Just a picture

A peaceful scene that restores the soul

After yesterday's lengthy post I decided that just a picture would do for today.  This was made in the Japanese garden at the Botanical Garden. 

How Did They Do It? Part Two

A while back I started a post about my grandparents and their lives, How Did They Do It? Part One .  After rambling for a while I realized that I needed to turn the post into at least two parts.  I also realized that I needed to organize my thoughts before continuing.  It has been bugging me that I haven't finished the series.  The problem is that all these thoughts keep swirling around in the salad spinner and I can't seem to get them together!  Part of the problem is that although in my mind I can see the lives that they lived, I can't really imagine what their lives were like. 

Both sets of grandparents were born in the early years of 1900, if my memory is correct in 1904 and 1907. My grandparents grew up on farms.  My maternal grandparents married in 1925; the paternal grandparents in 1927.  So I decided those years would be the first part of their lives.  In the following years my parents would be born and my grandparents would be busy raising them, so I decided that would be the second part of their lives. The 1950's brought high school and college graduations, followed by marriages and children moving far away to raise their children.  Part three is the stage of my grandparents lives that I remember as a child and a teenager.  

After breaking down their lives into these three stages I realized it was easier to understand what life was really like by just looking at each stage individually. (I have to laugh because at this point I'm wondering if one of my grandchildren will break down my life into stages!) So, thinking about the years 1904 to 1927 is hard.  I've seen pictures of my maternal grandmother's family home where she was born and grew up.  I remember one time when we were visiting the cemetery close to where the home was that my grandmother showed us the spot where it stood.  It was a big house, there were 10 children living there, as I remember it was two stories and made of wood.  There were no screens to keep out the bugs, ugh!  I've been in the house where my father lived as a little boy.  It was also made of wood, too, and I think there was a fireplace.  The room where the kitchen was had been torn down but I remember hearing him talk about the women cooking on a wood burning stove.  

Neither family had electricity nor running water, but that was the way of life at that time.  Winters were cold and summers were hot.  They didn't know what a luxury it would be to flip a switch and have light or turn on a faucet and have water, hot water, too, come running out.  If you don't know about something how can you miss it?  Automobiles were just coming on the scene as my grandparents were marrying.  I remember my grandmother talk about taking the horse and wagon to go to the Delta to visit her family.  I also remember her laughing that when the first automobile that could go 35 miles per hour was built that everyone thought that anyone riding in such would be killed!

Life in those days was about survival.  Raising crops for food and income.  Raising animals for food and to pull equipment.  Cutting fire wood for warmth and cooking.  Sewing clothes and making quilts for warmth.  There were social times, too though.  For my father's family there was Camp Meeting in the first week of August.  Churches had dinner on the grounds followed by a "Sunday Singing" that attracted visitors.  Trips to town were a special occasion, too. 

Health care was very different then, too.  Illness and injury took many lives.  Doctors were well trained but drugs and successful treatment techniques had not begun to develop (thank World War II for that). Doctors made house calls, traveling on horseback or in a buggy over the dirt roads.  My great-grandmother died in a February snowstorm as her 10th child was being born, the doctor was unable to get through the snow to the house.  If you walk through a cemetery often you will see many tombstones that have almost identical death dates:  influenza took it's toll during those years.

Did the people of that time think their lives were hard?  I have to think not; they didn't know any other way of life.  As I stated above, they didn't know about the luxuries and modern conveniences that make our lives easy.  Often we hear people talk about the good old days and how simple life was "back then".  I honestly don't think people's lives were really simple during these years. No matter what time period you live in, life is just the way it is at that time.

Water

We've had rain this weekend.  During the night Thursday and early Friday morning the first rain fell, 2 1/2 lovely inches.  Although it fell during the night and I missed the simple pleasure of watching it come down I was very grateful and somewhat surprised at how much we had.  It started raining again this morning; by the time I left for church the gauge had a quarter of an inch and by the time it stopped late this afternoon there was 4 inches in the gauge!  

