tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56995202914782712822024-02-20T03:18:25.451-06:00Hijinks on High StreetLife and times in small town MississippiNinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-47844356876366231032009-07-10T10:42:00.003-05:002009-07-10T10:44:55.111-05:00I'm Not Dead - YetI just read the following on someone else's blog and thought it was funny and mostly true. Maybe you'll enjoy it, too. It's attributed to Dave Barry, a syndicated newspaper columnist.<br /><br /><br />25 THINGS THAT IT TOOK ME 50 YEARS TO LEARN<br /><br /> 1. Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.<br /> <br />2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."<br /> <br />3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."<br /> <br />4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.<br /> <br />5. If there is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and he decides to deliver a message to humanity, he WILL NOT use as his messenger a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.<br /> <br />6. You should not confuse your career with your life.<br /> <br />7. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.<br /> <br />8. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.<br /> <br />9. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.<br /> <br />10. Never lick a steak knife.<br /> <br />11. Take out the fortune before you eat the cookie.<br /> <br />12. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.<br /> <br />13. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.<br /> <br />14. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.<br /> <br />15. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.<br /> <br />16. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.<br /> <br />17. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.<br /> <br />18. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.<br /> <br />19. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.<br /> <br />20. The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it.<br /> <br />21. People who feel the need to tell you that they have an excellent sense of humor are telling you that they have no sense of humor.<br /> <br />22. The most valuable function performed by the federal government is entertainment.<br /> <br />23. They can hold all the peace talks they want, but there will never be peace in the Middle East. Billions of years from now, when Earth is hurtling toward the sun and there is nothing left alive on the planet except a few microorganisms, the microorganisms living in the Middle East will be bitter enemies.<br /> <br />24. Nobody is normal.<br /> <br />25. Your friends love you anyway.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-30625484992448621032009-04-14T14:39:00.002-05:002009-04-14T15:08:45.087-05:00PilgrimageApril in Aberdeen meant getting ready for pilgrimage time. Aberdeen is full of ante-bellum homes; one street was formerly called "Silk Stocking Row." People who own the beautiful old houses get them spiffed up and ready for people from far and wide to come and tour. The azaleas start to bloom, and the crepe myrtle bushes are bright with color. Local ladies who give tours at the various homes dress in period dress, and it's a time of festivities and showing off the best of Aberdeen. Although our house was not a large ante-bellum one, several houses on our street were. After I left home, they began to use the front porch of our house as a stop on the tour, and my mother greeted guests on the porch, which was set up to look like an old timey school room. <br /><br />April also meant choral concerts and competitions and rehearsals after school. Our girls sextet competed at district and at state, although we were never selected to sing at the state concert. I guess a group who sounded a lot better than we did got to sing. But we got to go to Jackson for about 3 days to prepare for the state concert - probably the precursor to today's All-State choir. We took several buses there and stayed in a hotel; it was all so exciting for a bunch of small town teens! <br /><br />One April meant celebrating Aberdeen's Bicentennial. Our sextet had to have ante-bellum style dresses with bonnets, and we sang at events all over town. One event was singing at the Civil War cemetery in Aberdeen. Yes, there is a Civil War cemetery. It's a little way down from Oddfellows Rest cemetery, although not all buried in the CW cemetery are war veterans. One plot is rather large and is framed by a low metal fence; there is a large headstone. I always heard that a lady was buried there sitting in her rocking chair. <br /><br />During my junior and senior years in high school, as well as in the summer, I worked at a printing shop which had gotten the contract to print all the materials for the Bicentennial. Not only did I have to be a part of many of the events, I had to collate and staple the programs and get them ready for distribution. I was glad to see the Bicentennial activities come to an end.