My little helper.

It is Lenten Lunch time at our church.  These occur every Wednesday at our church, First Congregational UCC.  They start at noon and they are free so come and join us at 228 West Evans.  We are an open and affirming church and all are welcome: 6- 60, blind, crippled or crazy!  Happy to meet you!

Nancy Donnelly used to until she passed away and left the chore to me.  She called it her "labour of love."  I sure miss her, but since I am the one with the big kitchen and the equipment, baking bread has fallen to me.  Last Tuesday I had whipped out my 4 batches.

I do have a little helper!

Let me see which side is my good side.

this one?

Or this one?

Some of you may not think that having a 3 year old kid helping in the kitchen is a messy thing, but just look at the benefits to that.  

1.  He is not parked in front of the television or some game system.

2.  His fingernails will get cleaned and he doesn't even know it.

3.  Soon the floor will be wet enough to mop.

4.  And the most important part of all is he is helping grandma.  This little boy loves to come to grandma's house!  And he loves to help.  And it only takes grandma 2 days or so to put things back to the chaos that was her life before this little helper arrived.  

In all fairness, most of my grandkids liked me when they were little.  Of course they grew out of it, but they still tolerate me most of the time.  It is just that the little bitty ones are so easy to amuse.  So I will enjoy this one until he reaches the age where life takes him in a different direction and then we will see what happens.  

Who knows, I may get a puppy.

Lou Mercer Words of Wisdom: Holy shit! An attack mouse at grandma's house!

Lou Mercer Words of Wisdom: Holy shit! An attack mouse at grandma's house!: The grandma's both worried about me and mostly it was needless.  Life was pretty mundane there in Plevna.  Get up and eat breakfast.  N...

Holy shit! An attack mouse at grandma's house!

The grandma's both worried about me and mostly it was needless.  Life was pretty mundane there in Plevna.  Get up and eat breakfast.  Now you need to know it was pretty well ready the night before.  The egg poacher held 3 eggs.  The water was put in the poacher and the poacher was placed over the pilot light.  The eggs were in a bowl on the table.  The coffee pot was a drip o later and it was filled with water and the coffee grounds put in the basket.  Our plates were on the table with 1/2 of an orange on each one. The jelly was in the middle of the table.  The table was covered with a cloth.  While we slept the waters were staying warm over the pilot lights.  The next morning the poacher and the coffee pot were both pulled forward and the burners turned on.  The eggs were broken and placed in the 3 places for them to poach.

Now I can not remember just how that damn coffee pot worked, but it seems like the water somehow was vaccumed up into the upper chamber and then the burner was turned off and it slowly dripped through the grounds.  Bear in mind that all happened 60 years ago, so I am not real sure that my memory is completely accurate on this little detail.  I do know the toaster was set on the burner and the burner was real low and toasted the bread just right as long as you did not try to dash out to the outhouse while it was toasting.  The whole breakfast was on the table in short order.  We always prayed over our food.  Always!  Both grandmothers told me in no uncertain words that if I did not pray I would most likely choke to death!  I was not going to test that theory since I had what I hoped was a brilliant future ahead of me.  And here I am!

After breakfast was finished I was allowed to put all the dirty dishes in a pan under the sink to wash later.  They did not want me to be late for school because the principal would administer punishment in the form or a whipping with a rubber hose.  I never tested that theory either.  You may not believe this, but I was pretty much a model child and it was all because I did not want to be beat.  I was secure in the knowledge that when I dashed home for lunch great grandmother would have a sandwich ready for me.  That plate also went under the sink.  Now for the evening meal, I do not recall at all what we had.  I am sure we ate something, but I do not know what it was.  So after supper, I pulled the pan out and started washing the dishes.  Then I dried them and put them away and after I laid out the breakfast for the next morning I was free to do whatever I wanted to do.  Bear in mind there was no such thing as television.  The radio was for the market futures and I was not allowed to read anything but the Bible.  I could crochet, but I was still learning the basic chain stitch.

