Judy – Page 5

REMEMBER WHEN: CHILDHOOD TREATS

TREATS

Living on a dairy farm 15 miles from town meant treats were few and far between. We got to go to town once a month when the milk check came in. If it was a good one, we got to go to the diner in town and get a burger and fries. Once a quarter if there was a bonus added to the check we got to go to the Saturday matinee; if it was a rated A movie that mom approved of. Those were times we looked forward to. We would pile in the pickup and go into town; first dad would go by the dairy and pick up the check. We would wait in the truck all excited to know if we would get a treat this time. Sometimes if the milk we sold was less than grade A or on the low end of our normal volume we didn’t get a treat. We knew better than to say anything if we didn’t, we were just supposed to accept what we got without question.

We didn’t get cookies or dessert very often either. We all worked hard on the farm and meals were whatever mom put on the table. Sometimes on Sunday evening, she would make us a pancake supper. She would make one stack plain and one stack with fruit backed in. That was the desert stack; we never knew what kind of fruit, and it could be bananas, peaches, berries of some kind; whatever she had on hand. After I got old enough to cook by myself I would make a dessert if we had the ingredients. My specialty was cherry cream pie. When the hay crew was at our farm and we were providing the dinner, one of the men would send word that I better make the biscuits and a cherry cream pie.

For school lunches, we got to put peanut butter on gram crackers or if mom had powdered sugar I would make icing and we put that on gram crackers. The kids really liked those. Holladay’s were usually times we got treats. Mom would get the stuff to make special cookies and she always made her dad an old fashion fruitcake soaked in brandy. We didn’t get any of that; she would make it a couple of months before Christmas and dribble the brandy over it each week. By Christmas grandpa would tease her and say throw the cake away just give him the chasse cloth it was wrapped in to suck on. Also, Christmas was the only time we got bought candy. We got hard ribbon candy and hard candy filled with fruit filling. I liked the strawberry ones the best, root beer barrels and horehound. We each got a few pieces in our stocking with a big navel orange and some nuts.

We didn’t get birthday parties, but mom always made each of us our favorite cake, whatever we wanted. Mine was a banana nut cake, it wasn’t like banana bread, it was light and fluffy and had cream cheese frosting. I have tried to make it myself but can’t get it to taste like hers.

The best treat I remember from my childhood was having the whole family together. We would gather around the big kitchen table after church on Sunday. We would all hold hands and pray over the meal. It didn’t matter what was on the table we were thankful just to be together. Did this bring back memories of treats from your childhood? In the hustle and bustle of our lives today it is good to slow down and remember when things were simpler.

I think that is what the psalmist meant when he wrote: When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy and it shall be well with you.

PSALMS 137:2

REMEMBER WHEN: SISTERS

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AGE DIFFERENCE

Did you have to share a room with a younger sibling? I was 8 years older than my sister. She was the youngest in the family and I was the oldest. There were two brothers between us. They were closer in age and shared a room also but it didn’t seem to matter as much to them.

We lived in a country subdivision on the North end of Davenport, Iowa. Dad and mom built a beautiful home that was mom’s dream home; they planned on it being their forever home. It had all the features mom wanted and she did all the decorating.

The boy’s room looked like a fishing pier with ocean scenes on one wall and nautical fixtures for lights. They had captain’s beds with dressers on the bottoms. The girl’s room was yellow and the wallpaper was covered with kittens playing with balls of yarn.

I liked to read and dad built me a high shelf to put my books on and the collection of storybook dolls I was starting. This was before Barbies or action figures. They were characters from stories; they were 6 inches tall and came in their own box showing scenes from the story. Whenever I was asked what I would like for Christmas I would ask for the newest storybook doll. I never opened the boxes to play with them as they were collector items and grandma said they would be worth a lot of money someday. My sister always wanted to play with them and cried when I wouldn’t let her. This is why dad built me the high shelf above my bed.

