What a lovely Thanksgiving weekend with the whole family! That included our two, spouses, and grandchildren, plus Gina’s mother, sister, spouse, children. Eighteen in all! And everyone stayed with Josh and Gina but us; we went to a hotel. Quite a crowd! The grands are ages 8, 9, 13, 13, 17, 18, 21, 22. Yesterday … [Read more…]
Mother and Daddy, recently married, settled in to their life in the Clearview community of Middle Tennessee where he had grown up, living in the old farmhouse where my paternal grandfather had been born. By fall, Mother acquired a teaching job at the country school, which was much larger than your typical “one-room schoolhouse.” One … [Read more…]
Mr. Jess and I didn’t have much in common. We lived in the same small Tennessee community, his farm and ours equally poor. I was a teenage girl and he was in his seventies; I was quick and agile and he was feeble and slow. I talked fast and heard everything; he talked slowly and … [Read more…]
Today, as I tidied my office (an occasional experience, I admit), a letter fell out of a pile of papers. It was a letter written by my mother’s good friend, Etheline Wilkinson, a strong Christian woman who lived near my parents. She was always impoverished but never showed it in either her spirit or her … [Read more…]
November in Tennessee was much colder when I was a child than it is now. We knew it would be “hog-killin’ weather” on our long Thanksgiving weekend from school. Since my father was a teacher, this was a good opportunity to get our hams and bacon and sausage prepared for the long winter ahead. I … [Read more…]
As a child, I always had skinned knees. I ran everywhere I went and constantly tripped over things. On the farm, I’d fall over roots or sticks or gravel in our driveway. In town, I’d run an errand for Mother and fall on the sidewalk, hurting my knee. Of course what hurt more than the … [Read more…]
When I was teaching third grade at Moyer School and overwhelmed with all the paperwork, I’d often eat lunch at my desk as I graded papers. (Certainly third grade papers are not a challenge, but the sheer volume is.) Then I read an article citing studies showing that people who take a lunch break and … [Read more…]
When we first married, a big money-saving technique was getting S & H Green Stamps or True Value Stamps (which were yellow) when we bought groceries or gas. We had little books, free at any store, into which we wet and pasted the stamps. Each company had a stamp catalog and stamp catalog stores where … [Read more…]
Steve began preaching at Central in 1975 and right away we met Geneva Nordhoff. Geneva had two daughters, a son, and a husband who was a non-practicing Catholic. Her daughters were grown with families of their own, but her son Bud, age 42, still lived at home. As Geneva explained to us, during delivery Bud … [Read more…]
Even though my last post was lengthy, there is even more to the story. Steve’s draft number was 47, which meant he was high on the list to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. A side benefit to his assistantship at Pittsburg State was that he might get a student deferment. Might. Not. In the … [Read more…]
