Snake In The Potatoe Sack

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 barn my brother first looked in the sack and didn't see anything, then daddy said dump it out.  Well there in the bottom of the sack was a corn snake about a foot long!  My brother promptly squished it with the heel of his boot!!!!  Then of course we had to pick up all those potatoes and put them back in the sack.  

Raining Again

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.

National Debt

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 the money that they paid into the system.  Had the government not stolen the money that was to be set aside for the baby boomers there would be plenty of money for social security and medicare.

My Old House

Days like today I really miss my old house.  The house where my Mom and I lived, the house where I raised my kids.  Mama would have gotten up around six took her medicine and turned up the heat.  Then we would have slept til about eight.  We had floor to ceiling windows in the dinning room and our table sat in front of them, we could see the whole back yard from there.  I can hear her telling me that the birds were waiting on me and she was gonna start the coffee.  That was my cue to go out and feed the birds so that we could watch them eat while we were eating.  We always had red birds, sparrows, wrens, chickadee's an occasional bunting and others that were just passing thru.  I miss my mom and at times I just miss that ole house.  Sitting at that table watching the birds would be a great place to be this morning.

I have a great place to live here with my son and his family, but sometimes I miss having my own place.  I used to love to sit in front of those windows and watch it snow, or the kids playing.  I guess as we get older we think about our favorite places to live.

Christmas Day

I just want to say Merry Christmas to all those who stop by my blog.  Today has been a great day filled with love, laughter, food and most of all family.  I hope that each of you have had the same.  I know that some of you have spent most of the day in a deer stand and I hope that you brought home more than just a cold.

May the Lord bless each and everyone of you!  May your New Year get off to an amazing start and be filled with health, wealth and happiness!!!

Christmas, My Favorite Time of Year

The Christmas Season brings with it many wonderful memories.  Thoughts of how the house smelled when Mama was cooking up all our favorites.  Christmas Plays, concerts, friends and family.  I think about the effort that used to go into getting just the right gift. Sending the card that best fits the receiver.  The love and happiness that used to fill the air.

However those things are no longer a priority!  It has been over commercialized.  The largest tragedy of all is the removal of Christ from everything.  God loaned us his son so that we might have everlasting life and a lot of people want to shut him out!  As you go from day to day take the time to include God in your daily activities.  Make memories that will last a lifetime.

We had a Charlie Brown Christmas

I remember like it was yesterday.  We were getting ready to move again!  My Dad was a sharecropper and that meant moving whenever he could get a bigger piece of land or a better split on the crops.  It always meant moving in December, when school was out for Christmas break.  Lots of times we stayed in the same school district, but not this time.

Sometimes the houses we lived in were decent, but sometimes they were awful!!  This place was bad, really bad.  This was back before central heat and air, back when a wood heater or fireplace was you source of warmth, and when the fire died out you could freeze water in the room where you slept.  It was coming a light snow when we got the last of our things in the house and daddy got fires going in the heater and the fireplace in the bedroom.  When we got the bed up, my mom noticed that the snow was coming thru the roof, so she put a layer of newspaper between the cover so the covers next to us wouldn't get wet.

The next day was Christmas Eve and we didn't have a tree so she taped our Christmas lights to the window in the shape of a tree so that Santa Clause could find us.  I can't remember ever going hungry because my mom always had a garden an canned everything she could get her hands on.  Some of the best soup was eaten in that old house and the cracks were filled with love.  Christmas isn't about gifts or fancy trees, it's about love and the fact that God started his Son's journey for our redemption on that Holy night.

May you each have a Blessed and wonderful Christmas.