This is horribly grainy. The original is one of those old peel off polaroid photos. Me "helping" Dad with an automatic transmission. Wearing my favorite yellow dress at the time. (I rarely wear anything yellow now, the color in my opinion makes me look dead) My Mom made the dress. Yes that's a glass coke bottle in the top of the picture.
It's Friday the 13th and I want to celebrate memories that have surfaced as I looked through these old picture books. So, if you will please indulge me, here are 13 memories.
1. We had dogs as the time. Curb setters, sooners, heinz 57, whatever your family calls a mutt. My sister and I got to name them. Poor pups, their names were Holiday and School Book.
2. Omer was my Grandmother's friend. He always helped us roll pennies. I have no idea what happened to the pennies. And I have no idea why they never were more than friends - he was always there during the day and evening, and went home at night.
3. I stood in the seat next to daddy when he would drive.
4. James and WildaMae had a dog named Poncho, a Lassie style Collie. We would eat ice cream off the same spoon. A bite for me, a bite for Poncho.
5. I sat on a space heater and had 3rd degree burns on my butt.
6. When I had the chicken pox, mom wrapped my hands in sheets and taped them around my wrists so I wouldn't scratch. Mind you, I had blisters between my toes, up my nose, in my eyes, and many other publicly unmentionable places.
7. My daddy was impulsive. We would load in the car and drive to Miami to see my Aunt Jenny on Friday evening, "just for the weekend."
8. We raced, dirt track, beat and bang, red mud dust, drag car, burnt rubber. I still love the way it feels to get the jump on a redlight.
9. The smell of a mechanic. Grease and sweat. The way it smells when you walk into a shop to have your oil changed. My dad always had grease stains on his hands and grease under his nails.
10. A pair of pocket pliers and a pocket knife were more important to him than money. I wish I could find small pliers for me and my sis just like those he carried.
11. My cousin, Scott, had the cutest curls. One Sunday my Mom put his curls in a ponytail and my Aunt Diane had those curls cut off the next day. Scott's daughter, Cindy, has those same curls now.
12. Singing Delta Dawn using the hairbrush as a microphone. There will be NO REPEAT performance of this activity. Tanya Tucker was only a child when she performed this song at the gym in Royston, GA.
13. Seeing the Porter Wagner show at Shoal Creek near Lavonia, GA. Dolly Parten was so much larger than life even then. Sparkles and big blonde hair. I was too young to even notice the reason all the men were there.
13 memories. I have really enjoyed recalling all of this and more this week. I have retreated and reflected. I needed to do this in light of the loss we suffered earlier.
I challenge all of you to give 13 memories on the 13th and leave your blog information so I can learn more about you.
Have a wonderful weekend. We are off to the final volleyball tourney of the season.
I want to leave you with a link I found last night. This young lady makes jewelry and is selling some items for charity. Take a side trip to the UK and visit Kara at http://www.innocentcharmschats.blogspot.com.
See you Monday.
2 comments:
Oh, I had that variety of chicken pox, too! The worst - on my eyelids and the bottoms of my feet. ARGH!
In which Ellen tries again..each version is different, such memories!
1.Blowing bubbles in kindergarten, playing in the sandbox, hanging upside down on the monkey bars and hearing, "I see London, I see France, I see Ellen's underpants." Watching the caterpillars eat the milkweed plant outside the classroom window.
2.Our mother reading books to us...always..long books..The Yearling, Tom Sawyer, Just So Stories...so many.
3.Daddy making up outrageous stories, making me a swing in the front yard out of an old pair of his pants.
4.Jumping rope, spinning tops, playing jacks, making mud pies, playing with my beloved doll.
5.Refusing to give up my dime in Sunday School, I wanted to save it for an ice cream cone on the way home. Finally stomping across the room and throwing in the offering basket with a histrionic "THERE!"
6.Trying to decide which way to walk to my little elementary school...on one corner I was convinced that there was a witch, on the other was a huge, tall tree which I KNEW was waiting to fall on me.
7.Seeing my English grandmother make her four o'clock tea every day and sitting beside her on the "chesterfield" every day.
8.Sitting on the handle bars of my brother's bike as we went like a bat out of Hell down the road.
9.Playing football with my brother and breaking his finger when I tackled him.
10.Never wearing shoes until I was in the seventh grade...getting to wear lipstick in the eighth grade only after Christmas break..what a hoot that must have been to see all these girls in school trussed up with Tangee! (I know, all of you are too young to know what that was..I can still smell that lipstick in my memory.)
11.Breaking my big toe, getting stung by what seemed like a hundred wild bees while on a hike...several days were lost to me. I do remember my eyes being swollen shut, my lips so swollen that water would roll down my chin and picking stingers out of my head, arms and legs.
12.My sister making me a doll who was supposed to be the same size as I was..the only problem was that she forgot to allow for seam allowances and so the doll was a little thin. She came with some of my old clothes, red braids like mine and how I loved her. I must have been 4-5 years old and at the time my favorite song was Waltzing Matilda, so I named her Matilda. I insisted that Matilda come to the dinner table each night (there were stains to prove it as she had her own place setting and I fed her.) I had Matilda until I was 28 or so, until the fateful day that my youngest son at 15 months chewed off her arms. I cried. I should have called in the medics. I would love to have her today.
13.And finally...my first date with the man I was to marry later was on a Friday the 13th in March of 1962! Wow, here we are still together.
Thanks and Best!
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