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-21267269854472678132009-02-19T15:09:00.003-06:002009-02-19T15:45:41.344-06:00One of the young men I work with has gone on a skiing trip with a group of people from his singles class at church. Now, if I were his age again (26 or so), that sounds like something I would just love to do. I don't know if anyone who lived in Aberdeen in that era ever went snow skiing or even knew what it was. I was pretty much of a tomboy when I was young, probably brought about by the necessity of making up our own games, which were played mostly outside and with borrowed or homemade equipment. We would get our parents to save the big empty juice cans, and we would use an ice pick or a nail to punch a hole on each side near the top, thread the heaviest string or twine that we could find through the holes, and walk on the cans, using the string to pull the can up with each step we took. We loved the noise the metal cans made on the sidewalk. Why we didn't have more sprained or broken ankles I really don't know. <br /><br />Dr. Dabbs lived down the street from us, and he actually had a full-size tennis court in his backyard. His daughter and son were older than Alice and I, and they played tennis on the school team. Alice and I would often put on a brave face, go down and knock on the Dabbs' back door, and ask Mrs. Dabbs if we could borrow some racquets and balls and play on the court. She never told us, "No," and we would hit balls back and forth for a long time. Maybe that's where I got my love of watching tennis on television. I never thought about working with a coach or playing seriously; I guess I didn't know those things existed like music teachers did.<br /><br />I guess today I would sit in the ski lodge, drinking a cup of hot chocolate, wishing I were young enough once again to try my hand, or my feet, as is the case, at skiing. I think I might have been good at it, because I never shied away from taking a chance, whether it was climbing a tree (and falling out) or swinging on a vine in the jungle. <br /><br />I hope Brandon has a great time!Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-10533225811058944522009-02-03T10:56:00.002-06:002009-02-03T11:16:58.011-06:00All the stores are full of Valentines, Valentine's Day candy, and doo dads. The dime stores in Aberdeen (for awhile, we actually had two of them) had the Valentines that you either cut out or punch out, and you wanted to buy yours as soon as they were on the shelves. I don't remember seeing all the things that are in the stores today - pens, pencils, talking stuffed animals, etc. - only the cards and boxes of candy. <br /><br />About a week before Valentine's Day, we had to decorate a Valentine box to take to our classroom; it would hold all the Valentines we received from classmates. A shoe box was the ideal base for the box we planned to cover with red, pink, and white crepe paper, paper doilies, and massive globs of glitter. We also cut out tons of paper hearts to stick on the box, along with our name prominently displayed somewhere. The big day finally came, and we very carefully carried the box into our classroom, where it was displayed on a table with everyone else's. Selections of which Valentines and to whom to give them were made several days ahead of time. You didn't give a Valentine to everyone in the class; you certainly didn't want some random boy to think you were madly in love with him just because you gave him a Valentine! <br /><br />The one Valentine we girls hoped to get was one that had a real lollipop (red) threaded through the card. It was so special, and you just knew that that boy was probably going to grow up and marry you because he gave you such a cool Valentine. In the afternoon, the homeroom mothers would come and bring cookies and punch. No one seemed to worry about sugar or red food dye or food allergies back then, and I don't remember anyone collapsing or going into shock from eating homemade cookies and punch. <br /><br />We even had the little conversation hearts back then - the ones that taste like an antacid to me, although Arnie loves them. He actually mailed a small box of those hearts to me in college just to see if they would really go through the mail. They did. There was a space on the back side of the box for a name and address. The post office would probably throw them out today; I wonder what it cost him back then in the 60s?<br /><br />Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day, and I hope you get that big box of premium chocolates I know you want!Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-90266635935467641062009-01-15T11:38:00.002-06:002009-01-15T12:08:38.564-06:00On cold days like this one, Alice and I stayed inside to play. I remember a lot of those days, but there must not have been so many because we would have been in school. Alice liked to play with paper dolls - you know, the kind where you cut out the paper clothing and use the little tabs to attach the clothing to the dolls. I never saw much point in it. The doll was one-dimensional and couldn't bend or move around anyway. Then, you put an outfit on her and what could she do? Nothing. Then you took that outfit off and put on another one. B-o-r-i-n-g!<br /><br />I much preferred the not so cold days in the fall when the leaves had fallen and we could play outside. Sally Ann had a very deep back yard with a wonderful tree with limbs just right for kids to climb on. In fact, each of us who played on that tree had his/her own limb. Of course, Sally Ann had the best one; it went out for a ways and then branched into a "y" so you could hang upside down and do various tricks on it. And it wasn't too far from the ground, in case you fell, which we did sometimes. The rest of us had to get permission from Sally Ann to play on her limb.<br /><br />One of our favorite games at Sally Ann's was Follow the Leader. Now, Larry lived for a time in the other side of Alice's duplex, and he was an only child with a said-to-be alcoholic father, Herman, and mother, Pearl, who watched his every move from the swing on the duplex front porch. Larry wore glasses that were as thick as Coke bottles (the glass kind, you know, like we had back then when the Coke tasted better than it does now). Before Larry came over to play, Sally Ann, Alice, and I would dig some holes in the yard, fill them with leaves, and tell Larry we were going to play Follow the Leader. The leader would manage to barely avoid the leaf-filled holes, but Larry would step in them every time! We would howl with laughter, and Larry would start to cry. Then, his mother would start yelling, asking us what we had done to him. We would tell her we were just playing a game and didn't know what was wrong with Larry. Wasn't that mean? And Larry was even nice to me the last time I saw him, which was probably 25 years ago. He should have shoved me into a hole then and there!<br /><br />At one point, Sally Ann's father decided to make some extra money and raise chinchillas for the fur. Now, he built a fairly nice house for the chinchillas to live in; it even had air conditioning. We didn't have air conditioning in our houses, but the chinchillas did, so we spent considerable time in their house playing dolls and even dressing up Sally Ann's cats in doll clothes. I wonder what the two types of animals thought about each other. The chinchillas were in cages, so they never got very close to the cats. I really hated it when his chinchilla enterprise came to an end; I don't know if it didn't generate the money he had hoped or what, but we really missed the cool air.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-41263335072052385182008-12-31T08:52:00.002-06:002008-12-31T09:31:57.347-06:00Aberdeen WinterHearing that we might have some low temperatures with possible ice/snow next week reminded me of winters in Mississippi - where we saw snow and ice once in a blue moon. As a child, I had never heard of fancy Doppler radar systems, people called metereologists, Gary England drinking games, and storm chasers. We didn't have a television until I was probably 12 years old, and even then, we could get only one channel late at night. So, if the daily newspaper from Memphis, Tennessee said it was going to rain, then it might - or might not. The local radio station, WMPA, may have made some weather predictions, but you had to listen at just the right time of day - somewhere between the farm report and Uncle Bubba's Swap Shop.<br /><br />Anyway, my friend Sally Ann had an aunt Brooksie who was married to a man who worked for the local funeral home. I think he was nice enough, but I was always a little skeptical of him since he worked around dead people all the time. I remember him as being a quiet person, but I guess there aren't many chances to practice the art of conversation at a funeral home. When the weather would get really cold, Brooksie and her husband would run a hose up to the top of a bare tree in their front yard and, I suppose, let the hose run all night. The next morning, the tree would have icicles all over it - kinda like the trees you see decorated for Christmas where someone has paid someone else a lot of money to wrap thousands of lights around the trees. It was the prettiest thing to walk past on the way to and from school. It was the closest thing to a winter wonderland that we would see. If it ever DID snow, school closed, most of the town shut down, and everyone's mamas ran to the grocery