Front Porch Stories

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and my brother and his wife had come over from Georgia for the weekend.  They would usually spend Saturday with his wife's family and Sunday with us.  As mamma was preparing lunch, she realized she didn't have enough potatoes.  She called for me to go to the barn and get a bowl of potatoes.  I was in the process of getting the potatoes out of the sack(bag) when I felt something cold go across my hand.  Being nine, I knew I couldn't go back to the house without the potatoes so I opened another sack and finished filling the bowl. When I got back to the house mamma said, "Mercy child what's wrong with you!".  It seems all the color had faded from my face in fear of what was in the sack!  You see back then potatoes were kept in 50lb burlap sacks or bags whichever you choose to call them.  When I explained that something had crawled across my hand my dad and brother said, "come show us which sack".  When we got to the

It's raining again!  The ground is so saturated that it will take a long time for it to dry out enough to start planting gardens.  There are some things that need to be planted early March.  The man who farms for a living has incredible faith in God to send the right kind of weather his way.  My dad was a farmer most of his life and we had a garden for as long as he and my mom were alive.  We all need the faith of a farmer, somewhere in the Bible it says that those with the faith the size of a mustard seed could move a mountain. We can all complain about the weather but it won't do any good.  We take what we are sent and do the best we can with it.  To everything there is a season and a purpose under the heavens.  Ours is not to reason why.  I thank God for everyday and every blessing, even the rain.

One of the things we all talk about on the front porch or around the kitchen table is how we spend our money.  We dream of buying new cars, doing repairs to the house, or stuff the kids need.  Then we start planning a way to achieve those goals.  If our hours get cut, or we get laid off we make adjustments.  We look at the things we owe, the things we need, and the things we want, then we determine what we can do without.  Why can our government not do the same!  So what if a government worker has to take the same pay cut that I did just so that I would still have a job?  What if they had to use cheaper brands of things?  What if we cut foreign aid to countries who don't like us?  What if we drilled more at home and brought in the pipeline from Canada?  Why not combine some departments that do basically the same thing.  How about if government workers were paid that same as a civilian who does the same job.  There are ways to curb the deficit without scaring older folks who rely on