Some Amazing Moments/Amazing Stories

Post by Doris McCraw

Over the years I have had some amazing moments and because of the nature of this post I will not post my photo.  Many of those have come from my performances for various groups coming into this historic region.  Are you thinking that it is the performances that are those moments? While they have been wonderful and exciting, the moments I treasure are the time I get to spend with the attendees and listen to their stories. If you leave your agenda at home and truly listen to these people, without worrying about what you are going to say next or try to impress them with your greatness, you will leave with the special gifts that cannot be reproduced.

1958 Austin-Healey Sprite (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the years the groups have varied and composed of all kinds of disciplines. There was a women in construction group, the Studebaker and Austin- Healey groups.  All  of the attendees were great people.  By far however the ones I remember with affection have been the military reunions. I hope you will enjoy some of these stories as much as I do.

For two different years I sang at the memorial service for a WWII group. As I watched these veterans and their families honor those who were not longer with them it brought home how precious these people and their stories could be for the ones who remained behind.  I also learned how precious they are for the rest of us.

Another group were a bunch of pilots from WWII in the Pacific theater. If I remember correctly they were p-51 pilots.  I played the keyboard as they sang the songs from their time in service. During the banquet that night the gentleman on my right made a point of telling me, “They always talk about those brave young men, hell we were just a bunch of scared shitless kids.” Talk about a paradigm shift. Somehow we don’t think that way of those men.  At a second pilot reunion I had the pleasure of walking with a pilot through the miniature reproductions of planes used by the various groups in combat at the Air Force academy.  As we walked he told of his bombing  missions over southeast Asia and his later trips with his wife to those same areas.  He remarked how “when you are bombing from so far above you don’t see what you’re hitting, it is when you see if from the ground it hits you.”

One of the more recent programs was for the USS Ticonderoga reunion.  I did a program for the women while the men had their business meeting.  That is a fairly common booking for me.  I love coming in and sharing the history of the area with these women, interacting with them and bringing as much laughter into the room as possible.  This group was gracious enough to invite me to attend their banquet.  The speaker was a man who had spent six years in the ‘Hanoi Hilton‘ and then when he returned home he worked as a social worker helping vets who suffered from PSTD and other effects from their time in combat. He somehow made the story of his capture and captivity entertaining and yet deeply moving.

Exterior view of the prisoner of war camp (“Hanoi Hilton”). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I could continue telling you stories that I have heard over the years.  Instead I would ask that you listen to the people who have stories to tell, even if they are hesitant to do so.  These are the precious gifts we can receive and at the same time give the gift of our listening and caring to those who are speaking.  As we are preparing for Memorial Day Weekend hopefully these stories will add to your reason for celebrating this holiday.

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The Egg Hunt

 This post by Jennifer Flaten

Easter is only two weeks away! It is time for the Easter bunny to get hoppin’. My kids are old enough to have figured out that the bunny receives substantial help from mom. Which got me to thinking about when I still believed in the Easter bunny.

English: A milk chocolate Easter Bunny. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As a little kid I lived with my grandparents in central Wisconsin. My mother lived in Milwaukee about a five hour drive away. She tried very hard to come up to visit me every weekend and always on the holidays.

For this particular Easter, she decided to do something slightly different, she planned a more elaborate egg hunt-one involving a clues and a  map. Now, my grandparents property was pretty big (or it seemed so to a little kid) so the map kind or made sense, especially when you consider the year before we lost track of an egg or two.

When we found one of the wayward eggs it had gone “bad”. Which explained why the area surrounding that particular tree smelled awful (and attracted animals) an egg was wedged into the fork made by the roots.

The afternoon before Easter, we dyed the eggs and after they dried we arranged them in my Easter basket for the bunny to take. That night my mom concocted her clues, then grabbed a flashlight and set off to place the eggs.

My grandparents lived off a county highway. Across the highway was a road that led to two different resorts, each resort had a sign at the end of the road, but one in particular was really elaborate. She thought the perfect place to hide the last egg was in that big sign.

