of the chicken house.
My kids gave the cat a bath.

I smoked Catalpa beans.
They stole the neighbors flowers.

I used to run across the top of the pig sty's at the neighbors house and upset the old hogs.
Don't think the kids topped that one.

We used to spy on Hank Wingate when he milked his goat.
My kids watched Saturday morning cartoons.

Howard Fein used to make his false teeth jump out at me and scare the livin' pee wadding out of me.
My kids cleaned their room by shoving every thing under the bunk beds and pulling the top sheet down to the floor.

So, now these many years later I am still haunted by my mother's curse.  I wonder if I every cursed my kids like that and scarred them for life?  I must have because I had 5 kids on my own and they have produced 8 total.  I have 8 grand kids that sprang directly from my loins (This is not to count the step, adopted and foster) and my grandchildren have given me a total of ...OK, this is where I lose count.  I adopted a grandson who became my son who now has a son that is legally my  grandson, but if he were not my son, this would be my great grandson.  So when you ask me how many grand kids I have I will tell you 20 grand kids and a lot of great grand kids. And it is way to early in the day to start off confused when all I wanted to tell you was about the school lunches.

And there, dear people, is the reason I am screwed up like I am.  It is the curse my mother put on me all those years ago.  She did, before her death, apologize many times and I told her many times that it was quite alright because I have a good life and my kids survived my raising them.  Of course I sometimes hear them recounting the memories of growing up in Hutchinson and Garden City  and I wonder how they survived my raising them!

Sorry, kids, but momma did the best she could with the knowledge she had at that time.  Sam taught me that.

Good Morning World!

Just want to open my eyes and say that!  It is before 6:00 AM and I do not have the news on yet, although AOL news let me know that the world's oldest manatee turns 100.  How they know that beats hell out of me, but be sure it is way better news then I am going to get when I turn the silly television on and watch Hillary and Donald, both frothing at the mouth because the other one is a total asshole.  "Vote for me, because I am the lesser of the two evils!"  I ask you, is this how to run an election?

Oh, and over on the side lines we have the Bernie supporters who are not going to give up on Bernie because he will change the world.  I am sick of hearing it all and we are still 3 full months away from going into the voting booth, if we actually get to do that any more.  I forget the last time I drove over to Pleasantview and walked out with my little  "I voted" sticker.

Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Independent and whoever else is running for the highest office in this land, you all need to know something up front.  I am not voting for the candidate that is put forth by whatever party simply because that is my party.  I am not voting for the one who has the latest dirt on the other candidate.  I am not voting   for the candidate who screams the loudest, uses the dirtiest words, or points a finger upward and declares, " I am running because I beleive in God and I will bring our country back to God!"  God did not nominate any of you.

I do not want to know what Hillary did in her emails, because all of them do the same thing.  I do not want to know that Trump's wife plagurized Michelle Obama or that he screwed people out of money.  What I want to know is did any of you read the constitution?  Did any of you study our history from the time we set foot on this shore and seen this country through the eyes of the immigrants in Ellis Island?  Do you know what Ellis Island is and what it represented to those people?  Do you understand that WE were the immigrants?  Do you know how many Indians we massacred to get to where we are today?

Did you study what the slaves, brought here in the bellies of ships owned by slave traders endured?  Did you study how they were auctioned off like so many cattle in public squares and sold to men owning big plantations that needed free labor?  Did you know that when babies were born they became the property of the "Massa"?  Did you study how many souls were lost in the Civil War on both sides of the battle? Did you know it was illegal for a slave to know how to read or write?

Do you remember John F. Kennedy?  Did you study the Civil Rights movement at all?

Do you know what the Stonewall Rebellion is about?

Does World Trade mean anything to you?

What is fracking?

What are GMO's.

Why do we pay property taxes?

Why is Black Hills Energy allowed to gouge people that are unable to pay?

What are we going to do about the homeless people that are seen daily on our streets?

Why is the pharmacuetical industry not checked on thier prices?

Why is medical care so high?

What about the pet population?

What about the illegal drugs that are killing our kids?

I could go on all day, but the bottom line is this...I do not give a rat's ass if Hillary spent her money on a dress from wherever and I am going to look at what her record actually is, not what the spin doctors tell me.  The state of Donald Trump's hair and whether or not he has ever been faithful to anything or anyone is none of my business.  Until we, as a people, stand up and demand decency from the highest leaders of the land  we might as well forget that there is an election coming up and set in our little pile of shit and stay comfortable.  As long as we stay in that pile it is warm, it is when we try to get out of it that we get cold and uncomfortable and realize what a stinking mess we are in today.

Debbie told me that.

Happiness is a BLT and a trip past Linger Longer Lane.

This is the Rye Café from the inside out!

And this is the menu

Here are a couple shots of the interior.  Real homey place

And a  look out the back door.

This is the BLT, or what is left of it that Nancy and I traveled to Rye specifically to eat.  Whoops!  That is a lie.  This is the muffin she ate after.  I did not take a picture of the BLT, but I can tell you this, it was wonderful.  Crisp Bacon, crisp lettuce, ripe tomatoes and just the right amount of Mayonnaise served on freshly baked slices of French Bread.  It was well worth the trip.

After we ate we drove around and checked out the scenery.  Rye sure has that.  And look at this sky.

And on our way down we saw this sign and I had to make a U-turn and go back and make sure I seen it correctly.  I would love to Linger Longer on Linger Longer Lane!

So take it from, an old bacon eater from way back, this is the place to go.  And if you get a chance see if you can find Linger Longer Lane.  It may very well be a figment of my imagination!