Lent....

Was thinking this morning, Lent is half over!!! And what have I done that is so significant to do Penance for my sins!!! A few "measley" (my word!) things that I kind of half-heartedly do daily!!! I remember when I was a kid, Mother always made a "big" thing out of Lent, (which it should be!) and so we would do a few things like giving up candy, ( we didn't get that much anyway!), and try to be nicer to our brothers and sisters, etc. Oh yes, a few extra prayers would help too! But when I got away from the farm and into town then I tried to go to daily Mass and Communion and make the Stations of the Cross, not daily but at least once a week, and of course I began to stay away from the candy and sweets! We, all of us children, put our candy in a box till after Holy Saturday!! You can imagine what it tasted like then! But we felt that we had really done something good for Lent! I think that this year is the first year that I haven't given up chocolates! I've got a two pound box of See's chocolates still wrapped up and every day it keeps coaxing me to have just one!!!! But I am keeping from it because I know if I open THAT box, it won't be just one!!!! I, when I could, went to daily Mass here but since I don't drive and it's pretty hard to even go once a week,( I can't kneel!) But I do say my Stations of the Cross at home and an extra Rosary, and this month prayers in honor of St, Joseph!!! I do miss the daily Stations that I made too, when I was able to go to Mass!! Funny how fast time flies, isn't it? Is it just because I am so old that it just seems to be flying by, or is that the way it seems to everybody???? I was so looking forward to my Birthday and now am looking forward to a couple of weddings in the Fall! And then Christmas will be here again!!! Easter will be just a "flick" in time, and the other Holidays and events!!!! I told Alicia the other day, I hope I'll be able to make her wedding some time in the Spring!!!! Am I assuming too much or will God take care of me so I can do all these things that sound so exciting??????Only He knows!!!

The importance of family....

Family! What a wonderful thing! I was able to go to Mass last night with Steve, Marilyn, Alicia, Lorenzo, and Lily!!!! I felt so grateful to have a whole pew for us! The little one was really good and my heart just soared when I could hear her little voice making a few sounds, etc. Here was my family!!! Or at least a part of it! Nothing like a month ago! A month???? Only that long??? We went out to dinner afterwards where Alicia showed off her new "ring" and stated that they would be married early next year! She wants to be married at the little Catholic Church up at White Pines and of course that has to be when the weather will be gorgeous! And hopefully Lorenzo will be part of our Church family! I can hardly wait for that!!! Lily just laid there in her stroller and smiled at anyone and everyone and soon she was off to sleep! It wasn't a noisy place and like babies do, or what they are supposed to do is sleep when they get tired!!! They are so lucky in that she sleeps all night once she is in her bed! My heart felt so full with the family, (all but Sarah, and she doesn't get to come home every weekend!) all there and at Mass and afterwards, what an evening!! Then Marilyn and Steve brought me some pictures so that I can send them to some of the folks that couldn't make my party and have no computers to bring up the pictures on!!! I sat here for the longest time after I got home and just kept looking at them all and I guess they had taken more pictures than John and Janie, etc. I know that Wendy was running around taking some "candid" shots too. I lived with my family all over again. Got to bed after 12:00 midnight and then was so keyed up, thought I would never get to sleep! It wasn't anything I ate and we ate early enough but I was just so HAPPY!!!!

More about "the man in my life"!

