Funny Recollections

More Tuesday memories with mom.

She started talking about her year on a Virginia farm when she lived with her aunt and uncle. She and her twin brother went to live on the farm because food and money were scarce in Brookhaven. She cried sometimes at meals in Virginia because there was so much food and she knew they were hungry back home.

Her uncle was a postman/farmer. Their farm grew everything they needed except coffee and sugar, so the story goes. Mom remembered that when they were heading back home, her aunt asked if she wanted to stay a little longer because the king and queen of England were coming to visit the US in a few months. Recently Mom googled the royal visit and found out it was 1938. So she and uncle John had come the year before when they were twelve.

She said the two of them were very homesick the whole time they were there. Then she started remembering the games and silliness of living with seven siblings. Younger sister Becky was a dare-devil. She would hang by her knees from the rafters in the barn and she would 'skin-the-cat' on a pipe lodged between the pickets of the fence where the fence was about 6 feet high.

The four girls would play jacks and convince their three brothers to play, too. Then the girls would have to play mumbly peg with the boys. This game consisted of flipping a pen knife into the dirt from different points on the body-wrist, elbow, shoulder, head. The loser had to pull out a matchstick with his/her teeth that the winners pounded into the dirt with the pen knife. Mom said she always hoped that they would be called to supper before the end of the game.

Grandmother Corona was a member of all the ladies' clubs in town until one fateful day. She came home and found that the girls had locked the boys out of the house and were splashing water on the boys when they tried to open the screen door. (Mom was pretty sure Betty headed up this operation.)
After that day when asked to join the bridge club, WMU, or garden club ladies Corona told everyone  that she could not come because she had to look after the seven heathens at her house. Mom said the kids were often called 'heathens' by their mom.

Some of the games she remembered playing were hopscotch, devil in the ditch, who's got the button, and monopoly. On hot days they played on the shady porch on the cool concrete.

I asked about the main businesses in Brookhaven. My grandfather had a law practice and an interest in a lumber company. The next door neighbor, Daisy, worked in the office of the other lumber company in town. Mom said the office was above the Rexall Drugstore. So Daisy knew when any of the seven little Sauls kids was sick. She would order a milkshake for the invalid. It would be delivered by a boy on a bicycle who held the the shake in one hand balanced on a platter. Impressive to a sick kid, I'm sure.

That's about it for this memory lane trip.

Spring Flowers

These lovely irises are my favorite spring flowers. I got them from mom's yard. She has so many more varieties. When I was in junior high I thought I might develop a new variety of iris. I pollenated different irises in our yard and saved the seeds. I don't remember that the seeds ever came up.

Enjoy the photos! 

When I was a kid...

I was remembering playing with my brothers when we were kids. Every Easter we each got a stuffed bunny in our Easter basket. The bunnies were named really original names like "Girl Bunny" and "Boy Bunny". For some reason my younger brother's bunny was named "Dirty Bunny". I know that wasn't its first name but that is the name we called it when we played together.

I had lots of dolls and I played with them by myself since brothers don't know how to play dolls. I don't remember being the dolls' mother. I do remember pretending the dolls were orphans and I was in charge of them. I couldn't remember my dolls' names or I changed their names so often the names didn't stick. Suzy was a popular name for my dolls.

But back to the bunnies. My brothers and I played pretend games with stuffed animals like the bunnies and small, molded plastic animals that came in sets. I had a plastic lamb called "Cornelia". Now there is a name for a toy and why can I remember that? I think I was reading a book with a main character named Cornelia.

Anyway, my brothers and I made up fantastic adventures for our animals. We built buildings and roads out of blocks, boxes, and whatever we could find. It was much more fun than playing orphanage alone with my dolls.

This was back before Legos but I did have a set of American plastic bricks and Michael had Lincoln logs. We would build elaborate towns and beg to be allowed to leave them up so we could continue our story the next day.

The TV wasn't on all day long. There were no video games or computers. We found ways to entertain ourselves for hours with our imaginations and basic non-electronic toys.

What do you remember about childhood playtime?

More Mom Memories

Yesterday I tried to get mom to tell me about a trip her parents took when she was six or seven years old. I asked her about the doll they brought back to her from that trip.

She remembered what she was doing when they came home from the trip. She was playing outside on their seesaw. A sister was sitting one end and mom was walking up the board to the other end.

Their parents came up in the car and her sister got up to run to their parents. Mom fell on a nail that was sticking out of the seesaw handle. They had to pull her off the nail. After she told me about this accident, she remembered two more times that she hurt her knee.

Mom was not sickly as child but she was not as active as her siblings. She had some foot issues and had to wear corrective shoes for a long time. It is interesting to me that she is has lived longer than her sisters and brothers even though she was less healthy as a child.