as a kid this was just a fun time to dress up, get lots of candy and other junk. it was a more innocent time. people left their doors unlocked. if they were not at home they left their candy in a bowl on the porch and everyone knew to just get one piece and left the rest so others could get some too. can you imagine that happening today?
when i was in elementary school the classes each selected a king and queen for their room. i don't remember how this process took place. each grade had several classes and each grade had a king and queen to represent them at the school program on halloween. so each class had a king and queen and then had a competition to decide which class's king and queen would represent the whole grade. the competition was to raise the most money for that grade.
to raise money each class did things like bring things to sell at recess. i can remember mother fixing me bags of popcorn and i would take them in a cardboard box (like you see the sellers at the ballgames) to school and sell them before school and at recess. probably sold them for a nickel. some other items that she fixed for me to sell were popcorn balls. i don't know about the popcorn balls but i think the popcorn sold before school started. i do know i never took anything back home and sometimes at lunch she would fix me another box to take back and sell in the afternoon.
in fifth grade i was chosen as my room's queen - don't remember who was the king and our class won the contest. so i got to represent the whole fifth grade. my brother jimmy who was in ninth grade was the king for that grade. i don't know how the high school grades selected their king and queen. my sister donna who wasn't in school yet won the costume contest for her age. i have a picture that was made of that evening of the three of us.
the program at the school had several different parts. you could buy your evening meal at the cafeteria. i don't remember what they sold. i don't think we ever ate there. then each room decorated and had some kind of game or spooky house. i think it cost a nickel to play the games or go in the spooky house. some of the games i remember were bobbing for apples, darts, and go fishing. of course prizes were awarded at the games. i don't think i ever went in the spooky house - i was too scared. but i do remember being told that they used peeled grapes for eyes which just seemed gross to me. then there was the king and queen pageant and the costume contest.
parents were very involved with the program putting together the rooms and working the games. the disadvantage of being queen was that i didn't get to go to the rooms for the fun. daddy took mother and donna because mother had to work in my classroom but i had to stay home to get ready for the pageant. later daddy wnet back to get mother to help me finish getting ready and i was at home by myself and it was dark. remember this is "halloween" when witches and goblins are out and about. i can remember standing at the door watching for them to get back and being sooo scared and of course my imagination was running wild. by that time i had seen "the wizard of oz" several times so you can guess what i "saw" out the window. yep a witch riding a broom up in the night sky. i was so glad when i saw daddy drive into the driveway. it seemed as if he had been gone for hours. of course it probably hadn't been but maybe 15 minutes tops. the school was only about a half mile away.
another thing about trick or treating - we didn't just go to anybody's house. we only went to houses that we knew or kinda knew the people who lived there. i can remember trick or treating in patsy's neighborhood because we knew a lot of those people and i guess because she lived "in town". aunt louise was one of the people who left her candy out because she was helping at the school. i remember she left hers in the living room. you just had to open the door and step in and get your candy. i don't know that she ever had any problems.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Uncle Coot
Uncle Coot’s real name was U.L. I don't remember how he came to be called "Coot". Uncle Coot and Aunt Mattie lived next door to us. He actually sold Mother and Daddy the land for them to build on. I don't exactly know why but I’m glad they did. Uncle Coot was one of Mother’s older brothers (since she is the baby of the family all the brothers and sisters were older). Uncle Coot was one of the colorful ones. Lots of memories of good times with him and Aunt Mattie who was just a little bitty thing. Couldn’t say that about Uncle Coot. He was a Boland through and through which meant he liked good food and liked to eat.
I can remember going to the drive-in theater with them which was a treat not only to see the movie but to get to eat the hamburgers that Aunt Mattie made and brought with us and Cheetos. I don't think we ever had Cheetos at our house. He also took us to Bounds’ Cave on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes it would be several of the brothers and sisters and familys and sometimes it would just be Uncle Coot and his family with me tagging along. The road to the cave was gravel of course and part of it was pretty steep. Uncle Coot would always tell us to hold on we had to get up this before it got slick as if the car was not going to make it.