Now one chore I had which I did on Saturday morning was trash.  We did not generate much trash back in those days.  There was a trash thingy over by the door going into the front room.  That was emptied by grandmother into a wooden crate like barrel right outside the kitchen door on the enclosed back porch.  This particular Saturday, I picked it up and headed for the burning barrel which was located a safe distance from the outhouse.  I spotted the outhouse and decided I needed to use that facility at that moment.  So I set the barrel down, availed myself of the comforts and then started to pick up the container and finish my job.  I recoiled in terror because there was a mouse that had crawled up through the trash and was perched on top!  In my world a spider is the scariest creature on earth, but a mouse is a very close second.

What to do?!  My mind was in a quandary.  If I picked up the barrel the mouse might jump on me.  If I screamed, grandma would no doubt jump on me.  She was very old and I surely did not want to get her too excited.  I knew if I could just get the barrel to the burning barrel and tip it over the mouse would fall into the barrel and I would light the trash and my problems would be solved.  So I got a stick and threatened the mouse.  He was defiant! I whacked the side of the barrel and he fell into the trash out of sight.  I grabbed the barrel and made it a few feet closer to the burning barrel, but the mouse reared his head out of the trash.  I immediately dropped the barrel and it fell over.  Horror of all horrors, the damn mouse was now free to eat me or whatever he had planned.  I screamed in terror and grandma appeared on the porch.  That woman surveyed the scene, saw the mouse, stepped forward and whacked it with her cane.  My savior.  She turned and went back into the house leaving me to gather everything up and put it in the burning barrel.  The incident was never mentioned again.  That is how the pioneer women did it.  I like to think I am just a fraction of the woman my great grandmother Helen Gagnbein Miller Hatfield was.

I am still afraid of mice and I have a cat that brings them in and turns them loose.  I hate that damn cat, but she is the only friend I have now days.  I would like to say that since the dogs are no longer here that she has taken mercy on me and has not brought a mouse in for quite some time, but as sure as I say that she will know and go get me one.

I lay in bed at night and think about my grandma's.  If I could go back in time I would do things differently.  I would listen.  I would listen and I would remember.  And I would teach my kids about the stock we come from.  The chickens, the molasses great great grandpa made and the way my great great grandmother Gagnebein nursed the sick, delivered the babies and then came home and whipped out a lemon chiffon cake without even reading a recipe.

I would if I only could.

Better late than never?

Well, John Tenorio pretty well opened the flood gate to let all my friends escape this life when he passed late last year.  Then went Annie, Chaz, Nancy, Shirley and lastly Jim.  Needless to say I had plans with all of these people, or meant to at least.  Annie was expected; Chaz was not.  Nancy was expected; Shirley was not.  Jim was inevitable.  I set here now waiting for the next shoe to drop.  Mother always said it was sad to watch the nursing homes especially.  When fall comes the leaves drop and the little old people go to their reward.  Then comes Spring and with new growth the little old and sick people get new life, but it is not in this world.  Mother was wise.  When I would forget to do something in a timely manner, or blow it off completely, she had these words for me.  "Better late then never."  But was it?

When the pale horse with his rider goes by, it is too late.  The final curtain has fallen, the bell has rung, and "woulda", "coulda", "shoulda" are no more.  It is over and time is no more.  There is no way I can tell grandma what an impact she had on my life.  Oh, not while I was living it, but lo these many years later I can see so clearly.  Grandma Haas was an invalid due to a stoke and Great Grandma Hatfield took care of her.  I helped as much as I could, which was not very damn much, but I do not think that was what I was there for.  I think I was there in case one of them died I could call somebody.  I can remember helping her get ready for bed and pulling her dress up over her head.  I had to be very careful because she and Grandma Hatfield both had pierced earring and it was a nightly chore to untangle the dress from the earrings on both women.  Lord only knows what they did before I came.

Grandma Hatfield was prone to shingles and it was my nightly job to check her to see if any shingles were appearing and if they were I must make sure to check very carefully and apply medicine, because if the shingles went clear around her waist and met, she would immediately die.  I lived in mortal terror that they would become active while she was asleep and she would be dead when I went in the next morning.  Apparently someone was alert because she lived to be 104.  Grandma Hatfield was tall, or so it seemed.  She was regal in her bearing.  She rarely spoke but I just figured since she was 99 years old when I lived with them, that she had probably just talked herself out.  I am not sure she really knew I was there!

