Front Porch Stories

With the rise of apartments and city dwellers, sharing a Sunday afternoon on the porch with family and friends are rare. Families are living farther and farther apart. Parents both working, kids on the go, it's hard to have family time. I remember when I was a kid. We ate a least two meals together, and I mean at the table, not in front of the television. We talked about what was going to take place that day or at night what went on that day. When my kids were growing up it was mainly breakfast together during the week and Sunday was our catching up day. With all that is going on today families are lucky to have one meal a week together. Family time is important! It's when you catch up on all that's gone on during the week. A time to gather friends, share stories like how long do you think I can talk to my mom and call her Mother without her saying "what's up with that!". Yeah, number on son called this morning because one of his friends calls his Mother, Moth

As I sit here and write I have to thank God, for allowing me to be born in the United States of America. Every night when I say my prayers I ask God to watch over our troops and to bring as many home safely and in one piece as he possibly can. I also ask him to watch over them and give them the strength and the courage to do the things they have to do. I hope that you are also praying for our troops. Freedom isn't free! Don't take it for granted. Look around you, read the papers and listen to the news, if we don't stand up for our freedom right here in the USA it will be taken away from us. A one world government, and Sharia law would override our Constitution. Be wary my friends, little by little, inch by inch the progressives will steal our freedom and our liberties. Too many good men and women of all races have died to give us these freedoms, for you and I to let them be taken from us. I am Red, White, and Blue through and through. God, Family, Country! If you don't

I'll be a Corvette! When the kids were growing up one of the cars I owned was a Chevett. At first I wasn't sure that I would like it. I fell in love with it. It was a four speed and four cylinder and it would scoot! That's why the kids said that when it grew up it would be a corvette. We had that car for years! I took loads of kids to school, karate tournaments, skate meets. Hauled all kinds of stuff in it. It even got me the only speeding ticket I ever had! Yes, a woman who has owned some of the fasted muscle cars that were on the road got her only ticket in a chevett! I was on my way home from the skating rink late one night and had my youngest son and one of his friends with me, when out of the blue a deer ran out in front of us. It happened so fast I couldn't avoid her. We hit her and the boys wanted me to stop and I said no, because I could tell that there was a lot of damage. We were able to fix most of it and I even had to strap down the hood and I drove it. What

Do you remember when you started your day at school with the Pledge of Allegiance, then there was the reading of a Bible verse, then a prayer? Do you remember when you said a prayer before a ball game? Do you remember when you could carry a knife to school? Do you remember when all the boys and some of the girls had gun racks in the back window of their trucks, and if you got a new hunting rifle or shotgun you told every body at school including the principal? Do you remember having friends from all walks of life and different religions, and you went to church with each other just because you were friends? Do you remember that you didn't kiss and tell? Do you remember having respect for your parents, your friends, your teachers, and most of all yourself? We all have to stand for what we believe in! Do you believe in our country? Do you believe in a Higher Power? Do you believe in respect and discipline? Do you believe in personal responsibility? Do you believe in privacy? Do you be

I got involved in the martial arts because of my oldest son. He has asthma and we thought that the breathing exercises would help to strengthen his lungs. I would sit and watch the class and James and some of his friend started asking me to join the class also which I did. It was great!! I don't think I could have raised three children with no one's help other than my mom, it it had not been for the martial arts. It gave me a place where for a couple of hours I was no one's mom. I could scream and kick and punch and let out all the built up frustration that sometimes filled my body. It was the one thing that seemed to always to stay the same. Then came turmoil in the organization, one split, then another. Then one change after another, it never seemed to be the same anymore. I tried to make the changes in kata(forms), but then they wanted to change the weapons kata and I said no more. I am a weapons nut, my passion in the arts is weapons. I resigned, my son resigned, and I

the birds come and go. The goldfinches that spent the winter here are long gone. A few of the hummingbirds are back. I have watched a pair of blue birds feed and raise a brood. We have a pair of carolina wrens that have raised one brood in our barn and now she is working on a nest in a wren jug on the porch. The other day pop and I were sitting on the porch and noticed a young female red bird taking straw into a shrub. I took a peek and sure enough she was working on a nest. I checked on it again yesterday when I was pulling some grass from the flowers. What I saw was a completed nest, I assume that in a few days there will be eggs. I keep out a feeder with sunflower seeds but she prefers the cracked corn that I throw out in the yard. We also have several doves that come in for an easy meal. They have all gotten used to us being on the porch. We can get up and move around and they just go on eating or getting a drink from the bird bath. We spend a lot of time on the porch watching th

is gone. When I married pop I sold my old house to my neighbor. The old place was built by my neighbors grandparents. The front part of the house was a log cabin. Over the years folks had added rooms and porches to it. When we bought it we had to repair a part of the roof. From time to time the old roof would leak and we would tack plastic over the ceiling so that all the leaks would run into one pan. Yeah, we lived pretty rustic. The old house held up for over twenty years. My mom and I raised my children there. It was home! When I left there it was in disrepair, my mom had been sick and working two jobs I had fallen behind in my chores of keeping it up. So after I left and it set there empty for several years it was falling in. My friends decided before someone got hurt that it would be best to take the old place down. I went by there Mother's day and the place looked strange. The house may be gone but there will always be memories there. The tree that my mom and son planted when