I went out yesterday morning  to check plants and I was amazed at how in 24 hours they all looked so fresh and green.  The Swedish Ivy that had looked very pale had not only greened up but looked as if it had already put out new growth.  Same thing with the geraniums that had looked like they were just about done.  The rain had done what no amount of watering with the garden hose could do.

 

As I thought about this remarkable occurrence I remembered that last weekend Jaydon and I had gone to the Botanical Garden to see an exhibit of dinosaurs in the gardens.  One of the dinosaur's descriptions told that it had lived in the area that we know as west Texas and further explained that west Texas at the time of that dinosaur was covered with lush vegetation and rivers and lakes.  I had a hard time imagining west Texas looking much like present day east Texas! 

 

Last Sunday my Sunday School class finished a DVD series filmed in the middle east.  The final lesson spoke of the importance of wells and water in Jesus' time.  There were several arial shots of where the dessert and irrigated lands came together.  The contrast was sharp.  What a difference water makes to a dry land!

 

Water.  We take it for granted, but we have to have it to live, don't we? Humans, animals, plants and trees.  It is necessary for the sustainment of life.

 

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of the rain that waters your creation.  Thank you for the gift of water to drink.  Thank you for the gift of your Living Water.

Is it really time for these?

It seems early to see pumpkins in the store.  I saw a news item that farmers were harvesting early this year because of the drought so that may have caused these to pop up a little early.  And no, I was not the only one making pictures in the store!  It was quite a display, perfect to kick off the fall season!

The Well House

Several posts back I wrote about my grandparents and wondered how did they survive.  I realized, very quickly, that I needed to break the idea down into several posts. I was writing and writing and writing because I had so many thoughts.  I plan to continue those posts along with just writing about some of the things I remember.  This one of those posts!

Remember the post about iced tea and my comment about the well water?  Writing about the well water reminded me of the little well house that sat about 100 yards (I think) from my maternal grandparents house.  As I shared previously they bought the property in the early 1940's and expanded the small house that was at the front of the acreage.  

I don't know if the well was already there and if my grandfather built the well house.  By my childhood it was covered in the same white, probably asbestos or some other unsafe by today's standards, shingle type siding that covered the house. There was a door, but I don't remember it being locked.  There were several small windows and a dirt floor.  A single light bulb in the center of the room provided light. It always smelled like onions because that was where my grandmother stored the small onions that she harvested from her garden. In the summer time there were usually wasps or yellow jackets that had snuck in and built a nest so my grandmother kept a can of spray in there, too.  Not much else was in there except the well itself.

I don't remember going in there very much.  It was off limits without an adult presence.  There were no questions asked and it never crossed my mind to try to slip in there.  It was off limits, period (just like the loaded guns kept in the gun safe!).  I do remember the first time I went in there.  I think a switch or something had tripped so my grandfather had to go out there to take care of whatever was wrong.  It was dark and although there was a light in the well house I remember him carrying a lantern, too.  That may have been for the short walk out there but it may also have been for extra light in the well house.  What I remember more than anything else was how disappointed I was in seeing the well.  I had expected something like the old-fashioned wishing wells with a bucket and a rope hoist that I had seen in story books.  I fully expected to look down into a beautiful , shimmering pool of water and make an extravagant wish!  However, the well was just a big, white, round porcelain thing sitting in the well house! I remember saying, "that's the well?" and wondering how that thing possible got the water up out of the well!

Future visits also brought disappointment.  The well house was hot, stuffy, and as mentioned before smelled like onions.  Today if you drive by the property the well house is gone.  The county laid water lines and mandated that everyone use their very bad tasting water that was very expensive.  The hydrant in the yard area behind the house door remained hooked up to the well and that was where the tea water came from in later years.  My father swore it was the best water in the world, except for the times when some of that beautiful red Mississippi dirt slipped into the well!

You get mixed up

One of the assignments in my Organizational Communications class was to watch the movie Twelve Angry Men and write a critique. Thankfully the instructor gave us the option of watching the movie in class or on our own.  Obviously, since it was 9 p.m. the class choose to go home and watch the movie later.