store for milk and bread, just in case the trace of snow were to cripple us for weeks. :)Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-65612535723046663522008-12-15T14:09:00.003-06:002008-12-15T14:24:00.917-06:00Long time, no post...sorry. I know - you're tired of "Fire, fire." My job has really gotten in the way of my blogging. :)<br /><br />I was reminded the other day of a story my mother told me. My mother worked at a men's pants factory in Aberdeen, which may have been, at one time, the largest employer in town. My mother was the overseer of a "line" of women who had a quota to make every week. Some of the women came from very poor backgrounds; they didn't own a car and were very happy to pay a small amount for someone with a car to pick them up for work and take them home. Mary was one such person. Mary was a very hard worker. She didn't own a sewing machine at home, but my mother said she sometimes made her own dresses BY HAND. Now, I've made dresses with a sewing machine, but the thought of making one with just a needle and thread puts me in awe of someone who would do that. I guess you do what you have to in order to survive. Mary, along with 3 or 4 other women, regularly rode with another woman to and from work. Mary's husband, Emmett, who sometimes worked when he wasn't drunk, was unpredictable, at best. One day, as the car filled with women drove up to take Mary home, there was Emmett, sitting on the front steps, as my mother put it, "as naked as a jaybird." Right there - for all to see. Mary must have loved Emmett a whole lot. Another time, Mary had done all the laundry, hung it out to dry, brought it in, starched and ironed everything, and put it away neatly in a dresser drawer. Emmett came home drunk that night, opened the dresser drawer, and urinated all over the freshly-done laundry.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-83283840325219069502008-10-09T10:08:00.003-05:002008-10-09T10:34:11.480-05:00Fire, Fire!After an unsuccessful weenie roast in the jungle, Alice and I decided to try our cooking skills in her back yard, very close to the house. We had seen barbecue pits - the ones built with bricks and mortar with spits for roasting whole chickens and other things - so we looked around under the house and in the shed for some bricks for our project. (The house was not underpinned, and we would often crawl under the house to hide. We could not quite stand up under the house, but there was a clearing of 3-4 feet where we could walk around stooped over and spy on other people who were passing by on the sidewalk.) Our pit would not be as fancy as the ones we'd seen in magazines, but nevertheless, it would be perfect for our purposes. We just took the few bricks we found and laid them end to end to make a little square on the ground. Armed with some more matches and the goodies for our weenie roast, we lit a match and threw it inside the square. Now, Mississippi had had a pretty dry summer, so the minute the flame hit that dry grass, it lit up like a 3-alarm fire. The whole area inside - and outside - the bricks started burning, and this time we had failed to bring a pail of water. All we could find was a quart jar to put water in and throw on the fire. A teenage girl who lived in the other side of the duplex saw what was happening and ran to get a hose and managed to put the fire out. Boy, were we relieved! We never dreamed that the fire could get outside those bricks, and we never thought about having to explain a charred section of the backyard to Alice's parents and were quite surprised when they asked us about it.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-81384110534802734452008-10-06T13:40:00.002-05:002008-10-06T14:07:38.742-05:00BFFSAlice and I were two years apart in age, as I've said before, but we were like two peas in a pod. Where you found one, you usually found the other. I spent more time at Alice's house than she spent at mine for several possible reasons. There were more families with children nearer Alice's house, and behind Alice's house there was a jungle. Really! A jungle that Tarzan would have loved - in the middle of town! Just behind the house was a small wooden storage shed where Alice's dad kept the lawn mower and a few tools, and behind the shed was the beginning of the jungle. (The shed had a tin roof, and we loved to run into the shed when it started raining and sit there and listen to the rain on the roof.) At the beginning of the jungle was a dilapidated old wooden building. Perhaps, it was a garage at one time, but weeds had taken over and it was nearly buried beneath the growth. The jungle had thick vines that we could swing on from one location to another, and it was a cool place to go in the heat of the summer. We were always on a quick lookout for some boys who lived on the next block; they were