After getting all the eggs hid on my grandparents property, she walked out to the sign, completely forgetting she was wearing a nightgown, boots and a winter coat. About half way to the sign she realized her mistake and tried to be as quick as possible, but still several cars zoomed by, illuminating my mom with their headlights.

As I mentioned my grandparents lived in a pretty rural area and while it wasn’t heavily trafficked the traffic that did come by recognized my mom. My grandmother got a lot of phone calls the next couple of days wondering what Barb was up to in the dark, in her pajamas that night.

She successfully hid that last egg and I  had a wonderful time finding all my eggs the next morning and she had a great time telling everyone about her egg hiding adventure.

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Be Brave and Courageous

 This Blog  by Cher’ley Grogg

Be Brave and Courageous this was the thought that came to me as I was cleaning my cherished items in my curio cabinet. 

Some of my favorite verses in the Bible are about being brave and courageous or strong and courageous. My favorite is: Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

                                                                                                                                                    I’m not a physically strong person, especially compared to the body   builder Lisa Aukland.

I am strong in other ways. I am strong emotionally and I have been brave through the years, especially when it came to rearing youngin’s . My children were raised to be brave and courageous, and most of the time they were. I remember when my daughter was little and she had to go to the doctor to get a shot. She’d start crying before the doctor came into the room. I could not bribe her into bravery and I could not shame her into bravery, no way was she accepting those shots. Usually she cried so loudly that she couldn’t hear my pleas. It always amazed the doctors when they would enter the room and all they could hear was the roar of a child’s cries.

Now she’s all grown with children of her own and she has raised her boys to be brave and courageous. Over the last several months she has been suffering with back pain. I suggested she go in to get a pain shot to help ease her pain until they can figure out what her problem is. She instantly turned pale and said, “Mom, I am not going into the doctor to get a shot for any reason.”

So it was with my son, I raised him to be brave and courageous. And he was, mostly, unless it came to spiders. If a spider got close to him he’d yell, “Kill it, kill it.” The fear in his voice gave me cold chills. Once he married, his wife saw a spider and she said to my son, “Kill it!” He handed her a shoe and yelled, “Kill it, kill it.”

He also raised his children to be brave and courageous. It worked. He had a beautiful little girl who loved bugs. Bugs of all kinds, if there was a spider in their house and she was present she would yell,  “ Don’t kill it, don’t kill it.”

In my novel “Stamp Out Murder” James was not a strong and courageous man.  In fact, he was very passive until the life of the girl he loved was in danger, from somewhere deep within himself he pulled out the  strength to be brave and courageous.

In my tween novel “The Secret in Grandma’s Trunk” Brandon and Jacob had to pull out grown up feelings, in order to save Grandma, they had to be brave and courageous.

In your life, have you ever had to be brave and courageous? Was it a life threatening situation or something more common?

Stamp Out Murder”.

“The Secret in Grandma’s Trunk” This is an especially good book for your Tween Children and Grandchildren.

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Photos: Cher’ley Grogg-My children and granddaughter

Bright Birds, Bright Ideas, and Brilliant Memories

This post by Cher’ley Grogg

My Mom loved birds, she loved everything about them, she loved the vivid or subtle colors, she loved their sounds, she loved their nests, and the little eggs that hatched into little birds. I’m not someone who can tell one bird from another, but I know a few of them when I see them. I want to know more. 

I fed my back yard birds this week, and ended up with a few that I had never seen before. These little creatures bought me great pleasure. Several times over the last couple of days I watched them peck away at the food. One day there was 5 brilliant red cardinals and one brown female with the orange bill and orange tuft on top of her head. I had blue jays, blue birds, wrens, a chick-a-dee and a red-headed wood pecker, among many others. I got some photos.