Grandma Haas was a very sweet little old grandma and looked like grandma's were supposed to look.  She had beautiful blue eyes and her hair was golden rather then gray.  I still have that golden braid tucked away somewhere.  Since I was 15 years old she thought she should have "the talk" with me.  This is it in it's entirety, I swear to God.

"Have you started your menstral cycle yet."  (I had a vague idea of what that might be.)
"No".
"Ok, when you do, tell momma and she will let you stay home from school that day."

Well, there was a little something to look forward too since school was the only place I could go and escape the tedium of my life.  The only book I was allowed to read was the Bible and the only entertainment was learning to crochet.  I had to keep my shoes on at all times.  Aunt Lena sometimes let me play in the horse tank.  Television was just coming out and the Smith family had one, but I was not allowed to go over there and look at it because I would surely rot in hell!

I miss the grandma's.  I wish I could go back in time and this time I would listen.  I would listen about the aunts and uncles and the trip over from Germany.  I would learn about the herbs and tinctures that Great great grandma Gagnebien  used and how to be a midwife and how to make molasses.  But I didn't.  But you know what?  I think that sometimes those old ancestors pop into my head and tell me things because sometimes I know things that are true and there is no way I could know them.  I think my ancestors live inside me.  Course I may be nuts.

There is that!

'Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good.

The wind was blowing all day and this is what happens when that happens.  This is just up the road from my house.  Sadly this is not the first time that this has happened at this same house.  Just the first time in landed on the house.

This is the same place up on South Road.  This was several years back.  That time I had been working with a family on Gale Road and when I came home down 25th to South Road I had to back track  and come up County Farm.  When I came in and turned on my computer, this picture was in an email from my son in Dallas, Texas.  Little a--hole never did tell me how he got that picture.  Kind of creeps me out to think he has spies up here in Colorado.  I must say that this man has some pretty bad luck.  I also must say, I am glad it was not my house.

That having been said I think I am going to call the tree company and have the Apricot tree behind the house taken down.  that tree is actually only about 15 feet from my head when I am in bed sleeping.  Sure there is a wall between it and me, but as you see, walls do not stop falling trees.  It isn't like the damn tree gives me any Apricots any way.  To take it a step further, I do not even like Apricots in case it did decide to give me some fruit.  Once it had lots of fruit and I fed it all to the geese.  So now I suppose you want to know why I planted the damn thing!  Ok, here is that tale.

Many years ago Kenneth was working on a job in Paonia, Colorado.  We had a park model camper that he pulled around to different jobs.  Park model is just a way of saying a small camper that is the equivalent of a tiny trailer house.  It had a small front room, kitchen, full size bath and a bedroom in the back.  When he parked in a trailer park, he hooked into the water and sewer which was better then having to store water and empty sewage.  His little home away from home.  I would travel over to the job a couple days a week and that way he and I kept in touch, so to speak.

Paonia was just a small town that attracted a lot of hippie sorts.  The job he was on was a BLM job so he was privy to all the amenities of the land.  Peaches and other fruit was plentiful on the site and Kenneth was always going to pick me some when he got time.  Sadly, he never got time, but Joe Fisher to the rescue.  He was another trucker.  One evening he was setting in the roadside park and just enjoying the evening when he noticed a tree loaded with Apricots!  He scrounged around under the seat and came up with an empty bread wrapper.  He then proceeded to fill it with plump, juicy Apricots which he presented to me with the stipulation that I would give him a jar of Apricot jam.  Sounded like a deal to me.

As soon as I got home I worked up the Apricots and made my jam.  The seeds I threw on top of the septic tank where I was sure they would rot and make compost.  Joe was pleased with the jam and began to tell me of other fruits on the BLM including Sarvis Berry trees.  Sadly they were dried up by then.  And can you imagine my surprise when I noticed little tiny trees coming up in the compost pile!  I moved them to a protected area and "heeled" them in to winter over.  The next Spring I had 40 Apricot trees.  Some of them I planted at my mother-in-laws house.  Several I planted in the front yard and several out back.  One I planted behind the house and there it stands today!  The Bores have about killed it, but still it tries.  Usually it blooms and then a freeze comes and the flowers fall off, or it may actually go ahead and set fruit, but then comes the "June drop" and there goes my crop.