older than we were, and we were a little bit afraid of them. So, if we heard them, we would run back to Alice's back yard. One day, Alice and I decided to have a "weenie" roast in the jungle. We were probably 11 or 12 years old then and budding pyromaniacs. We swiped franks, buns, matches, and a pail of water (just in case all didn't go well) from Alice's kitchen and went to find the perfect place in the jungle for our campsite. We dug a hole in the ground, put in some dried twigs and leaves, put our franks on the ends of some clothes hangers and set about to light our fire. Wow, I didn't know that things could burn that fast! We soon had a flame several feet high with no way to contain it. What if we burned down the whole block? What if we had to call the fire department? What if someone was on Alice's party line (you don't know what a party line is?) and we couldn't get through to the fire department? What to do? Well, I reached over, grabbed that pail of water, and threw it on the fire, hot dogs and all. We filled the hole back up with dirt and left the jungle for the day, hoping no one had seen a thing. Meanwhile, Alice wasn't too happy that I had ruined lunch.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-10745391869240972632008-09-30T13:12:00.002-05:002008-09-30T13:56:42.484-05:00Partners in Grime and CrimeI don't remember the first day I met Alice, but she and her parents and brother, Doug, lived 3 houses down from mine. Mr. Dugan, as I mentioned before, was next door, and next door to the Dugans' house was Sally Ann's house. Then, there was the big ante bellum house that had been converted into duplexes, and Alice and her family lived in one of the duplexes. Alice was two years younger than I, so I'm thinking that maybe I was at least 6 before I met her. And I suppose that's one reason we spent more time playing at her house than at mine; her mother felt more secure having her home than down the street somewhere.<br /><br />Alice and I became best friends quickly, and we loved swinging in the swing on her front porch. We even learned how to turn the swing upside down somehow, sit down in it, and it would flip back to the upright position. It was as if we had our own amusement park ride! You see, there were no year-round amusement parks - no Frontier City, no Disneyworld, no Six Flags - only the once-a-year Monroe County Fair. The fair people came to town in September, and school was dismissed either a day or part of a day so we could all go to the fair. My favorite ride then - and still today - is the Tilt-a-Whirl. I just knew that one year Santa Claus would bring me one for my back yard. I just don't know why I never got one!<br /><br />My parents and I would usually go to the fair once - on Saturday. They would literally drag me through the "exhibits." I hated looking at endless jars of plum jelly, pickles of all kinds, dried ears of corn, cucumbers, green beans, other canned vegetables of every sort, and everything else anyone could preserve in a jar and take to the fair. They all had some kind of ribbon on them, and I always wondered why one jar of pickles had a blue ribbon and another had a red or white ribbon. They all looked like pickles to me, and was Miss Somebody embarrassed that Miss Somebody Else got a blue ribbon and she got a white one? The ribbons were right out there in front of everyone to walk by and read their names. How boring for a young girl who was in a hurry to get to the Tilt-a-Whirl. And the needlework was even more boring than the jars of pickles. Please, daddy and mama, please let's get out of here!<br /><br />It didn't take long to get from the exhibits to the rides, because I wasn't allowed to participate in any of the "gambling" games - trying to knock down milk bottles, trying to pop balloons, trying to toss nickels into glass dishes. However, I could pick up rubber ducks, because you got a prize every time. The ducks had numbers on the bottom and each prize had a number, so your prize depended on what number your duck had on it's bottom. Funny that I never did see anyone get one of the "big" prizes - it was always a plastic Hawaiian lei or a big pencil or something like that. I wasn't allowed to eat any real food from any place except maybe the concession of some local group, such as the American Legion. Those people were clean, and you never know where the fair people's hands had been. I was, however, allowed to have cotton candy and candy-coated apples. There was only pink cotton candy, and the apples were coated with some type of red gook - not the good, thin candy coating you're probably thinking about. This was thick, tasteless stuff, so I usually spit it out and got down to eating the apple.<br /><br />But, I digressed from Alice, didn't I? Alice and I spent many fall days at various Monroe County Fairs as we were older, and I will talk more about Alice soon.