Whippoorwill Bird

 
Birds make me think of my Mom. When I was little, we’d sit on the front porch and she’d say, “Listen, they’re calling your name-Cher-ley` (accent on ley-kind of high shrilled).” I would listen and I could hear them calling to me. Dad always told me if I put salt on a birds tail I could catch it. My grandma said if children weren’t tucked into bed by dark the Whippoorwill bird would get them.  She had a willow tree and when that bird would scream, “Whip you I will”, we’d all (my brothers, cousins, and I) would practically run over each other to get into bed.

From birds I draw inspiration.

                                              In Stamp Out Murder and in my next book that will be coming out later this year Cancel Out Murder, every chapter starts with a description of a stamp, (maybe new, or maybe canceled) that’s worth a lot of money. Many stamps have birds on them. Can you think of a year where a bird was featured on a Stamp? Here’s a link to an Ebay page featuring bird stamps. And these stamps are now worth Eleven Dollars. Not a lot in the Stamp Collecting World, but a $9.00 dollar profit for the collector.

Birds calm my soul, God’s little gifts of joy to me. Is there an animal that has been a part of your growing up years? I lived in the country, so there are more animal tales I can tell about.

Stamp Out Murder”.

“The Secret in Grandma’s Trunk” This is an especially good book for your Tween Children and Grandchildren.

And please join me on my Facebook Fanpage, that’s managed by one of my most faithful fans: Cindy Ferrell

A couple of related articles.

Related articles

• Blue Bird on Branch watercolor illustration for farmhouse cottage homes. (thepaintedcottagehome.com)
• “Birds and Birds and Birds” – Walt Whitman (biblioklept.org)

The Five Senses of Christmas – By Sherry Hartzler

Christmas Day! Hoping your Christmas morning is filled with laughter, sharing, giving, fond memories, and plenty of good food. It’s all part of the season of love and peace. Now that the doomsday prophecy is behind us, we know that life will go on after January 1^st. For those of us with works in progress, we have the all-consuming responsibility to finish what we started and begin that new project that’s been quietly cocooned in the nether region of our brains. Life is good. As a writer, I feel blessed to have an imagination that constantly tugs at my procrastinating self to get to work.

Today, on Christmas morning, I will do the following:

Listen to the laughter of my grandchildren as they open their presents and know they are safe in an often unpredictable world;

Taste a cup of eggnog laced with rum and topped with a generous dab of real whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon;

See the love that abounds in the gathering of family, how love shines in the eyes of the people I love and remember those who have passed before me;

Feel my mother’s hug and know that is life short, realizing that next year, one us might not be here for another hug and kiss; and

Close my eyes and take in the holiday smells of live pine boughs, a wood fire, cloves, and roasting turkey.

A day filled with blessings. Merry Christmas to all!                        

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Christmas Cookies

This post by Jennifer Flaten

Sunday we finally got snow. The mere dusting turned into a nice blanket of 3 inches of heavy , wet snow perfect for making snowmen and forts, if you are a kid. Perfect, for creating a lovely holiday atmosphere and staying inside to bake cookies if you are me.

Actually, I don’t need an excuse to bake cookies. I bake cookies when it’s snowing, cold and rainy or 100 degrees and sunny. Still, it isn’t Christmas without official Christmas cookies.

So, I broke out the mixer and made a batch of chocolate mint brownie cookies. Did I mention I love the internet, especially for looking up recipes? Now, don’t get me wrong I have a lot of clipped recipes (loosely organized) and a few favorite cookbooks, but nothing beats punching in exactly what kind of cookie you want into Google and getting a ton of recipes back. The only problem is choosing which one to make.

The kids were outside while I made the cookies, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone snitching a cookie from the cooling rack (I did have to keep an eye on my husband who’s infamous for stealing raw cookie dough).

When I was little I didn’t steal the cookie dough, I did however steal the completed cookies, but not from the cooling rack. Before the holidays, my Grandmother (sometimes with my assistance) would bake several batches of our favorite cookies. After cooling, she would carefully place the cookies in an old JC Penney shirt box, cover the cookies with layers of waxed paper and aluminum foil and put them in the chest freezer on the porch.