The movie turned out to be very interesting,  We watched the 1957, black and white version. It is a very absorbing movie and I easily wrote the assigned critique.  Twelve men jurors are in a jury room trying to decide if a young man accused of murder is guilty or not.  Sounds rather blah, but this is a classic study in verbal and non-verbal communication not to mention prejudice.  I also thought the non-human elements were intriguing.  I could probably write a dissertation, the movie is just that full of thoughts.

But I had to share something here that one of the characters says to another when he was aggravated with him.

 "you're like everybody else, you think too much, you get mixed up"

 

I've written here before that I sometimes think my mind is like a salad spinner with all these thoughts and ideas spinning around. I have to sometimes push the stop button and dump out the contents of the spinner.  So this quote, while slightly funny in the movie, spoke to me.  I think way too much, not that that is a bad thing.  But it reminded me that when the ideas get to spinning around they get mixed up.  So it is good to stop the spinner, empty the contents and un-mix them.

Why do you like to...

Saturday morning Jaydon and I took my big embroidery machine to the shop.  This machine (AKA "Lucifer") has been having multiple issues so it was time for it to go; this is its second visit since I got it less than two years ago and I'm hoping this visit will also be under warranty.

 

As we were driving along Jaydon asked me why I like to sew so much.  I had a quick response with another question, "why do you like to build Legos so much"?  He had started a project the night before and had to reluctantly leave it to go to bed.  He was up early Saturday morning to finish the project, too.  So this led to a little conversation about why we like to do certain things. We discussed the fact that there is just something within each person that attracts them to certain things. I can't explain why I like to sew and why it gives me a feeling of satisfaction.  It is just something deep within me. 

 

So, why do you like to....                                 .

 

 

Problems

I'm starting a new class tonight. Its title is Organizational Communications and the text deals with organizational behavior.  I had to laugh today as I was reading the text on my lunch break when I came to a chapter on problems and encountered this sentence "Unfortunately, most problems don't come neatly packaged and labeled "problem.""

I could just see the UPS (or /Fed Ex) delivery person bringing me a package labeled "Contents: problem".  I certainly wouldn't be excited and would definitely refuse delivery.  No one wants problems, that's for sure. 

Sometimes life's problems do come suddenly, just like a package off the delivery truck.  But sometimes they are like the sink holes that you see on the news; they start off small in a tiny crack and grow and, if left unattended, grow into a massive problem.  They sneak up on ya!

Sometimes when problems pop up in our lives we say "why me Lord?" But as I read this text I was reminded that we just need to pray and ask God to get us through the problem.  So just refuse the package and send it back!

How Did They Do It? Part One

I've often wondered, how did my grandparents survive?  Their lives were so different, and not just in the sense that they didn't have cell phones, computers, and microwave ovens!  Even I didn't have those conveniences when I was growing up, well yes, we did get a microwave when I was a teenager but on with this story. I have to note here that I intended to write just one post on the subject but it grew and grew.  So, this is part one:

My father's family just lived a few miles from town when he was small. The roads were all dirt/gravel and often their travel into town was limited because of bad weather; my grandfather gave up farming and they moved into town when my father started high school. His family from that time on  were "city folks".  My grandparents both had jobs and enjoyed city conveniences even though their finances were still limited. The years in the country were harsh, it was the depression and everyone was struggling.

My mother's family lived way out in the country, also on dirt/gravel roads, until my mother was about 9 years old when they moved just a few miles outside of Eupora.  They bought a small house and (I think) about 35 acres.  My grandfather built around the existing house and added a barn built from lumber salvaged from an old house (yep, recycling was going on then, too). There was no air-conditioning, just cross-ventilation and box fans. As I "suffered" and complained about the August heat last week I thought about how hot it was in Mississippi in the summers without air-conditioning.  My grandparents never seemed to mind, they just took it in stride. Their car wasn't air-conditioned either!

This was my grandparent's house, as I knew it.  This picture was made in late December 1964.  There was a light snowfall; my cousins and I were thrilled!  Daddy walked across the highway and made this picture.  The car on the left was ours, my uncle's on the right.  My grandfather put his car in the barn!

Steps

I don't know why but a set of steps along a curb has always caught my attention.  Especially ones that lead to a vacant lot. I always have to wonder about what was there that the steps led to and why that building is no longer there.