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-47099753202018308212008-09-17T14:40:00.000-05:002008-09-17T15:25:25.113-05:00NeighborsSo, we moved into the house on High Street. High Street housed a true cross-section of small-town Americana. I've told you that my parents were both working people who, in their first year of marriage in 1939, managed to save enough money on a combined weekly paycheck of $16 to buy a car. I suppose by the time they moved to High Street, they were bringing home somewhat more than $16, but certainly not as much as Mr. Dugan, the semi-retired bank president who lived next door, or Dr. Dabbs, the physician who lived down the street. Mr. McDuffie, who owned one of the two drug stores in town, lived catty-cornered across the street, and Mrs. Kingsley, a widow, lived next door in one side of her duplex and rented out the other side.<br /><br />Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie lived just across the street. Willallah, or Arber, as her children and grandchildren called her - (no, I don't know why), was a wonderful cook who could tell you in January exactly what she planned to have for Easter dinner and how each dish would be prepared. I say Easter<span style="font-style: italic;"> dinner</span>, because in the South, what we have learned to call lunch in Oklahoma is really <span style="font-style: italic;">dinner</span>. And the night meal is <span style="font-style: italic;">supper</span>. Willallah was also the organist at the Presbyterian Church and for funerals at Lann Memorial Funeral Home. Very rarely did I see her without an apron, and quite often she would be bringing an apron full of crabapples from her tree for my mother to make crabapple jelly. I'm not sure that my children knew you could buy jelly from the grocery store until they were teenagers, because we always had a plentiful supply of crabapple jelly from Willallah's tree, and they didn't know there were other flavors. Mr. Frank was retired from the state tax commission, and Willallah took great joy in preparing his meals, although frugal she was. She could make a few strawberries last at least a week by slicing one or two (only) on his piece of pound cake for dessert. She told my mother that she paid herself $.50 a week for cooking for him; the money (from the grocery fund) went into her little ceramic "kitty" in the kitchen. I don't know what she did with the stash of cash as it grew.<br /><br />One of the things I missed about Columbus Street was my fig tree. I was soon to find out that Mr. Dugan had<span style="font-style: italic;"> several</span> fig trees in his back yard and would often bring me a little wooden pint box of fresh figs. I had struck gold! The Dugans' children were grown and had moved away, and Mrs. Dugan struggled with health issues. They had a cook who came everyday, I believe, and they also had their groceries delivered - <span style="font-style: italic;">delivered</span>, mind you!! From Welch's grocery store downtown. Mr. Dugan smoked big cigars, and several cats called his big sprawling front porch (and the top of his car) home. He would sit on his front porch in a rocking chair smoking cigars and yelling, "Shut up!" to the jay birds in the trees who taunted the cats.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-54573745481433136322008-09-12T10:01:00.001-05:002008-09-12T10:07:23.579-05:00Words I Don't LikeThis has nothing to do with living on High Street, but I was reading another blog this morning in which the author said he doesn't like the word "microfiche." I was so excited to hear that I'm not the only one who dislikes certain words, such as "pus." Just say it slowly, and it sounds disgusting - just like it really is. Pus.<br /><br />And "fungus" is another word that sounds like something we shouldn't eat or want to have on us. However, we eat mushrooms of all types and look for ways to use them in recipes. Fungus. Ugh.<br /><br />There will probably be more words to come.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-83095312493656438372008-09-09T16:23:00.000-05:002008-09-09T16:40:45.855-05:00Movin' On Up to High StreetMy other posts have been what I remember from living on Columbus Street. I must have been about five when we moved to High Street - about 2 or so blocks away. We had been renting on Columbus Street, but daddy and mama were going to actually <span style="font-style: italic;">buy</span> a house now. I vaguely remember helping bring in a few small things from the car to the new-to-us house. I'm not sure how much the house was, but it probably wasn't over $5,000. There was a living room with French doors that led into the dining room. Off the dining room, the kitchen had room for a dinette table and chairs. There were 3 bedrooms. In the front of the house, off