She did find a crayon one day and drew circles around her favorite kittens on the wallpaper. She was only two so the circles were only as high as she could reach. Mom tried to cover the circled kittens with furniture but my sister would cry so we left them uncovered. She would talk to them and pet them. Maybe that is why she has always been an animal lover.

But life happens and when the city incorporated the country subdivision we lived in, our parents decided to move. Dad had said he never wanted to live in a city so they bought a farm in southern Missouri, 15 miles from the nearest town.

On the farm, dad said any pet we had must earn its keep so the dog was a stock dog and the cats had to be mousers. My sister even made a pet out of a baby turkey that the mother had abandoned. It would follow her around and even sleep with her at nap time. She called it Mr. Peepers. It got to be huge because she fed it all the time. I don’t remember how it happened but its leg broke and it had to be butchered. Dad said it weighed 40 pounds, and my sister was heartbroken.

Dad gave each of us kids a calf to raise so we could learn responsibility, but Anna didn’t like hers because it kept trying to suck on her fingers or clothes, she wanted a pony. Dad got her a little white Arabian horse that wouldn’t let anyone else around but her. It would try to bite you if you got close to it. But she could go out in the pasture and climb up its front leg and ride it bareback, without a bridle or anything.

Things began to change after our dad died. We were only 14 and 6. We couldn’t keep up with farming so mom sold the animals and went to work in town. A few years later she met and married a man in the Army and we moved to Fort Lenard Wood. After High School, I went to work on the base where I met and married a sergeant. We went to Germany; I worked for the civil service while we were there and we were gone for 6 years.

My sister and I went our separate ways for years but reconnected after we both came back to Missouri. Now that we are both single and at retirement age, we get together as often as we can. She still lives in the country and still has animals. I live in the city and don’t want to be bothered taking care of a pet. I do enjoy going to her house and setting under the trees in her front yard and reminiscing about our days on the farm.

We are all part of God’s family and it gives Him pleasure when families are together and enjoying each other. In today’s world technology makes it easy to stay in touch with family, but is even better when you can be together face to face.

EPHESIANS 3:14-15

REMEMBER WHEN: CHARACTER TRATE

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HOT TEMPER

When I was little I had a temper. My mom used to say I could fly off the handle if you looked at me the wrong way. I don’t remember being that way, but I guess I was. She said I hated to get up and when I was I didn’t want anyone to talk to me. I am sorry to say my brother got the brunt of my anger a lot. We were barely a year apart and everyone said we looked like twins. He knew exactly how to push my buttons to set me off. We both have scars and memories to prove it. But we were best friends too. It was like we knew what the other one was thinking and would finish the other’s sentences. As we grew up and had to take on more and more of the responsibilities of the family we got even closer.

I was away at boarding school when our father died. He was my hero and I felt guilty that I had been away until the day before he passed. I did get to see him for a little bit that day, but I was devastated. My brother helped me through it and convinced me to go back to school. He said it was what dad would have wanted. I stayed for another year and a half before I had to quit, mom needed me to come home and help with the family. I became a caregiver at 15 and pretty much took on the responsibility of the household and my younger siblings. Mom was working two jobs to pay the bills.

When I turned 16 I decided I wanted to learn to drive. The neighbor up the road said he had an old car out behind his barn that we could have. We got some friends to help us get it home and the boys got it running again. My brother said he could teach me. Driving on the road was a lot different than driving the farm truck around the hay field. You actually had to go faster than 5 miles an hour and learn how to shift gears. We had been going out every day for a week after school to practice, when mom asked at the dinner table, how I was doing. My brother said great as long as she doesn’t get behind the wheel. That put an end to our joy riding, I finally learned how to drive but it was 10 years later.

Now that we are in our 70s, we have been able to spend more time together. We are still the best of friends and enjoy just spending time together. Time is the best gift friends can give each other.

