Back In The Saddle

A very belated Happy New Year ! My last post was December 16, 2008, so it's been nearly a month since Senior Speak has spoken. So, for all of you who have sent E-Mails wondering whether I had finally shut up, firstly, thank you for asking, and secondly, no I haven't.

The Holidays were so incredibly busy, and I had quite a list of Stained Glass pieces that needed doing, and the danged Elves were afraid they'd cut their fingers, and insisted on hazardous duty pay, and on and on ad nauseum. Then, on New Year's Eve, I was bit by the Flu Bug. For those of you who have had it, my sympathies. For those of you who haven't had it, don't get it. It ain't worth doin'.

If all that wasn't enough, my computer decided to entertain a whole host of viruses, and it took the Fix-it shop a whole week plus $150.00 to clear 'em out, and I've spent the last 2 days trying to get things back to the way they were before. I don't deal as well with change as I used to. Go figure. I also had to deal with another Birthday a little before Christmas, to add a little more trauma. So, welcome back to my Vale of Tears.

This first post of 2009 will be a sort of Bits 'n' Pieces post, so if I ramble a little, please bear with me.

A while back, My Darlin' Darlene found a wonderful piece titled "Grandma's Apron", which I'll share with you now.

Grandma's Apron
I don't think our kids know what an apron is. The principal use of

Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath, because she only had a few. It was easier to wash aprons than dresses and they used less material, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears. From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven. When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids. And, when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove. Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls. In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds. When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner. It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes. Send this to those who would know, and love, the story about Grandma's aprons. Or it can be a good history lesson for those that have no idea how the apron played a part in our lives.

REMEMBER:Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to 'cool'. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to 'thaw'.They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron; however, I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron.

Boy, does that bring back memories! I hope that every one of you has at least one memory of a Grandma's Apron. I am so fortunate that I had two "Aproned Grandma's", along with my own mother and my Aunt Lola who were apron devotees. My family was, at best, somewhat "countrified". I recall helping both of my Grandmas carry in kindling for their wood cookstoves, although I didn't have the advantage of an apron, which they surely did.

We spent many summer vacations "down home" in Ellsinore, a tiny (today's population: 360) village in the Ozark foothills of Southern Missouri. It was much smaller back then, and we loved it. Other than the two County Roads that intersected near the Greyhound Bus Stop, all the streets were hard packed red dirt. There was a creek across the road from Grandma's house, and my brother, my cousin Jurdy Leach (a red-haired, freckled replica of Huckleberry Finn) and I spent hours catching crawdads and chasing snakes after Daily Vacation Bible School. Then, up the creek bank to a huge Mulberry tree which we climbed, lounged in the shade and ate our fill and then some. On some weekend nights, a huge white tarp was fastened to the side of the only brick building in town, to serve as a movie screen, and the townfolk would gather to watch; not so much Drive-In as Stand-In movies. Ozark people are easily amused.

It wasn't much different when we returned to our home, about 5 miles north of Reed City, Michigan, although we did have electricity and a natural gas space heater. Plumbing was something for city folks. My earliest recollection of indoor plumbing was when we finally moved to town on Church Street in Reed City. I was 10 years old, and thought I was finally "livin' in tall cotton", as my Dad called it, though, for the life of me, I have no idea what "livin' in tall cotton" actually refers to. Obviously, you can take a boy out of the Ozarks, but you just can't take the Ozarks out of the boy. Southerners do have a penchant for colorful language and expressions.

My Dad would call a hard rain a "Frog Strangler". One time, while playing catch, he threw me a high, hard one. When I flinched and ducked, he laughed and said that I was "blinkin' like a hog in a hailstorm". My Uncle John Lehr was a master of colorful expression. When I was around 4 or 5, and had experienced a bit of a growth spurt, he remarked to my Dad that I was "danged near big enough to turn over gravel", a reference to my supposed urinary prowess.

As I said earlier, I may ramble a bit, and it appears that my mind is stuck in the Ozark backwoods. I'm enjoying it, but I fear that it may be asking a lot of my readers to continue down this particular path, so I'll save some for another time.

Now, if I could just find some old-fashioned flour sacks, and a pattern for those great old aprons. And if I knew how to sew, and...

Have yourself a wonderful day, because it's a wonderful day out there !

Later,

Don Lehr ( Michguy)