Tuesday, October 26, 2010

POISON IVY


     Hey y'all, sorry that I've been gone so long.  I was on another blog site and changed my theme and could not get back in to post a new blog after that.  So anyway, I found this blog and hope it works just as well.

     The weather here in Florida was just perfect for hiking a couple of weeks ago.  My husband and I took advange of it and hiked in the forrest a couple of days for two hours each time.  We had a wonderful time.  However, the last day I stepped in a rut and turned my ankle and fractured my fibular.  That was bad enough.  But since one of my hobbies is photography I aways have my trusty Nikon along on our walks.  I got some great photos that I was pretty proud of but one of them happen to be poison ivy.  Yep, I thought the colors were nice and I stepped in poison ivy to get a picture.  It was so dumb because at the beginning of our walk the park had poison ivy signs posted.  Of course I did not know what it looked like but hey that's no excuse.  Okay, so now my right fibular is fractured and the doctor put me in one of those huge lovely black boots that reminds me of Herman Munster and I'm using a cane.  Then my left leg starts itching and I notice a rash that starts with tiny blisters then turns to red bumps when the blister pops and of course spreads at the same time.  Then I remembered the Poison Ivy signs!  So I go out on the web and look up the rash and a treatment for it.  The web page said use calamine lotion and take Benadryl.  I did.  Oh Boy!  The rash spreads over my whole body and I don't have enough hands to scratch every where it was itching.  First thing the next morning I call my doctor and rush to her office.  Can you believe that I am allergic to the dad blame Benadryl?  Yep!!  Only a few people are and I happen to be one of them.  Finally, she gave me a steroid that is giving me some relief and letting me get some sleep.
     I posted the picture just in case any of y'all decide to go hiking to take pictures in the forrest.  STAY AWAY FROM THE POISON IVY.  The doctor said "If it has three let it be."  Trust me that's great advice.
     I'll be back with more of "Farmer's Daughter" when I quit feeling so dumb and itching.
Good night.  I'll talk to y'all later right now I need to soak in an oatmeal bath.

FARMER'S DAUGHTER (sequence 2)
Hey Y’all, good to see you back.  C’mon in and have a glass of cold ice tea.
      Most of the farms you see on television have either beautiful stately homes or tumble down shacks.  Ours was neither.  The house was a huge rambling six large bedrooms, a living room (with no television) kitchen and a dining room big enough for a boarding house.  The dining table was long and could easily seat twelve to fourteen people.  Momma and Daddy sat one at each end.  Daddy didn’t have a captain’s chair.  No, his was just a plain, woven cane bottom straight chair like all the others that were around the table.  A bench ran down one whole side of the table.  I don’t think it had ever been painted.  The boards were gray from age and the top was as smooth as silk from little behinds sliding across it for so many years.  It was high enough so the young children could reach the table with no problems.  When you grew too tall to sit on the bench you graduated to a regular chair at the table and sat on the other side.  Three or four of the same type chairs were lined up against one wall and were used when we had company.  A large China cabinet with a glass front held Momma’s good dishes and it took up most of one wall in the dining room.  There was also a large, white wooden safe with screen doors where Momma and the older girls stored cakes, pies and left over biscuits or cornbread.
     The kitchen had a huge, black wood stove. The walls were lined with cabinets full of pots, pans, whatever it took to cook a meal and the every day dishes.  Our canned goods and other groceries were kept in a pantry off the kitchen.  A small table big enough so four people could sit around it comfortably was shoved up against the two tall windows that looked out on the back porch.  As long as I can remember that table had a red checkered cloth on it and usually, right in the middle set a small bouquet of flowers picked from Momma’s garden no matter what time of year it was.  Momma always had something blooming in her garden. I loved to spend time in the kitchen with Momma and the older girls buzzing around cooking dinner or canning.  I’d lie on the floor under the table, with my huge gray tabby cat snuggled up against me and most of the time drift off to sleep as I listened to them chat about what was going on in the community or at school.  There wasn’t much talk about boys although once in a while one of them would tease the other about some boy from school or church.
     When we left off before I promised to tell you about the outhouse.  That’s not a pretty subject but since I promised I’ll tell you but there are so many other things we can talk about.
      The privy wasn’t much to write home about or look at.  Daddy and the boys built it way back behind the barn.  I should say threw it together from the looks.  The boards were never painted and over the years the weather had changed them from a honey gold to gray and so dark in some places it looked almost black.  The door wasn’t a door at all.  They had put several planks side by side then nailed another one cater-corner across them to keep’em together.  A couple of rusty hinges held this contraction on to the tiny building that they placed over a deep hole they had dug.  It was a double seater if that means anything.  I never knew why because who in their right mind would want to sit beside another person and use the toilet.  It wasn’t a place you would want to sit and visit.  The odor was anything but pleasant.  In the summer Daddy dumped bags of lime down the hole to help control the scent but I couldn’t see where it did any good.  The roof was made of rusty tin that did nothing to help defuse the heat.  Over in the corner of the seat somebody had put a Sears catalog. You can use your imagination to figure out what we used it for.  You had to crumple the pages to make it do any good and let me tell you it sure wasn’t Charmin.  But it was better than corn cobs that I hear some folks used back then.  I think I was about eight years old before we ever had real toilet paper.  I guess we  wouldn’t have gotten it then but Daddy fell off a building and got hurt so Momma started buying it for him and we were all allow the luxury.
      Two of my older brothers served in World War Two and were still in the military when I was old enough to remember anything.  They came home for visits but never back to live with us.
     My oldest sister’s husband got killed in the war so she and her son came back home to live.  The boy, Clifton, was only six months younger than me and we grew to be as close as siblings.
     Clifton, what wonderful memories; the two of us were regular rascals.  Those are some stories I can tell you later.  I guess I’ve wasted enough time for today and need to cook supper.  It was nice visiting with you.  Come back again soon.