She would leave an assortment of cookies out for snacking but the rest had to wait until Christmas, well, the cookies she left out went pretty fast leaving me sad and cookie less.

However, there was a box of cookies just waiting for me on the porch. All I had to do was sneak out onto the porch, carefully open the freezer and slide my hand into the cookie box and grab a cookie.

All I can say is a purloined frozen chocolate chip cookie is still delicious, just a little bit harder to dunk in your glass of milk.

My crime was reveled when my Grandmother opened the cookie box, to discover and empty row where the chocolate chip cookies once were.

What are your favorite holiday cookie memories?

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Cookies, Magic and Rejuvenation – By Sherry Hartzler

English: Screenshot of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in the American film It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). The film lapsed into the public domain in the United States due to the failure of National Telefilm Associates, the last copyright owner, to renew. See film article for details. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This Blog by Sherrie Hartzler

 

Christmas is closing in fast. Today is December 11^th! Today, Christmas cookies are on my agenda, the wonderful smell of baking sugar and spices filling the house. I’ll turn the radio to Christmas songs, and my heart will fill with all the joy of the season.  The season is a time of renewal, a time to look around and feel the magic. My magic word today is rejuvenation.

Webster New World Dictionary defines the word rejuvenate: to make young or youthful again; bring back to youthful strength, appearance, etc. Well, considering I’m a little past youth, I think I land in the etc. part of this definition. Nonetheless, Christmas does bring out a sense of youthfulness in all of us. I remember a time when I thought growing old would be a long time off, that all the older people would always stay old, and I would always stay young.

In the old movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, where the old man is sitting on a porch swing telling Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart that life is wasted on youth? Or, like Benjamin Button, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to live our lives in reverse, that way we might appreciate our youth, maybe even bring a halt to all the bickering in the world and make us more respectful of how beautiful it is to be young. But, one the other hand it’s nice being my age and spending a quiet afternoon making cookies and listening to Christmas songs on the radio. You see, as a person gets older, rejuvenation takes place more on the inside than the outside. All the material “stuff” doesn’t mean much in a world of magic.

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A SLICE OF LIFE … OR LIFE BY THE GALLON

Three days a week, I go walking with a friend. This morning our walking conversation was about the price of gasoline. I got to thinking about an old photograph I’d stuck in the bottom drawer of my desk (do not know the year it was taken, although my guess would be somewhere in the 1930’s). Now, take a look at these three people. I know for certain that the woman (far left) is my grandmother. The other two people I’m not sure who they are. Obviously, they are on some kind of road trip. I’m figuring this because the two women are wearing their go-to-town/church hats and most likely they wouldn’t have wasted camera film on some ordinary outing. The gas pump  to the right in the photo looks a bit more of an antique than the one on the left with the old Marathon logo. Now, let your eyes wander up to the price of the gas (I’m hoping this shows up on my scan) The price of the gas is 6.75 CENTS/gallon!!! Is this not a hoot?! Can you just imagine what the three people in the photo would think if they pulled up to a pump today? I’m thinking they were pretty average Americans for the time, farm people, no doubt growing their own vegetables and most certainly didn’t depend on the government to make up the difference. Television was still in the future and the idea of computers and the internet would’ve been something out of a science fiction novel. Their clothing was far from designer, And by the looks of the sweater and skirt worn by the woman in the middle, she got more than a few seasons’ wear out of that outfit.

Now, back to my walking friend and this morning’s conversation about gasoline prices. She told me that back in 1991, she drove a Honda CRX that got 60 miles to a gallon of gas!!! I said, “You’ve got to be kidding!” She then told me they no longer make the CRX. Why? Well, she didn’t know, but she said it was the best car she’d ever driven.. Okay…now it’s 2011, and I ask you: “Why can’t manufacturers design a car that gets 60 miles to a gallon of gas?? To get even close to that, we have to buy one of those ugly hybrids at a purchase price that would make the three people in the old photograph have simultaneous heart-attacks. Any thoughts?

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