I keep thinking I would like to have fruit just one more time so I can have some more Apricot trees so I can sell the house and leave them, I guess.  But that is the tale of the Apricot tree.  I know I should have it taken down, but that is just something I can not bring myself to do.  When the Apricot tree goes I am afraid my heart may follow.

Just the musing of a silly old woman.

Why do I listen to Classic Country Music?

Because when one of the old guys starts singing I can understand the lyrics and the lyrics are the song as far as I am concerned. Like this one by Conway Twitty. He tells it like it is. https://youtu.be/XOLsaTRrWCs. No banging on a an electric guitar. No screaming out words that are not in the English language. Just down to earth words about pain, love, cheating, prison, trucks, momma and old dogs and children and watermelon wine. Like the one I linked up above. That one is "She needs someone to hold her when she cries," And I wish I had a dollar for every time that song ran through my head. Oh, not now, but back in the days of worthless men and binge drinking.

I know it is hard to picture me as ever having been young and even harder to picture me in a mini skirt out on a dance floor with men actually waiting to be the next one to spin me around the floor.  Sadly, I had a small problem with alcohol back in those days and my evening usually ended up with me on the floor praying to that porcelain god known as the toilet bowl.  It was at that point of the evening that the boys ideas of romance were out the window. Whoever had brought me understood that they were to take me home.  Whether it was a female friend or my date of the evening, it was their job to deliver me back to where they found me.  That followed another rule my mother had taught me, "You leave with the one who brung you!"  Yep.  Mothers words are embed in my brain clear down to my feet!  She was the wisest woman I knew then and she still reaches down on occasion and pulls me up short of some mess I am about ready to get myself into.

What Mother has to do with country music and beer drinking songs, I do not know.  I just know she has been gone for many years and she still pops in from time to time to give me those knuckles on top of my head!  Did your mother ever do that to you?  That crack from those boney knuckles always stopped me in my tracks no matter what I was doing.  I am sure I did that to my kids also and for that I beg their forgiveness.  Or do I?  Maybe not.  I have raised some damn good kids.  They all have the basics down pat.  They are honest, hard working, dependable, independent, and devoted to their mother!  They check in from time to time and are not clingy.  As far as I know, they have never been in jail and if they were it was not for very long.  

So I do not know how I got from the virtues of country music to raising kids, but I suppose my mind just took one of its turns that it is famous for, but I think there is a lesson in here some where.  Shortly after Kenneth and I got together (We lived in sin one year.  Wanted to see if we could get along before we tied the knot and had to get a divorce.) he came home and said he had just heard "Our song".  The one he came up with was "Close enough to perfect for me." https://youtu.be/UVivkbmu3To .  When I heard that song I knew that this was a marriage made in heaven.  If he could accept me as I was, where I was, then we would make it.  And we did.

Kenneth has been gone 17 years.  It seems like yesterday.  I rather doubt that there is another man alive who can accept me just as I am and where I am in my journey through this thing called "life."

So I am just going to treasure every day and do what I can to make someone happy some where.  Doesn't seem like there is much else to do.

Where did Chiquita Banana disappear to?

If there were just some way to shut this mind of mine down, we might all be better off for that.  It is 4:35 AM and the coffee is made and my hair is combed and Chiquita Banana is still fresh in my mind.  I have 2 nieces and 1 nephew by my oldest sister Josephine.  The oldest is named Mary and must be pushing 70 by now.  When she was but a wee lass and I mean so little she was not even crawling yet, I was allowed to play with her on the bed as long as I was real careful.  I was very careful, but bear in mind that I was only about 7 years old and not yet wise in the ways of wiggly babies.