One of the things that I failed to mention in yesterdays blog is Cappy's likes and dislikes! Not too many dislikes! When we were first married he had a lot of trouble with his stomache. He said that he had been told that he had stomache ulcers and began to tell me what he could eat and what he couldn't. Seems he had been to a Dr. sometime in his teens who had given him a bunch of tests and found that milk was one thing he could not drink. He said that it felt like the minute it hit his stomache it would feel like it was boiling and made him very sick! Well, I don't like milk and never did so that posed no problem. He could eat things such as gravy or creamed vegetables where the milk was boiled. I never thought much about his ulcers and so I just cooked like I always had at home. Potatoes, gravy, a cooked vegetable and sliced tomatoes, or cole slaw, or lettuce salad, etc. He didn't seem to get any "attacks" of stomache ulcers. But one time after we were married he did get a terrible attack and they were bleeding ulcers. He would during one of these attacks just stay away from food and when he got to feeling better, fix up for himself a big Mexican dinner! And hot as it was, it never bothered him!!! He loved the Mexican food and started to show me how to fix it! I had never ever come close to Mexican food unless it was a big pot of Chili con Carne, made with just good old red beans and then tomatoes, chili pepper, (canned), onion a bit of garlic salt or powder, etc. It was a pretty good dish when I had it in the cold Northwest where I lived as a girl. One ate this concoction with soda crackers on a cold wintry night! Well, after tasting Cappy's Mexican food including Chili, and most of the time without the carne, (meat) I was hooked for life! My Mother and Father got so they liked it too and in fact, Cappy started doing most of the cooking on weekends when we had company!I don't know how he made it taste so special but everyone who has ever tasted his tacos, Cnili Colorado, green chili, tamales, and other Mexican dishes, and the rice and beans that went with them swear that he had a "secret" ingredient that he put in them when no one was looking!!! I think the ingredient was love of Mexican food and his love of cooking!!! I have tried all my life since his death to make things taste like he did but....! When a couple of my kids were married, we put on a feast of home-made tamales for them for their rehearsal dinner and at their request!!! I learned how to make tamales and it was a job doing them from scratch but we bought all our ingredients from a Mexican store, even the "masa" that was the cornmeal filling! Of course, Cappy "doctored" it up so it was pliable, etc. He made a wonderful dish with chicken. He boiled up the chicken and then made the sauce which included, chocolate, cloves, etc. I could positively eat that all night!!! The Mexican name escapes me at the moment! (One of those senior moments!)He had a ball doing the cooking. He was a wonder at the backyard Barbeque too. His barbecued chicken was famous too. As you can see, I was pretty spoiled with him doing so much of the cooking, even though I was told by more than one in the family that I was a "Great" cook! My potato salad always went over big although I never ate a bite of it, but Cappy tested it out and could et tons of it!!! So all my kids grew up loving Mexican food except Steve and he told me one day after he was married, "I wish I had tried Dad's cooking! Everybody tells me I don't know what I missed!" Yes, Steve, you would have loved it as much as the rest of the family!!! Goodnight!

Family...