But getting back to the temper concern it took a lot of living to cool my hot-headedness. Life can totally change your personality; I finished school, got married, joined the civil service branch of the Army, spent 6 years in Germany during the Viet Nan War, had 4 children, went through a divorce, becoming a single parent. You don’t have time to get upset over every little thing. You have to learn to rise above it. I still sometimes get short with people who knowingly don’t do the job they are getting paid to do. As a business owner that was one of my pet peeves. I never had to fire anyone but they knew from the being I would not tolerate laziness. I have had to learn that it is not my job to correct others that are not my responsibility.

That is where the grace of God comes in. I have learned to give my short temper to Him and ask him to help me put a smile on my face and see if there is something I can do to help. If you want to know the one who can help you overcome any problem you might have in your life, let me introduce you to my Jesus. You will be glad you did.

JOHN 3:16

REMEMBER WHEN: RUNAWAY

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THE DAY MY BROTHER RAN AWAY

Have you ever felt like giving up and running away, just throwing in the towel and starting over someplace else? Nothing is going right and it seems like everyone is against you. That happened to my little brother once. He didn’t care for school at all. In this day and time, he would have been in special education classes. He just did grasp the concept of reading or arithmetic. It wasn’t that he couldn’t learn, it just took him longer than others. We had a new teacher that year who wasn’t very understanding, whose teaching style was ridicule and sometimes even punishment. Because we went to a one-room school with all the grades together, I told the teacher that I would set with my brother and help him.

My brother was a free spirit and would rather be roaming the fields with our family dog than reading and doing math. At eight he could shoot better than his older brother and kept the dinner table supplied with rabbits and squirrels. He couldn’t understand why he had to learn to read, he was going to stay on the farm for the rest of his life anyway. He didn’t need to read to take care of the animals, and he could drive the tractor and shoot his gun, so what else did he need?

On this particular day, we had a math test. The teacher handed out papers with the problems on them. Each class had a test appropriate to its age group. We were to do the test and then hand in the papers. When we were finished we could go outside for recess. Everyone was finished and going outside except my brother. He just didn’t get how to do the problems so he just put a bunch of numbers down handed in the test and went outside. Later in the afternoon, the teacher handed back the corrected tests. When he got to our desk he gave me my paper but slapped my brothers down on the desk with a big red F on it. He said in a loud voice that he had to stay in the classroom the rest of the week with no recess and maybe that would teach him to pay attention and try harder.

My brother cried all the way home and said if he was such a dummy he didn’t belong with normal people. He was repeating what some of the other kids had said to him after school. Mom tried to talk to him and dad told him he would learn he just needed to stick with it. But there was no consoling him. He went upstairs packed his suitcase and said he was going to find a place where he didn’t have to go to school. He came down and went to the kitchen, fixed himself a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, put them in his suitcase, and started off down the road. Dad let him get down the road a ways then followed him. He got down to the creek at the bottom of the hill and sat down. He was still crying and talking to himself about how mad he was at the teacher and the kids that made fun of him.

He sat down on the creek bank to eat a sandwich when dad came up and sat down with him. He said he hoped he didn’t mind but he was going to leave home too. That he was tired of milking cows and bailing hay. That all those dumb cows did was eat and he would rather go fishing. My brother looked at him and said,

“But you can’t leave, who would take care of the farm and mom and the girls? His brother couldn’t do it all he was only 10.” Dad said that they would have to get by the best they could. They sat there awhile eating sandwiches and talking about fishing. It was getting evening and dad said they better get going it would be dark soon and it looked like it might rain.

My brother told dad maybe he would go back home and help take care of the farm. He had decided that it wasn’t right to leave his brother to do everything and I had told him I would help him with his school work and not to listen to what the other kids said to him. They didn’t know everything either. So they walked back to the house put the suitcase on the stairs and went out to the barn to feed the cows.

