Back in the Old Days

Good morning to everyone! I hope that your Monday is going great. Mine is going great.  I am on a liquid diet through tomorrow morning. Then this evening, I get to drink some really awful tasting stuff to clean me out. You guessed it, I am having another colonoscopy tomorrow. Most people go in for one and are told “everything looks good, see ya in 10 years” but I’m not so lucky. But all is good. We are going to make sure they got everything and see how fast polyps are growing.

What did you do over the weekend? We took the kiddos bowling Saturday and, on our way back, I drove through Edna to where I use to live as a young girl. It was a little bit sad to see how the place is so run down. But I got to share some of my stories with the grandkids. It brought us some wonderful memories.

We moved there from Louisiana. In those days, kindergarten wasn’t required. I went to kindergarten at the Methodist Church in Edna. I remember that we got our vaccinations at the courthouse. I also remember that Johnny (my middle brother) always passed out when we got to the benches in front of the courthouse. He didn’t do shots very well. Lol

This blog is going to be all over the place because it is just memories and when you are that young (at least for me) time didn’t mean much. We moved from Edna half way through my 4^th grade year. I showed the grandkids where I went to kindergarten and elementary. I remembered where I took tap and ballet lessons. I believe that I took piano from the same lady.

Our house was a big one. We had 3 bedrooms, a formal living room, a formal dining room, big kitchen, and a family room that doubled as Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Their room was at one end of the house and all of us kids were in the other end of the house. I remember that when I had to go to bed, I would run down the hallway and flip on my light. I would look around and under the bed, turn off the light and run and jump into bed because I was afraid that the boogey man would get me. My room was the first bedroom down the hall. Randy and Johnny shared a room and Mark had his own bedroom with a bath.

We played outside most of the time unless it was raining. We had 9 barns and a lot of animals. So, of course, we had chores. We had chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, sheep, and a horse. I don’t remember everything that we had. And we usually had some animal that we were bottle feeding. We didn’t tell our parents that we were bored because they would find chores to do.

I recall that we had a dirt bike. Randy and Johnny were going to teach me to ride it. One of them held it up and the other put me on it. They told me to pull the handle bar to make it go. I couldn’t even reach the shifter by the pedal so they put into gear and told me to go. I ended up wrecking right into a ‘broncing barrel’. They picked me and the motorcycle up, dusted me off (as I was crying), and told me “now steer it”. They were so sweet to me 😊. I’m pretty sure that I learned to ride!

What is a ‘broncing barrel’ you ask? Well, it was a barrel that had 4 springs that was hung between some trees and we would act like it was a bull. We would try to throw each other off of it. We made a lot of our own fun. We would take hot wheels cars and make roads and towns and play for hours with army men and cowboy and Indians. When it was hot, we swam in the horse trough. We didn’t have a slip and slide, but we made one out of plastic and took turns holding the water hose.

We had a green broke horse named Jim. I remember going out with Randy and Johnny behind the barns (because we didn’t want Momma seeing) and we would race the horse. It’s a wonder that we never got hurt really bad. The boys had to get up early and go milk the cow and feed. My job was cleaning the chicken pen. I got paid a quarter for it. Back then, I could buy 25 pieces of gum for that! Kids now days would just laugh at that and refuse to do it. We didn’t refuse and to some degree we were afraid of our dad. He never laid a hand on us when he was mad, but he would spank when we needed it.

Mom and Dad took really good care of us. They raised us with manners. And they led by example. We had responsibilities, and there were expectations, but we were happy. We got into mischief and we were always plotting something. We were very close when we were growing up. I miss that now. I have a close relationship with Randy but not Mark and Johnny. I wish we could all be close again.

I’m going to close this blog for now. I hope that you have a wonderful day.