Good ol’ days – Page 10

Good ol' days, Inspiring, Sayings, Wisdom

Saturday Sayings – Old

Posted on April 16, 2011August 14, 2011 by Katharine

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
–Robert Browning

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.
–George Chapman

For as I like a young man in whom there is something of the old, so I like an old man in whom there is something of the young.
–Cicero

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.
–Victor Hugo

Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
–Washington Irving

Before old age my care was to live well; in old age, to die well.
–Seneca

Nobody loves life like an old man.
–Sophocles

Good ol' days

A Great Grandmother

Posted on April 14, 2011September 24, 2016 by Katharine

My great-grandmother, Grismamma, was a petite woman who spoke no English. She made the enormous, and I am sure, frightening, sacrifice of coming over here, to America, and leaving all behind in southern Germany. Her real name was Wilhelmina Carolina Anna Adelheidt Wieckert. And that was BEFORE she married. As small children, we had her long name memorized.

When I knew her, she was old as old can be, and I was barely over four years. She lived with her daughter, my grandmother, “Laura” and we saw her every time we went there. I never saw her walk. She had to be helped with everything. We were not allowed to speak to her, except to tell her “Good-night.” I guess she knew that much English. We also had to be quiet and polite around Grismamma.

One amazing thing about Grismamma, is that she had hair long enough to reach the floor. Yet her hair was so thin, she kept it all, all in a bun about the size of a golf ball..

I think she died when I was about four. I did not attend the funeral. Probably I was too young.

I have one thing that used to belong to Grismamma. It is a small, orange sherbet glass with a wax orange in it:

Grismamma received this glass or cup as a gift when she was 13, and kept it safe for the rest of her long life. When she died, my mom got the cup and kept it safe for her whole life. Now it is mine. It lives in a little box in the top cabinets in my kitchen.

I think it is old.

But I want it to become even older. I want the memory of my Grismamma to go on and on, until time comes to an end, because she was mine and was ours. I want someone far in the future to be able to touch the precious thing my Grismamma touched and know someone else was here, once, and then went on, someone who sacrificed to make something better for those who were to come.

And to be thankful.

I want my children and their descendents to know I valued someone small and frail, who borrowed the air we now borrow, and then gave it back.

As we someday must.

Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Inspiring

All My Men Have Been Good to Me – Dad

Posted on March 24, 2011March 10, 2015 by Katharine

I wrote of my dad already, but left much unsaid.

A WWII veteran, my dad was a factory worker. He lifted heavy bags of plastic pellets into a machine that turned out knobs, duck calls, and laundry baskets, at high temperatures. He seldom took sick leave and came home exhausted every night. For that he received $100 per week and a party sometime in December.

Yet he had such energy left for tomfoolery! He played with us kids as if he were one himself. Airplane rides (on his feet), jigsaw puzzles, carom games, goofy drawings, and croquet were among his repertoire. He made the stand for our carom board, himself, without any plan or pattern. He also made several bookcases and two desks the same way. And he repaired our toys.

One play activity he initiated with us was about trust. Did he think it through and decide to teach us trust? Maybe not—he was having fun. He encouraged and coaxed us to fall backward into his hands, if we believed he was strong enough to catch us. Was that ever hard to do! And how insulted he acted when we were scared to try it! He never dropped us, though, and we learned something, I think.

When his family grew, he built an addition to the house, himself. Alone. He hired help with digging and pouring the basement, and with the rafters. All the rest he did with our help. We gained a new living room, bedroom, basement, and bath. It was hard, but he did it. He wired, plumbed, hammered, sawed, plastered, sanded, and varnished. And I still can back any nail out of any board, no matter how bent or stuck. Just ask my kids.

He kept a huge garden, too. Corn, tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers, I remember. Sometimes he hired it plowed in spring, sometimes he could only afford to burn it off and attack with a shovel. But he had a big-wheeled cultivator and we pulled weeds. And there is still something about pulling weeds that pulls me into the garden.

How I loved to sit on his lap while he watched television! Mostly I did not watch, but just nestled and played with his hands. I twirled his wedding ring round and round his finger and rubbed the calluses on his palms and ridges on his fingernails. Sometimes he would give me one quarter of one of his Throat Disks from their slender tin he kept in his pocket. He also had a smaller tin of tiny, black Meloids that were too spicy for me.

One thing bonded me to him more than any other. When I was very little, he would give me piggy-back rides. He sat on a big chair while I climbed up to grab hold around his neck, then he stood up and bounced me around the living room. What fun we had! The day came, though, when the ride was over, I slid down his back, and my leg caught on a screwdriver in his back pocket. I screamed. He was absolutely heartbroken. I had never seen a grown-up cry before and it riveted me.

Oh, to be that concerned about my own precious children!

Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Inspiring, Wisdom

All My Men Have Been Good to Me: Grandpa

Posted on March 23, 2011December 16, 2014 by Katharine

My grandpa used to gather us kids around to play a mouse game with us. He somehow folded his handkerchief into a cylinder shape with a tail and would hold it in his hand and stroke it like a pet mouse. Then he would talk us into petting it, too. Suddenly it would jump up his arm while he acted surprised and we nearly jumped out of our skins, although we knew what was coming, each time. It was the only kid entertainment at their stuffy parsonage, and we loved it, couldn’t wait to go there and beg to play the mouse game. Oh, the giggles!

Imagine my awe and shock when my mother revealed to me the truth: my grandpa never did like children much. Imagine!—Oh, just imagine!—What dedication to doing right prevailed in this man who did not like little children yet took them into his arms and blessed them with a silly game!