Family, so important, and so needed! This week I had a lot of time to think about my family, especially after the spectacular 90th birthday party that they, my family, gave me!!! And since I already told you about my family growing up and my Mother and Father, (who by the way died on the Feast of St. Joseph in 1970!) So I thought I would tell you about my husband and the father of my 5 biological children who came into my life with two children, Lester Bert III,twelve years old and Florence Rose 7 years old. Her Mother died in giving birth to her and so her Grandmother Farnsworth raised her as her own child! Cappy and I took Lester Bert to live with us until he was about 17 when he went into the Air Force. Cappy, whose real name was Afton Leroy Farnsworth, (he used to say he only kew two girls and a river that were named Afton!)was a very gentle man. Oh he could cuss with the best of them but it was almost a part of his speech!! He didn't mean a thing about it and in fact. I don't think he even realized that he was swearing, or "cussing"! He got along with everybody and everybody liked him. He was bald when I met him and he told me (and his Mother told me) that he had started going bald very young! He had been a "sickly" youngster and so had stomache ulcers and was kind of held back from doing chores like his older brother had to do. Rake up leaves, chop wood and bring it into the house, etc. Hence the name "Cappy" as most people knew him. He got the name when he was a small child and his Mother had asked him to bring in some wood. There was a lot of little Mexican kids around the sawmill in Mexico where they lived at the time and so one of the Mexican workers at the mill saw Cappy line up the kids and actually had them bringing in the wood! The Mexican man laughed and told Cappy's father that Cappy was a real "El Capitan", Captain, and the name stuck!!! I think I knew his real name when he put it on our Marriage license! He loved every one of his kids so much! Lester Bert was at first a problem, because I had taken "his" place in his father's life!!! No amount of trying to show him that I really cared about him worked, but then in later years we became friends. when he began to have children and he had a couple of stepchildren!! Florence Rose was like a stranger to her Father because he was off working someplace and even if Lester B. could be with him, she couldn't and so that posed a problem. I tried one time to have her come and live with us and all she did was cry all night and day for her "mamma" I told Cappy, it just wasn't fair to her to take her away from what she considered home. She, also in later years, has become close. She was at my party with a couple of her children and grandchildren! Good to see her. She has been having a lot of medical problems. After four years of marriage, Cappy and I started to have our biological children. Robert Earl, Richard Allen, William Leroy, Stephen Gerard and Thomas Clarence. Or, Bob, Dick, Bill, Steve, and Tom. I had one girl, a nine mo. stillborn girl, Dorothy Anne whe was born 11 mos. after Steve. Cappy was a good Father, patient and hard-working but if he got riled, (which was once in a blue moon!) the boys knew it!! I was always, in his eyes, his bride, and he treated me such! Flowers, or candy, or jewelry, etc. I can't remember him ever leaving me or coming home again that he he didn't take me in his arms and give me a "special" kiss and a hug!!Every baby was greeted with a bouquet of American Beauty Roses! I lost him to Emphesemia and other complications in July of 1970 after 29 yesrs of marriage. There never was and never will be anyone else for me!!!!God Bless you Honey!!!

Weather....

This is about the third week of really, not all that great, weather! It could be worse! We really need a lot of water here in the Valley and so far we haven't had too much! I'm not complaining God!!!!! And in thinking over my life, I have been in pretty worse "stuff" When growing up, up in Washington State near Pullman, we really had a combination of weather. The Springs were beautiful and all the wild flowers started blooming and the birds were singing, the creeks were gurgling, and it was as perfect as it could be here on earth! Then the hot summers came, nothing to have over 100 degrees for weeks at a time and it was so sultry because of the Snake River not that far from us!!! And as I've said before, no electricity for fans or for refrigerators, etc. But despite that we, as children, thought nothing of walking the two miles to the store for an ice cream cone! (We had eaten it before we left the store and then had to walk the two miles back in the heat!) Then we had our August "dog-days", (as we called them!) the evenings started to cool down but the days were hotter than in July it seemed! Then just about when you got cooled off in the fall, winter came and yes, we had a lot of snow!!!It was about the same in Idaho but the snow was a little worse because we were more North! Snow time in Couer d' Alene was really good except for the walk to school when you couldn't even see the cars on the other side of the snowbank where snow-plows had really piled it up but there, we also had beautiful Springs and Falls and the Summers were fantastic with the Lake and all! When we moved to California, we had thought we were coming to "Sunny California" where the sun shone Summer and Winter. Boy, did we ever get a surprise the first Fall we were here and it didn't get any better! I told you about the snow piling up so high on our wedding night that we couldn't even get to the cabin we had rented! So I guess in every life "a little rain must fall"! We have, here in California, run the "gamut" so to speak, in the different areas we have lived in! From really bad heat, to fog, (not my favorite weather!) to wind, to snow and it seems like it anyway, never-ending rain!!!!! The worst part about all this rain is that when it starts to warm up we may have to suffer FOG again before the winds blow and the drying heat of Summer!!! Have a good one!!

An old memory...