Uncle Coot worked for Caviness Woodworking (where my brother has worked for the last umpteen years) and he would come home with sawdust all over him. I remember he had a towel draped over the seat of the car so he wouldn't get sawdust on the seat. At one time during my school days before Jimmy could drive and I guess before Daddy starting working for Dr. Webb, Uncle Coot would pick us up and take us home for lunch. We had to walk down to the main highway from the school and wait for him and them he would drop us back off at the school on his way back to work. Interesting that he always came home for lunch.
Uncle Coot was famous in our family for a couple of things - all relating to food of course. He was the one that would smoke sausage for us every year. It would be ready to eat around Christmas time and that was a treat. He also was known for his oyster stew which he usually fixed for our family get togethers in the winter months. I never tried it just couldn't get over the milk look. I never liked milk unless it was buttermilk. But the one thing that I think about the most this time of year was the days Uncle Coot lit the fire outside and put the big black pot over it and started filling it with meat and juices to start the "stew".
It was an all day event every fall - rain or shine - perferably shine. Mother and Aunt Mattie would start the day before cooking the beef and chicken and then early on stew day they would cook the potatoes and onion -- everything else came out of cans or bottles. Then through out the day we would get to take turns stirring the stew with a boat paddle made at Caviness Woodworking. When it got close to being done sometime late afternoon only Uncle Coot or Daddy could stir because they didn't want it to burn and with all the stuff in it it was thick and hard to stir. What good eating we had that night.
When the days start to get shorter and cool that's when I think back to stew day. I’ve been able to carry on the eating of stew by cutting down the original recipe to be able to cook it on the stove but I wish I could have given my kids the experience of cooking it outside. Great memories - great family times.
I can remember going to the drive-in theater with them which was a treat not only to see the movie but to get to eat the hamburgers that Aunt Mattie made and brought with us and Cheetos. I don't think we ever had Cheetos at our house. He also took us to Bounds’ Cave on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes it would be several of the brothers and sisters and familys and sometimes it would just be Uncle Coot and his family with me tagging along. The road to the cave was gravel of course and part of it was pretty steep. Uncle Coot would always tell us to hold on we had to get up this before it got slick as if the car was not going to make it.
Uncle Coot worked for Caviness Woodworking (where my brother has worked for the last umpteen years) and he would come home with sawdust all over him. I remember he had a towel draped over the seat of the car so he wouldn't get sawdust on the seat. At one time during my school days before Jimmy could drive and I guess before Daddy starting working for Dr. Webb, Uncle Coot would pick us up and take us home for lunch. We had to walk down to the main highway from the school and wait for him and them he would drop us back off at the school on his way back to work. Interesting that he always came home for lunch.
Uncle Coot was famous in our family for a couple of things - all relating to food of course. He was the one that would smoke sausage for us every year. It would be ready to eat around Christmas time and that was a treat. He also was known for his oyster stew which he usually fixed for our family get togethers in the winter months. I never tried it just couldn't get over the milk look. I never liked milk unless it was buttermilk. But the one thing that I think about the most this time of year was the days Uncle Coot lit the fire outside and put the big black pot over it and started filling it with meat and juices to start the "stew".
It was an all day event every fall - rain or shine - perferably shine. Mother and Aunt Mattie would start the day before cooking the beef and chicken and then early on stew day they would cook the potatoes and onion -- everything else came out of cans or bottles. Then through out the day we would get to take turns stirring the stew with a boat paddle made at Caviness Woodworking. When it got close to being done sometime late afternoon only Uncle Coot or Daddy could stir because they didn't want it to burn and with all the stuff in it it was thick and hard to stir. What good eating we had that night.
When the days start to get shorter and cool that's when I think back to stew day. I’ve been able to carry on the eating of stew by cutting down the original recipe to be able to cook it on the stove but I wish I could have given my kids the experience of cooking it outside. Great memories - great family times.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
CHURCH
Some of my earliest memories are of First Baptist Church, Calhoun City, Mississippi. I remember graduating up to the 4 and 5 year old room -the Beginner Department - with Mrs. (Red) Goodson as my teacher. It was a big room with a kitchen area, block area, reading area with a bookshelf of books, table and chairs for working with crafts, a piano, and a semi-circle of wooden chairs with a yellow seat. In fact I have a couple of those very chairs. The church did some updating about 25 years ago and was just going to throw out the chairs. My daddy got several and passed them around.