Later that night when the other kids were in bed and I was reading I overheard mom and dad talking in the kitchen. Dad told her the conversation he and my brother had setting on the creek bank and mom told him that he had packed one shirt, 2 pairs of underwear, and 6 pairs of socks in his suitcase. They laughed at the ingenuity of an 8-year-old and how special he was going to be.

My brother always struggled with learning. But he stuck with it and became a journeyman carpenter and an over-the-road truck driver. He might not have been a quick learner but he had more common sense than most adults I knew. You could always rely on him to figure things out one way or another. He married a wonderful girl and they raised a fine family of boys and now are enjoying their grandsons.

If you feel that the world is closing in and your future looks mighty dim remember your father God is always watching over you. That he has time to set on a creek bank and listen to what is going on in your world. That if you talk to Him enough he will help you figure out what is going sideways in your life and how to straighten things out. His word says he will never leave you or forsake you. If you would like to know more about Him leave me your email and I will get back to you and tell you about our ever-loving father.

REMEMBER YOU ARE LOVED

REMBER WHEN: QUIET PLACE

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MY QUIET PLACE

When I got older and could get away from my little brothers and sister I would go out to the big government pound. It was a holding pond that the road workers used when they built the roads in the county I lived in. This was back in the 1030’s when the government used local men to make county improvements. The locals called them government ponds so the name stuck. They also put a lot of gold fish in the ponds to keep the algae down. By the time we lived there the fish were huge some 12 to 15 inches long. My brothers liked to practice catching them, but dad made them throw the big ones back to add to the population. The land in the county was divided into tracks to be sold to farmers. The pond happened to be on the piece of land that my father bought in the mid 1950’s. It was a good quarter mile from the house so it was a great get-a-way place.

I would get a blanket, a sun hat, whatever book I was reading at the time, maybe a snack and go out to the pond alone to read or just think. I had a big imagination and would plan what I thought my future would be like. I enjoyed reading adventure books and could imagine myself going on wonderful treks in faraway lands. I accomplished some of those dreams when I got older. But none as exciting as the ones I dreamed up.

One day I asked mom if I could use her new sun hat to go to the pond. I had a wide brim and flowers around it. I thought it looked elegant and I felt grownup wearing it; mom said, ok just don’t get it dirty. I went out to the pond set down my blanket and started to read; when a big gust of wind grabbed mom’s hat right off my head and blew it out into the pond. I tried to reach it but the wind kept blowing it farther out into the water. I hollered for dad to come help me but he was too far away. What was I going to do? Mom was going to kill me; I had ruined her new hat. We kept a small boat on the bank by the pond but I couldn’t get it into the water by myself. All I could do was run to the house and get someone to help me.

My brothers were in the barn so I told them to help me get the boat in the water. They laughed and said, “You are in trouble now.” We went out to the pond got the boat into the water, rowed out to the hat that was still floating with the brim up so it hadn’t filled with water. But the pretty flowers were all wet and it smelled like pond water. We got back to the shore and got the boat back on the bank and I gathered my stuff up and headed back to the house. By the time I got there after thinking of how much trouble I was in and what mom would say and do, I was in tears.

I apologized over and over, holding out the wilted pond smelling sunhat; I told her she could have my allowance for the rest of the year to buy a new hat. I got a dollar a month for helping clean the milk barn. It would take me the rest of the year to save up enough to by another hat, but I was willing. Mom said, “I haven’t even got to wear that hat yet.” Trying to look upset and not laugh at the same time. She took the hat out to the watering trough and dunked it in the clean water to get the pond smell off the set it in the sun to dry. It never looked as nice as it did when it was new but mom wore it any way.

Next month when Dad went to town to by feed for the cows he bought mom another hat. I got the one that had been blown into the pond. But I still thought it looked elegant even if it was a little droopy around the edges. I wore it when I went to the pond to read and think, but I always made sure it was tied under my chin to keep the wind from blowing it into the water.