Gulfport, MS

I didn't have to wonder about what happened to the building these stairs led into; it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

 

These steps lead up to the abandonded T& P Hospital. I had to wonder about all the patients and their families that went up and down these steps.





No steps here, but still made me wonder about the house that had once been there.  Now this was all that was left - two lions at the end of the sidewalk, guarding the vacant lot.



A man's heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.  Proverbs 16:9

An interesting find

When Bentley and I were on our way to Marshall Pottery I spotted an old building as we were going into Marshall.  On our way back I circled around the block to get a better look and some pictures.  There really wasn't much place to park and it was clearly posted "no trespassing" so I had to take what I could get picture wise.  There were no signs or anything, really to identify the building.

It appeared to be a school.  There was a building to the side that was connected by a covered walkway on a lower level and an enclosed walkway on the upper level.  What puzzled me was that this side building had what appeared to be a carport that was under part of the back side of the building.  The area was big enough that several vehicles could have easily parked under the carport.  It seemed odd for a school but I thought maybe it was a Catholic school and that was where the nuns or priests lived.

Here's a full view from across the street, obviously this building has been abamdonded for a while.

Here's the view from the back,  you can see the covered walkway.

When I started searching on the internet for this building I first thought it was one of the old high school buildings but I couldn't get the address to line up with the historical information.  I looked at it on Google satellite and could see a circular drive in front of the building, very interesting.  And, this building is adjacent to some of the current day school buildings.

Some more searching and I had the correct identification.  This is the T & P Hospital and it served all employees of the Texas & Pacific Railroad.

 

 This isn't a very good picture, it actually came from a post card on the T&P Railway site, but it gives an idea of the size of the hospital and a (somewhat) before picture.  Knowing that it was hospital explains the building to the side; that was the emergency room where the ambulances or emergency transports could pull under the carport covering.

As usual I found myself picturing this building as it was when new and in use, although I had envisioned students coming and going and not patients and ambulances.   There was a roof fire about a year ago and the owner commented that he would love to sell the building.  The article in the Marshall paper stated that the building was inspected after the fire and was deteriorating.  It also has asbestos so it will probably continue to decline until it is torn down and a little piece of history is lost.

The Clothesline

I put my pillow out on the glider today, in the extremely hot sun.  I do this from time to time and always love the way it smells when I go to bed. The fresh clean smell of sun on the fabric will envelope me as I drift off to sleep. As I brought the pillow in I took a quick smell, just to check.  Yes, it has that heavenly fresh air clean fragrance.  I wish I could have that fragrance on my pillow every night! 

When I took that quick sniff I remembered hanging sheets, towels and family laundry on a clothesline and how sweet the sheets would smell after hanging in the sun to dry.  At one house I had an old-fashioned clothesline with two "T" shaped poles and several lines strung between them.  Another house had a modern clothesline; it was square in shape and would spin around.  But my initial training with a clothesline goes back to my maternal grandmother.

My Mamaw had the old-fashioned clothesline, strung between the "T" shaped poles.  Hers actually had several poles in between that would be used to raise the lines after the wash was hung up.  Sometime during my teenage years she got an electric dryer, but I don't recall her using it (my mother did when we visited in the winters).  During the summers I stayed with her, and even on visits in later years, hanging out the wash was a ritual that I always enjoyed.  As a child she taught me how to hang the clothes, and I worked right along side her with no restrictions on what I could hang up. She would hang all the socks together, all the underwear together, all the shirts together, everything was hung up in orderly fashion. I also remember that just like while we washed the dishes we talked while we were hanging out the day's wash.   I also washed my doll clothes and would hang them right along the human clothes.  In the late afternoon we took the wash off the line (sometimes sooner if it looked like rain) and would fold the clothes and put them away. 

Hanging out the clothes was one of those simple things, a necessity that had to be done over and over again.  I never tired of standing at the clothesline, as a child or an adult. It was a chore, but it was an organized routine and when the job was done there was a sense of satisfaction that the chore had been done in an orderly fashion.  Today I dry my clothes in an electric dryer, but my pillow goes outside to bring the laundry day scent into my dreams.