My mom loved pictures. That may be where my son got his love of cameras and taking pictures. She had a box of pictures and every so often we would take them out and look through them. Some would make you cry as you remembered a love one that had past on or a friend you hadn't seen in years, but it was history. I can remember some of us getting a little upset that she held on to pictures of our ex's, but she would just say that's part of our family history. I have lots of mama's old pictures and yes some of all the ex's, because they are part of history. Lot's of the pictures bring you joy with old memories. The old houses where we used to live. Some of daddy's hunting dogs. Cars that we've all owned. My mom was a foster parent for little babies and there are some pic's of those little babies. Remembering the way things were. I could look at them for hours. Don't forget to pass on some of your family history to your children. Thanks for stopping b

While watching television last night they were showing some folks fishing. One of the fish they brought in was a Blue Marlin. That reminded me of my brother-in-law. He was more like my brother. I was very close to him, he was good to me, he didn't mind getting on me if I didn't do right and I think that made me love him more. He and my sister had moved to Florida and he loved to deep sea fish. I was still a teenager and we lived in Georgia. One beautiful Saturday morning he got up early to go fishing with some of his friends. My sister said for some reason she watched him ride his motorcycle until she could no longer see him. Late that afternoon she got the call that he had passed away. He had hooked a big Marlin and had fought with it for a long time, when he finally reeled it in he was exhausted. The captain of the boat suggested he go below and rest while they going back to land. When they docked he had died. When my sister called I went to pieces. Some people say I was drea

All boys like hot rods and some never stop liking them. So when the oldest boy turned sixteen, we started out with a '78 Camaro, 350. It was a nice car and one evening he was on his way home and a car came racing up on his bumper, then backed off. It did it again and again. He didn't recognize the car, and when it turned on our road behind him and did the same thing and flashed his lights. He decided not to turn in our driveway but to take this fellow for a little spin, literally. Our road ended into another road, but there was a fire road straight across from the stop sign with a huge drop off. With much experience my son made a sliding, smoking u turn and started back toward the house. The other car, which turned out to be one of his best friends, slide and skidded to make the same u turn. Not quite as smooth but both boys made it back to the house with cars in tack. His friend said he was still shaking that it scared him bad..

this Sunday. It makes me miss my Mama. She passed away four years ago. She and I were very close, she wasn't just my mom she was my best friend. I could tell her anything. We could talk for hours. After my Dad died she bought my family a house that was close to hers. A few years after I got a divorce she called and ask if she could move in with me. I said of course. I came home the next day and she and the kids had most of her stuff moved to our house on a wheelbarrow. She took over at being the Mom and I guess I was the Dad. I went out and worked, sometimes two jobs. She took care of the house and the kids. I love my mom! Not long ago I found a box of her things, in it was some of the cards she had saved. My oldest son will be 38 his birthday and she had kept the first cards we had sent her with his name added to it and the first Happy Mother's Day Grandma with his name on it. She was certainly one of a kind and there will be a lot of front porch stories inspired by her memori

Foxy, was my pet squirrel when I was about five years. My dad cut pulp wood a lot to earn a living. He and another man cut down a tree that had a squirrel nest in it. There was two baby squirrels, daddy brought one home and the other man kept the other one. Mama fed him with an eye dropper. He grew and I kept him for several years. He made a great pet. He would let us pet him and he would run all over the house and we had a great time with him. Then one Sunday morning we let him out of his cage and he was doing his running around the house. My mom was sitting on the couch reading a paper, and he was running across the back of the couch and he made the trip several times then, he ran down my moms' arm and bit her thumb! He wouldn't let go!! Mama had to squeeze his jaws and get him to turn lose. Needless to say, Foxy had to go outside! He was lucky he wasn't supper. Daddy put him a box in my favorite tree and he stayed there for several months. Then he met a girl squirrel an

One of the most requested breakfast foods at our house was my Mom's chocolate gravy. Chocolate gravy is a hot thick sweet syrup that is magnificent over a hot butter biscuit. When I was growing up it was a cheap sweet that we all could enjoy. As my kids were growing up that was what my mom treated them and their friends to when that had sleep overs. It got so that when the kids would ask someone to spend the night they would ask if Granny would make gravy, and of course she would. My youngest son and some of his friends worked for a hurricane clean up crew and sometimes they worked way off from home and on their way home they would call Granny and see if she had everything to make chocolate gravy, she would check and if she needed anything they would bring it to her. They always came to our house first to get their gravy fix before they went home. I guess you'd say the Chocolate Gravy was her trademark. So much so that when she passed away we put the ingredients in a jar with a