Another thing I remember about church was choir. Most of what I remember about the preschool choir is getting dressed in the choir robes -- white with big maroon bows -- and standing in line waiting to go to the sanctuary to sing our little hearts out.
One of the things that was so neat about Mrs. Goodson was that she went on mission trips to far away places and always brought back stuff for us to see and would tell us all about it. Looking back I realize what a very good pre-school teacher she was. She did it for many years. I also remember one spring during Vacation Bible School we got to go to her house and have cookies and juice (I think that's what we had). She lived within walking distance of the church. So they lined us up and had us hold onto a rope to keep us all together.
Then we graduated to the Primary Department and got a Bible as a gift from the church. In this department we were separated by grades in small class rooms with a big meeting room in the middle where we met together and had a devotion and song to start the day.
Our next step up was the Intermediate Department and then the Junior Department. As always church choir was a big part. The robes got a little more dignified as we got older. A couple years ago I found a picture of our choir when I was in middle school or junior high as we called it. It brought back memories of Mrs. Helen Lackey, Mrs. Minnie Lee Pryor, and Libba Jane Harrelson and all the choir trips we took.
We went to Jackson for choir festival every year which was a big deal for little o me. This was a one day trip but it always ended with us eating at a fancy restaurant which was something to treasure for me. Mrs. Pryor would get a shish kabob -- something I had never heard of - and it would be on fire. Another fun thing was to get to ride in Mrs. Pryor’s Cadillac. Fancy doings.
I have some very good memories from those days in church. A lot of seed was planted in my heart and life that finally came to fruitation many years later. I walked the aisle when I was 10 years old. Following my cousin because I had this incredible urge to do something. But not understanding what it was I needed to do. But because I had been in church all my life I must have had the right answers to Dr. Curtis’ questions or maybe he fed me the answers in the way he phrased the question. Anyway I was baptized and then tried unsuccessfully to make myself into what I thought God wanted me to be or to do. I was a good "church" girl, very involved and committed. You know when you're not a bad person or don't do anything really really bad sometimes it is hard to realize that you are a sinner just the same and can't do it on your own.
Thankfully God knew my heart and kept knocking on my heart's door and giving me opportunities to truly find Him. It wasn't until I was a mother of two with another one on the way that God finally made plain to me that I needed to seek His forgiveness and open my heart to Him. I was going through the Paul/Timothy Study from Billy Graham with a friend from church -- now Coldwater First Baptist. She shared a tape with me of someone giving their testimony and it opened my eyes to my own need. Up until that time I realized that I had never looked at myself as a sinner. So sitting on the side of my bed in Coldwater in a big old drafty house one morning after having what I considered my devotional. I confessed to God that I was a sinner and needed for Him to forgive me and to come into my heart and be my Lord and Savior and He did. Up until that moment I had never had any peace or assurance that when I died I would go to heaven. He took care of that problem. Then for months I pondered what to do. I mean I had already been baptised but did it count? I had never heard of anyone being baptised again.
Well God took care of that problem too. Through a round about way He placed me in my uncle's house in Atlanta, Georgia where I had a conversation with my aunt that gave me the answer to my question of what to do now. She told me her experience of her second baptisism and why she had done it. So I knew then that was what I needed to do. I have the date written down somewhere but I think it was in September 1979 that I was baptised following my true conversion.
By the way you may have noticed that I now use periods instead of hyphens or at least most of the time. That’s in response to a good suggestion from my son. See moms can learn from their children.
Another thing I remember about church was choir. Most of what I remember about the preschool choir is getting dressed in the choir robes -- white with big maroon bows -- and standing in line waiting to go to the sanctuary to sing our little hearts out.