FARMER'S DAUGHTER
 Hey Y’all.  Come on in, pull up a chair, have a nice glass of cold ice tea and sit while I spin you a good yarn. (That’s southern for tell you a story.)  Here… take this pan of Conk peas and shell them while we talk.  It’s nice to visit but the work must go on.
      Statistics show that a lot of people get depressed and some even commit suicide around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.  I can get through those days without a hitch.  It’s these, I guess you’d call them Indian Summer, days that put me in a melancholy mood.  No, I’m not depressed or even sad it is just a dull feeling of loneliness deep inside.  I can’t explain it.  Maybe it’s because the days are shorter and the sunlight seems to have a softer gentler glow.  Who the heck knows?  My thoughts turn to Georgia and my family.  But I’m not like the country singer Charlie Pride I know I can’t live there or like that any more.  Don’t get me wrong it was not all bad.  I had a wonderful, loving family and I miss them a lot.  But in my case the adage is so true: I can’t go home again.  Even if I went back I could not see them because they are all dead except one sister.  The city condemned and burned our old shack of a house.  Only the chimney remains standing in a lot cluttered with weeds and rubbish.  But today my thoughts go back before the years spent in that house.
      Daddy was a farmer with ten kids and a wife. (I was the baby of the family, a great story there for another time.) Talk about being like the Waltons; I swear some of their stories matched my family perfectly.  Only we didn’t have running water or an indoor toilet.  Nope.  My older sisters and brothers had to draw water from a deep well with a rope and bucket.  There was an unpainted, gray from age and weather, foot wide shelf that ran from the wall to one of the support posts on the back porch.  A gallon, medal bucket of water set on that shelf up close to the house.  A white trimmed in red enamel dipper, with a black spot about the size of pea on the inside bottom where the enamel was chipped, hung on a nail on the wall close to the bucket. When we were thirsty we just took the dipper down and dipped up water from the bucket.  Yep, we all drank from the same dipper.  And a large enamel pan that matched the dipper was farther down, closer to the post on the shelf and that is where we washed our face and hands. The area around the pan was always wet and a bar of sticky soap lay on the soggy wood.  Someone had hammered in a nail, leaving about half an inch sticking out on the front of the shelf and that’s where a threadbare towel hung so we could dry ourselves after washing.  We all knew better than to come to the table with a dirty face and hands when called to supper.  The towel always felt damp and smelled like Cashmere soap.
     On Saturday evenings the boys would lug one of Momma’s number two tin wash tubs into the kitchen so we could take a bath.  My older sisters would draw water from the well and heat it on the wood stove to fill the tub.  The water was not thrown out after each person bathed.  Oh no, it was only dumped after it got so dirty no one could get clean in it if they tried.  Then two of the boys would each take a handle and carry the tub out and dump the water on Momma’s flowers.  Absolutely nothing was wasted. And the bath process started again until everybody was clean so they could go to church the next morning.
     What about the toilet?  We’ll save that for a later blog.
 Thanks for stopping by. Please come back now, you hear, for more stories on the Farmer’s Daughter.