You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘home’ category.
Tell about home cures or old wives tales, hiccups, toothaches, earaches, arthritis.
(on today’s slip of paper drawn from the jar)
I remember my brother taking sulfur and molasses to prevent chiggers from biting him, it seems the sulfur smell comes out of your pores and smells bad so the chiggers won’t bite…
holding an aspirin on a toothache until it melts
putting butter on burns
Coke for hiccups (after holding my breath didn’t work)
gargle with warm salt water for a sore throat
Clorox on a wasp sting
starve a fever, feed a cold – or was it the other way around?
Of course the most effective cures came from my mom:
a stern look would stop you in your tracks
a swat on the backside would send you to your room
a hickory switch cured a whole lot of things – smart mouth, arguing, fighting with your brother…
Tell about the houses you lived in childhood – addresses, phone #s, etc.
(on today’s slip of paper drawn from the jar)
Oh which house? Where to begin?
There was the house in the country near Ft. Bragg, North Carolina – big yard, garden. I was in first grade, and I remember this was our first house after living in Army housing, and my parents went back to their roots – growing vegetables, canning, freezing. I witnessed first hand what it means by ‘running around like a chicken with its head cut off’. My dad went to Korea while we lived there, my mom got a job, and my brother and I became latch-key kids. Once when we came home from school, the house had been broken into. My brother said he was going to call the sheriff. I thought he had lost his mind, they don’t have sheriffs any more – that is just on Gunsmoke – call the police! The TV dinner was popular at our house during this time, and my mom would save the aluminum comparted trays and refill them with home cooking for our own personal TV dinners.
Then the next house was a duplex in Army housing at Fort Rucker, Alabama. This was great fun, paved sidewalks for bike riding, lots of neighborhood kids to play with, warm weather, just 90 minutes from the beach at Panama City, Florida. We would walk from the school in a line down the sidewalk through the houses to the nearby playground or swimming pool. Once while walking single file a mom ran out to tell our 4th grade teacher about the assassination of President Kennedy. Also while living on the base, my mom became very good at bowling and even golf.
After leaving LA (lower Alabama) when my dad retired, we moved to the mountains of North Georgia. Our first house was just a little 4 room shack house without a bathroom. It was an adventure to say the least. My folks once again went back to nature and their roots, planting a garden, having chickens, and even a couple of calves. The little house served as a roof over our heads for a couple of years while my dad built us a new house. My brother was 5 years older than me, he listened to the Beatles and Roger Miller. While in the little house I joined many other young girls in watching the Monkees – ooohhh Davy Jones! By the time we got in the new house, my brother was out of high school and well on his way out of the house. The house had wonderful large windows – floor to ceiling – along with a beautiful front door and mantlepiece that had been salvaged from an old house torn down by my father.
As a military family, we moved around a lot and did not develop ties to any one place. The longest time I spent in any of our houses was about 5 years. There is no old homeplace to go back to visit, to pass down to the kids and grandkids. There are just places we stopped for a while before moving on to the next place. But it was always home where ever we were, a home with a family and a pet or two.
I feel fortunate to have married into the family I have now, everyone is so close. My husband and his sisters only ever lived in one house growing up, the one their dad built. The land we live on now has been in the family for over a half century, and plans are to pass it on for future generations.
what lessons did you take as a child – did you carry any over into adulthood?
(on today’s slip of paper drawn from the jar)
No lessons for me!
No sports, no music, dance, singing, swimming lessons for me!
So now I can’t sing – but I do – along with the radio in the car, if no one is around…
And I can’t dance – but I do – along with the radio in the kitchen, if no one is around…
I don’t play a musical instrument – except for the radio
I don’t swim
Maybe that is why I encouraged my kids to take lessons in dance and music and gymnastics and swimming…
We had the other kind of lessons to learn when I was younger – school lessons, manners, household chores, respecting elders, staying out of mama’s way!
Let that be a lesson to you!
describe your yard as a child – did you help with the yard work?
(on today’s slip of paper drawn from the jar)
A swing.
Growing up, I always had a swing.
We moved around a lot, but that was the one constant in my memory of childhood yards.
Either a rusty swing set,
Or a rope thrown over a tree limb
with a board for a seat.
Or even a tire swing.
Nothing like swinging on a summer day
the wind in your face
going up high
touching the leaves with your feet
back and forth
That sounds so good, I wonder why we don’t have swings as adults? Something that gave us such pleasure as kids, why would we not continue this? Yes, we have a porch swing, but it is not really the same…
Maybe we as adults get our kicks in other ways, but why?
tree swing poster at art.com
describe your last home as a young couple
(on today’s slip of paper drawn from the jar)
I guess the last home we had as a young couple is the same one we are living in now. We built this house in 1976 when we were PK (pre-kids), just the two of us still. But the first addition within a year of finishing it was for the nursery, so we weren’t alone for long.
The plans for this house were in the making long before my time, and were shown to me while dating (how to impress a date…). After we were married, we lived at Tumblin Waters for 6 months, then moved to an apartment south of Atlanta and lived there for over two years while saving and collecting supplies to start the house.
It took almost a year to build it, and it seems like we have been working on it ever since. It is a lot of work to own a home, but we wouldn’t trade our A-frame in the woods for anything else.
This house holds all our memories, along with a few scars, like the scuff marks on the baseboards from baby walkers, and the scorch marks from the lightning strike…
The mantle holds memories of stockings being hung – first 2, then 3, then 4…
The stone chimney was the backdrop for many posed pictures – baby’s first Christmas, Halloween costumes, prom dates.
The kid’s rooms have evolved into guest room, craft room, storage, again to kids rooms when they moved back…
Like they say, if these walls could talk…
where did you live as a child – town, country, suburb, etc.?
(on today’s slip of paper drawn from the jar)
Before the age of 10, I was an Army brat. Other than a couple of Army bases (which were like suburbs with rows of houses and sidewalks), most of my childhood was spent in the country. Three years in North Carolina outside of Fort Bragg – 1st through 3rd grade – our own house with a garden, and woods with trees to climb, great fun!
Then in 5th grade (at age 10) my dad retired from the Army and we moved to the North Georgia mountains, 50 acres with no houses in sight. We lived on a dirt road that was rough and nearly impassable at times. We had a garden and pasture with cows, chickens, dogs and cats. We would get out on Sunday afternoon and ‘walk the property’, my parents obviously glad to have gotten out of the ratrace of Army life and moving around, glad to have some land to call their own.
I don’t guess I have ever lived in town, even as an adult. Living on the Army base was fun, with lots of kids to play with and paved roads and sidewalks to ride bikes, but my favorite place to live is in the country, especially now, with its slow pace, friendly people, wide open spaces.