When things happen in children’s lives it can be heart breaking to them. It is our reaction to the incident that can help them to understand why things happen and how to fix or accept the situation. Children need understanding adults, weather parents or others to help with grow. You never know that kind word you give might be just what is needed to turn a bad situation to a good one.

PROVERBS 23:23-24

If you could relate to this leave your email and I will get back to you.

REMEMBER WHEN: BOARDING SCHOOL

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FIRST TIME AWAY FROM HOME

When you are a girl raised Catholic and think you want to be a missionary; the only outlet you have is the convent.

All Catholic families take it as a matter of pride if one of their children chooses the church as a vocation. It was like they had accomplished their duty as a parent. It may not be like that today but when I was a child it was normal. So when I told my mom that I wanted to be a missionary, she told our priest and he contacted a convent that trained missionaries. I was 14 and we lived in Southern Missouri at the time. The convent was in Fort Smith, Arkansas about a two-hour drive away. Dad thought I was too young to live away from home but mom and our priest convinced him that my education would be geared toward that goal. They would train me to be a nurse and work in a hospital.

Living in a dorm with 39 other girls from all walks of life was an education in itself, but I soon learned to fit in. The convent was a self-sustaining school, meaning we grew all our own food, raised our own meat, and did all our own maintenance. We never left the grounds except to work in the church-run hospital. We went to school from 9 am till 6 pm, and then we served the nuns at table and cleaned up after. On the weekends we worked on the farm in the garden. It didn’t take long to learn to always have a project you were working on in your hands, because if you were caught with nothing to do, you were given a project to accomplish before you could go to bed. Lights were out at 9:30 whether you were done or not. I was good at sewing; so I always kept an embroidery project in my bag.

The brothers from the Little Rock Monastery worked on the farm with us and taught us how to do repairs on the buildings and farm equipment. When we got to the mission field we might have to fix things ourselves. The only time we were allowed to talk was in our free time. The Brothers only spoke to us when they were explaining how something should be done. We were taught what was called blind obedience. We were not to question what was asked of us. That was to teach us that we had given our lives totally to the church and whatever was asked of us we were to do without question. On the mission field, this could be the difference between life and death.

The Arkansas Benedictine convent was started in1879 by four women from the convent in Indiana; they were to teach the children of German settlers in the area. When their numbers grew too large to meet the needs of the area; the sisters moved to Fort Smith. The original building was designed by an Oklahoma Architect in 1924. It looked like the cathedrals and castles in Europe and could be quite creepy when the mist would roll in off the river. The main building was 5 stories with a chapel that would seat 300. I remember having to clean the chapel and wax the floors, it would take a group of us an entire day. The convent consisted of 28 acres on the highest point in Fort Smith and we could set on the roof of our dormitory and watch the tornados coming across the river from Oklahoma. But that only lasted until we were missed and found out. But even in a church-run facility, mischief will find a way.

My dad died my first year there and it made it hard to go back after the funeral but mom convinced me that dad had been so proud of my desire to be a missionary that I should continue. My second-year grandmother died which put more of a strain on my mother; who was trying to run the farm, take care of her parents and my younger siblings.

My grades were suffering because I felt I should be helping at home. Finally Mother Superior said I should go home at the end of the school year to help with the family situation and then continue my studies at a later time.

Sometimes life gets in our way and we have to put our plans on hold. I never went back to the convent; staying home to help raise my siblings. I finished high school and started working for the military. The Lord has a way of seeing ahead and making a way for you to fulfill your destiny. Mom died 10 years after dad. He was 37, mom was 45. If I had been on the mission field I would not have been able to help my siblings when they needed my support the most.

If I had not learned to stand on my own two feet, accept the obstacles life through my way, and carry on despite having to put my choices on hold, I would not be where I am today. I realized that there is a mission field where ever you are if you look for it. Offer to volunteer at your, school, church, senior center, or animal shelter, there are needs on all sides. Fulfill your destiny, whatever that may be.

JOHN 15:16