One of the things that was so neat about Mrs. Goodson was that she went on mission trips to far away places and always brought back stuff for us to see and would tell us all about it. Looking back I realize what a very good pre-school teacher she was. She did it for many years. I also remember one spring during Vacation Bible School we got to go to her house and have cookies and juice (I think that's what we had). She lived within walking distance of the church. So they lined us up and had us hold onto a rope to keep us all together.
Then we graduated to the Primary Department and got a Bible as a gift from the church. In this department we were separated by grades in small class rooms with a big meeting room in the middle where we met together and had a devotion and song to start the day.
Our next step up was the Intermediate Department and then the Junior Department. As always church choir was a big part. The robes got a little more dignified as we got older. A couple years ago I found a picture of our choir when I was in middle school or junior high as we called it. It brought back memories of Mrs. Helen Lackey, Mrs. Minnie Lee Pryor, and Libba Jane Harrelson and all the choir trips we took.
We went to Jackson for choir festival every year which was a big deal for little o me. This was a one day trip but it always ended with us eating at a fancy restaurant which was something to treasure for me. Mrs. Pryor would get a shish kabob -- something I had never heard of - and it would be on fire. Another fun thing was to get to ride in Mrs. Pryor’s Cadillac. Fancy doings.
I have some very good memories from those days in church. A lot of seed was planted in my heart and life that finally came to fruitation many years later. I walked the aisle when I was 10 years old. Following my cousin because I had this incredible urge to do something. But not understanding what it was I needed to do. But because I had been in church all my life I must have had the right answers to Dr. Curtis’ questions or maybe he fed me the answers in the way he phrased the question. Anyway I was baptized and then tried unsuccessfully to make myself into what I thought God wanted me to be or to do. I was a good "church" girl, very involved and committed. You know when you're not a bad person or don't do anything really really bad sometimes it is hard to realize that you are a sinner just the same and can't do it on your own.
Thankfully God knew my heart and kept knocking on my heart's door and giving me opportunities to truly find Him. It wasn't until I was a mother of two with another one on the way that God finally made plain to me that I needed to seek His forgiveness and open my heart to Him. I was going through the Paul/Timothy Study from Billy Graham with a friend from church -- now Coldwater First Baptist. She shared a tape with me of someone giving their testimony and it opened my eyes to my own need. Up until that time I realized that I had never looked at myself as a sinner. So sitting on the side of my bed in Coldwater in a big old drafty house one morning after having what I considered my devotional. I confessed to God that I was a sinner and needed for Him to forgive me and to come into my heart and be my Lord and Savior and He did. Up until that moment I had never had any peace or assurance that when I died I would go to heaven. He took care of that problem. Then for months I pondered what to do. I mean I had already been baptised but did it count? I had never heard of anyone being baptised again.
Well God took care of that problem too. Through a round about way He placed me in my uncle's house in Atlanta, Georgia where I had a conversation with my aunt that gave me the answer to my question of what to do now. She told me her experience of her second baptisism and why she had done it. So I knew then that was what I needed to do. I have the date written down somewhere but I think it was in September 1979 that I was baptised following my true conversion.
By the way you may have noticed that I now use periods instead of hyphens or at least most of the time. That’s in response to a good suggestion from my son. See moms can learn from their children.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Stretching
Okay here I go --- trying something completely new. We’re supposed to step outside our comfort zone to grow. This is definitely outside of mine. I’ve thought often of trying to write down our family memories to pass on to our grandchildren. Just never have. Since reading family members blogs I decided that maybe this would be a good way to do it. But it means me sharing which literally scares me. I was reading my youngest son's blog last week and it sounded a lot like me. He is much more like me than I thought. Commitment is scary; being open with others is scary; but if he can try then maybe so can I.
I hope to make this about memories from my past, from Sam's past, and from our family's past. Hopefully to connect our family in another way since we are all scattered from here to there. Sam has always been good about telling the kids stories of his youth. Hopefully this will help me share mine (that is if I can remember any!!!)
I hope to make this about memories from my past, from Sam's past, and from our family's past. Hopefully to connect our family in another way since we are all scattered from here to there. Sam has always been good about telling the kids stories of his youth. Hopefully this will help me share mine (that is if I can remember any!!!)
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