the living room, was mama and daddy's room, the next room was mine, and the back bedroom belonged to my two grandmothers. There was a hallway between the dining room and kitchen and back bedroom, and the bathroom was at the end of the hall. How did 5 people ever get by with one bathroom? There was a screened-in back porch that spanned the back of the house. Off the living room was a screened-in side porch, and there was a concrete front porch with a metal swing for two average size people or three children. In the back yard was a small wooden house/shed where daddy kept the lawn mower and larger tools. I was so afraid of spiders (and still am!), and when I was older I had to get the mower out of that shed when I mowed the yard. I hated going in there. We had a big back yard and then another lot behind the shed. I usually didn't have to mow the lot, but the back, sides and front yard were quite a bit to handle. But, the $3.00 I got for mowing would buy a lot of tickets to the movie at the Elkin Theater at 25 cents each. I could even afford a nickel bag of popcorn, but the Elkins didn't allow any drinks in their theater. So, there was a constant line of kids going back and forth to the water fountain. More on the Elkins later.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-71140555815102246822008-09-09T14:02:00.000-05:002008-09-09T14:10:50.799-05:00BilboI almost forgot to mention two people who figured prominently in my life on Columbus Street - Bilbo and Louise. I can't remember their last name, but they were the oh-so-nice black couple who lived in the house behind ours (we were on a corner). I guess my parents had been trying all sorts of things to get me to talk, but with two grandmothers doting on me, I didn't need to say anything. One evening, my father had been talking to Bilbo and Louise over the back fence, and as daddy carried me in his arms toward our house, I turned, waved, and said, "Night, night, Bilbo!" Mama said they made me say that phrase for the next two hours.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-26383381802690817572008-09-05T14:03:00.000-05:002008-09-05T14:17:33.523-05:00Pigs, Figs, and Flowers<div style="text-align: justify;">His name was Porky, and I don’t know why we were allowed to have a pig in a pen in our yard in the middle of a town of around 5,000 people. I think I was 4 or 5 years old, and Porky, a huge fig tree, and Miss Janie Morgan's shop are about the only things I remember about living on Columbus Street.<br /><br />To this day, I love fresh figs, but they are difficult to find, I guess. Recently, I found two pints at the Edmond Farmers Market, and the lady told me they were grown in Texas. How I wish I had bought both pints! I used to sit under the fig tree in our yard on Columbus Street and eat figs until I was literally sick. And Porky was my pal, until one day I came home and Porky was gone, and my heart was broken. I don’t recall eating lots of bacon and sausage that winter, but we probably did. <br /><br />Miss Janie Morgan’s floral shop was across the street from our house, on a side street, and sometimes I was allowed to walk across the street to watch the ladies in the shop making floral arrangements and wreaths. I heard lots of stories about the newly deceased and how pretty such and such a wreath would look on his/her casket. I think Miss Janie was married, but in the South, all children called ladies they knew, married or unmarried, Miss (insert <span style="font-weight: bold;">first</span> name). It was cool in the shop because of the fresh flowers, and since we had no air conditioning in our house (neither did anyone else I knew), it was a great place to spend some time on a hot summer afternoon. The best thing about going to Miss Janie’s was the small fish pond outside the front door. It had been built up above the ground with pretty stones and brick. In that pond were the biggest goldfish I had ever seen, and I would stand and watch them as long as my grandmothers would let me stay.<br /><br />Both my maternal and paternal grandmothers were widows and lived with my parents and me; I guess it took both of them to keep up with me, an only child. My mother worked at a local factory, and my father worked at a local furniture store, so my parents had built-in babysitters.<br /></div>Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5699520291478271282.post-30289730565822671312008-08-31T21:07:00.000-05:002008-09-02T12:04:02.822-05:00Because my family asked, I will, from time to time, post some memories of my childhood and growing up in the small, deep south town of Aberdeen, Mississippi. I hope time and distance will not cloud my remembrances of the wonderful days gone by and the dear friends with whom I spent them.Ninahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034462360622311057noreply@blogger.com0