As I recall she was dressed in a white something or other which started at her shoulders and ended below her feet.  It had a drawstring that tied so her little feet would stay warm, but it was loose so she appeared to be a tiny little angel!  I way so enthralled with the vision of an angel in my arms that I loosened my grip for just a moment and she shot out of my arms and fell between the bed and the wall!  Ah, sweet Jesus!  I never heard a human emit screams like that in my life and it did not help to know that I was the cause of the pain.  Since I was only 7 years old I could not pull the bed away from the wall to save the baby.  Enter Josephine, Mary Jo's 12 or 13 year old mother. (Yep.  They married young back in those days.  And you might also remember that it was a very long time ago and reality then and reality now, are sometimes 2 different things.)  Let me tell you right now, that old gal had no problem jerking that bed out and screaming at me at the top of her lungs while she was doing it.

Of course, Mary was alright.  She was a little shaken by her early flight from being my little angel to being a missile launched behind the bed.  Of course Josephine would not let me touch the baby again for a very long time.  I, of course, did not actually want to touch her just in case I was some sort of ax
murderer.  I was told every time I looked at the baby how careless I was and not to touch her.  It was kind of sad because Mary used to look at me and smile and laugh and coo, like babies are known to do.  She learned to crawl in due time and would crawl over to me and I would run away.  So much for bonding with my niece.

It was sometime during this period of my life that mother brought home a folded piece of fabric from someone who did not want it.  She unfolded it to reveal the front and back of a Chiquita Banana doll.  All she had to do was cut it out, put it right sides together, stitch it leaving an opening for turning and stuffing, stuff it and it would be mine!  How could I ever be so lucky?  Mother did not have a sewing machine at that time, so it would have to be done by hand.  Of course I was such a patient little girl as I waited every day for that to happen.  When I had finally given up on Chiquita ever being anything but a couple of flat cloth pictures, Mother whipped it together one night and handed it to me at bedtime.  You would have thought she had handed me the world!  It was the most beautiful doll I had ever seen!  The fact that it was not even a real doll, completely escaped me.  She was mine and she was special because my mother had made her for me!  I could picture her dancing in the moonlight with her hat of bananas on her head.  She was so beautiful and I wanted to be just like her when I grew up.

I have not thought of her in years.  My mother ended up helping raise my oldest sisters three kids while their father was in the Navy and their mother was busy doing her thing.  I remember special things about all three of them.  Charlie had bears in his bed most of the time.  I could never see them, but he assured me that he could.  I asked if he was afraid and he told me no, that they were nice bears.  I wonder if he still sees them?

My niece, Cindy was the youngest.  Since Mary lives on the northwest coast about as far north and west as she could go, I do not see her.  Charlie and I had a falling out years ago and I have no idea where he lives.  He has his demons and I have mine and never the twain shall meet.

But, little Cindy is firmly ensconced in my heart.  I have been to see her once and talk to her occasionally on the phone, but she is a homebody and so am I.  And she looks after her Aunt Lou.  Just recently I posted a picture on facebook of an old mixer I had fallen heir to through a death and I had used it to make cinnamon rolls.  My phone rang and Cindy wanted me to know that a new red mixer was on its way to my house to replace the last red mixer she had sent me, which had replaced the pink mixer which had replaced the black one.  Kitchen Aid has her on speed dial!  She looks out for me!  When I told her the story of the old mixer I had inherited, she told me to do something with my old red mixer because it was being replaced anyway.  Bless her little heart.  It warms the cockles of my heart to know someone out there is listening every time I speak!

The "old" red mixer will go to Pastor Faye in Colorado Springs.  The "old" pink one went to Rosie out at Los Pobres.  The old black one went to one of my kids.  The good Cindy does through me makes a lot of people happy and isn't that what it is all about? We are all shaped through out past into a vessel that will serve us in our quest for the golden ring of happiness.

And, like it or not, we spend 9 months in our mothers womb and the rest of our lives either immolating our mothers, or trying to escape the havoc they wreaked on us.  It is all in the cards we are played.  One day we all look into the mirror and see our mothers face looking back at us. We can never escape the perils of our childhood and my only advise I can give at this late date is to "Bloom where you are planted."  Nothing else can happen

As for I Chiquita, I suppose I will always wonder what became of  her.   I expect she ended up tossed into a mud puddle some where, but she should know that I never forgot her completely. I like to think that she ended up in a good home with a little girl who would love her and dream of being just like her when she grows up.