It was too late last night to write about this one but I remembered about it today and so will let you in on this! When we first moved to Los Banos because we had to get where it was drier than Oakland because of Dick's Ashma, we lived in a housekeeping room in a Motel because Bob was in school and had to walk there. When we had taken about all of those cramped quarters we could, (remember, we had three children by then!) Bob's Godmother and Godfather were living out on a farm in the area and had a "worker's house" on this big farm. So she asked the farmer if we could rent one of the other houses for awhile and Bob could catch the schoolbus from out there. He agreed and so we moved out to this farm. In the orchard of this farm there were a bunch of white "boxes" and since boys will be boys, Dick and Bill decided to check them out! Katie, (Bob's Godmother) and I were sitting in my living room there and we heard the boys start to hollar and scream and we opened the door and they ran in with a swarm of bees right after them! Katie said, "Put their heads in the sink and put cold water on them while I try and chase the bees out of the house!" She got a dishtowel and started to chase the bees back out the open door and when we figured they were gone, took the boys out of the water and they were covered with the stingers of the bees! I took one and she the other and with tweezers had to pull them all out of their heads with them screaming all the time!!! They did not have any dire effects of all the bee stings but were pretty well covered with lumps for days! They had overturned a beehive that the farmer had for the bees to pollinate his crops!!!! A lesson well learned!

Another memory about Mexico..

I was talking to son, Bob, the other day and he said, "How come you never told about the bus trip" So here goes. I wasn't in Mexico very long when I found out I was pregnant with Dick!!!! So at the time I was living in Chuatemoc and since one of Cappy's brothers had our car we decided to take a bus to Chihuahua where my Dr. lived. We went to the bus depot and paid for our fare and then the Mexicans, Indians, etc. started piling on the bus! There were lots of children, men and women so we had to take a seat in the "back of the bus"! On the way to our destination we stopped several times either to take on more passengers or let some of them off the bus. Well, we weren't too far out of town when we stopped to take on an older man and his wife? friend? And they had to stand in the aisle near the back of the bus. This old guy was carrying a rooster and he kept petting it, I guess so it didn't fly around! The two of them, the man and woman got into a fight! They weren't throwing things but one could sure tell that they were fighting! More people got off and so he sat down in a seat right in front of us! That bus was the stinkiest, dirtiest bus that I have ever been on in my life!!! I'll never forget the smell of sweat, etc. to say nothing of pets! Finally this couple pulled the cord on the bus and it stopped and let them off! Everyone was laughing because they were going up this "trail" and still fighting. He was walking ahead, with his pet rooster and she was lagging along behind, etc. Thank Heaven, the return trip was much calmer. Maybe by that time, most of the people were at home having their dinner!! This was truly an "experience"!!!

Just a few...

I wrote what I thought was the masterpiece of all time the other night and before I could Post it, I accidently hit the wrong button and soooo! Bye, bye blog! And too late at night to write another one so I'll try and do better now! I was doing a puzzle in my book the other day and one of the cryptograms just hit me between the eyes! It said, "Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. We make discoveries about ourselves." And I thought how true!!! Looking at my brothers at my "Big Party", I remembered so much of our life in the past! Living on the farm, life in the city, etc. From birth to the present! Here were my family, biological and my stepdaughter who plays a big part in my life and is really a daughter! My stepson could not make the party because of medical reasons but I raised him too! He and his wife were missed! So much of my married life evolved around him and his wife and family! I want him to know that! Then the boys and Flo and their children who have such a part in "my" future! One doesn't get to a Great-grandmother on her own. And to think that I have some great-grandchildren that are old enough to get married and then it will be the Great-Greats!! Hope I hold up to see that!!!! How amazing! And all from Cappy and my marriage!!! I can see him now, (in my dreams!) having just as much fun with the Great-Greats as he had with his children! He was a great father! Spoiled the kids rotten but enjoyed every minute of it!! When the in-laws started showing up he really made them "his" kids too! We were Mom and Pop to so many kids! Or at least that's what their freinds called us and still call me Mom today when I see them and yes, I do see them every once in awhile because the family keeps in touch with their friends!!! So I hope all of you can have a "Family Magic Mirror" someday!! Love you all.