Outside of that game, our activities with him were on adult level. He lived in St. Louis, and took us often to Shaw’s Garden and the Climatron. Anyone who has ever been there knows a child can be totally impressed with such a ho-hum-sounding activity. I was. I loved it there; the waterfalls that ended in fish-filled pools with floating lava rock amazed me. That the birds could live there for our enjoyment, that we could climb stairs to be near the treetops, that the birds were used to us, was unbelievable. I grew up to be an amateur botanist and birder.

After retiring from parish life, he took a simpler job as proofreader at a large publishing company. Twice he took me there to see the processes, every step conducted in house, in the good ol’ days. I remember a long set of cover-less books aligned side-by-side with an enormous screw clamp, waiting for their corporate edges to be gilded. I grew up to be a writer.

Grandpa also had a pump organ and played very well. He would not let us play on it unless we could pump it ourselves and knew an actual song to play for him. My brother was better at that, but when Grandpa took us to the big, old church that had a real pipe organ, when the organist was practicing, it was sublime. I soaked in it and grew up to prefer richly chorded classical organ music.

One activity bonded me to my grandpa more than any other thing: milk toast.

For the uninitiated, that is a bowl of torn-up toast, doused in milk, to eat with a spoon like cereal. A-a-ah!

I liked milk toast and none others of Grandpa’s fourteen grandchildren did, that I know of. He liked to eat a bowl of it every night before bed and if we were there, he would make me one, too. We sat together at their antique oak dining table that was covered in hand-made lace, old man and little girl, happy as coons in corn, eating a meal he prepared just for me.

Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Inspiring, Wisdom

An Odd Egg

Posted on March 21, 2011February 22, 2017 by Katharine

What a difference in these two eggs! Each appeared during this flip-flop season we call “spring”.

Spring is such a time of turmoil in our area—flower and leaf buds popping out everywhere, new birth, chickens beginning the new laying season, tornadoes—I wonder how we survive it.

Spring’s natural beauty forces us to love her. The amazing fragrances and forms of blooming things, the pearlescence of eggshells and the fragility of baby chicks, the mew of kittens, the peeping of hidden frogs, all work on us, draw us to that perennial love affair with spring.

So we roll up our sleeves, kick off our shoes, and pull our hair up into ponytails to catch the sun on our skin. We pull weeds, freshen flags, mow too soon, plant too soon—anything to be outdoors, to come inside smelling like spring. We paint lawn furniture, divide potted plants, and attend herbal festivals, filling our lives with projects to prepare us for spring.

But no-yolk and double-yolk eggs most remind me of spring. My dad had a collection of odd eggshells that appeared on the same day as tornadoes. He always said the tornado scared the hens and caused them to lay odd eggs. I think he believed that. Maybe it is true. He labeled each shell with the date of its corresponding tornado and displayed them on egg cups, for which they were far too large or far too small. He always loved curiously humorous events.

He’s been gone, now, about 12 years. So much has changed. I doubt he ever guessed I’d be telling the whole world about his eggshell collection, one day. I doubt he ever guessed what an impact he had, in the daily humor of life.

But I do not doubt he lived life, squeezed everything he could out of it, love it, with one hand held palm-upward, trusting, waiting for some blessing to fall into it, be it only an odd eggshell.

And he was not disappointed.

Good ol' days, Pre-schoolers, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Why do people put children in schools? Part 1

Posted on March 17, 2011December 15, 2015 by Katharine

Tired and angry child.

People forget children are not adults. Adults can handle many things children cannot. The adult thinks to himself, “Oh, it won’t be that bad.” But he forgets. Time has a way of rewriting our memories.

We project ourselves onto our children and think of how great it would be to be surrounded with 25 five-year-olds every day for nine months. We think as an adult who has authority and could quell any problem with a child. We forget a child has no such ability and does not even know what to do, let alone how.

Or we look at other kids or our own childhood and think, “They did okay. I did okay. Troubles make you stronger, after all.” That is true to an extent. When air blows over a plant, it does make it stronger, unless it is a tornado.

If we look deeper, though, we realize those who did well in school were taught how, as were most of their peers. In my day, kids were polite. It was considered a huge breach of civilized behavior to forget to say “please.” The child who did this was ostracized. Now it is a joke. It is a different world. It is truly bad.

Bad has always been a possibility, though, in schools. Some were blown away by the tornadoes of troubles they faced. Einstein, Edison, Disraeli, and T. Roosevelt all did poorly in the institutions of their days—very poorly.

If we actually were to place ourselves in our children’s shoes, we would think twice, and that would be good.

Think: if everyone at your workplace were mean to you, had better stuff than you, outperformed you, or got chosen before you.

How well could you cope with that?

Would you change jobs?

They say in those circumstances, a person should change jobs. However, children in those circumstances cannot change jobs. Their job must always remain to go to the school of someone else’s determining. Period.

If you did stay in that job, though, would you seek comfort from family or friends? Sure you would, and you should!

The child, though, often finds his family does not believe how bad it is, as discussed above, or does not understand the enormity of it. And his friends! They are all at the school, all in the same boat! How can they help? The child and all his friends are in a social drain that leaves them socially depleted by day’s end. And then he usually has more school to do at home.

You know how you would resent having to bring work home. Daily. Hours and hours of it.

Yet, you have freedom to leave your job if you want, even to take vacation whenever you want. The child is required by law to remain in his torture chamber for 12 years, at least. No wonder they think of suicide.

We will discuss the solution to this ongoing problem tomorrow. See ya!

Good ol' days, Homemaking, Inspiring