WHEW!!!

Well the big day is over and everyone made it home safely! Dick and Jane, and John and Rosemary were the last to leave yesterday morning and Janie called last night and said that they were just leaving Dallas for home!!! She told me that Rosemary and John had barely made their connection in Houston because the plane was a little late leaving Sacramento but that she and Dick had a little while before their plane left Houston for Dallas!!! She said she considered it a success and I told her that I was more than satisfied with the number of people that showed up despite the weather! I'm still trying to open things and get cards and gifts straightened out!!!Somehow or another with the cards, some of them fell off the gifts, etc., so the Thank You's will just say "thank you so much for coming. I really appreciated it and hope that you enjoyed the party as much as I did!" I know what some of the things were and who they came from but one or two? I am completely at a loss!!!My legs are starting to feel a little better and that could also be because of the weather clearing up a bit! Got another gift yesterday. My brother Jerry and wife sent me a beautiful bouquet! Heard from Bob, of course and he said that Marilyn and he thought it worked out very nice!!!I heard from my brother Bob's youngest son, Joe, and he said that he had been given the weekend off and he was going to come and the Forestry Dept. called him and asked him to plow some roads! So he said, that changed everything!!! He lives up in Washington about 30 miles from the Canadian border in the Cascades! But he said that in a few weeks he was going to come by and see me because he was going to take a trip down to see his Dad and Sarah, etc. and of course would stop by here too, to see his brother Rob who lives in town! I just finished a piece of pie that Coco's gave me for "free" because of my birthday! We had gone over there to eat dinner on Sunday night!!!Seems like all we did is get in and out of cars ever since last Thursday! Since I don't do too much cooking anymore and don't keep "that" kind of food on hand anymore, it was eat out or else!!!! Truly though, now I'm beginning to let it sink in that I am alone again and it may be some time before I see some of my family again! Of course Steve lives in Stockton and this coming weekend Alicia's baby Lily is being Baptised and if I am at all able to attend that I will!!! My youngest Great-Grandchild of twelve Great-Grandchildren!!! I'm getting old, people!!! And tonight I feel like I just had my 100th birthday!!! Good night and God Bless you all!!!More on the party in a few days!

My PARTY!!!

I sit here doing nothing. I haven't eaten since morning and it is now 7:00 but I got a call from the Motel next door to me and here is where my Neice, Amy, is staying! She said she arrived yesterday but was staying in her brother's room but there was so much confusion going on that she decided that she was going to get herself a room tonight!!! Others are coming tomorrow! Am I ready for them???? Yes and no! I haven't done one thing to clean up my house today and I thought that I would hurry up and do that early in the morning, along with trying to get my prayers in!! I'm afraid that I am going to have such a hard time with my prayer schedule in the next few days but It is so important to me to do my prayers!!!I will more or less depend on saying a lot of Rosaries, etc. because I can say them a little at a time!!!I've got to get in there and eat also or I won't be here to greet the guests!!! I'm not all that hungry either! It was raining when I was talking to Amy, or at least that is what she was telling me! She is such a character!!! I love her so much!!!! I got a card from my stepson and his wife yesterday with a gift certificate in it for $90.00! They can't make it because of medical problems but they told me this was in honor of my being 90 years old! Then said, "excuse me! 90 years young!" but then they haven't seen me lately! And people keep saying how amazing it is that I am 90 years old!!! I'm soon going to start believing them!!! Heard from a couple of people that had to back out in the last few days but I hate to say it but I wonder if I'll even notice it? I just hope I don't collapse after its all over!!! I'll probably sleep for a week! I'm just rattling on so I guess I better get to eating something! Good blog Steve, I'm so proud of you! Wish I could be as deep as you are with your Faith!!!

Me and walking!

When I was a kid I used to love to walk and hike, etc. Of course we had no cars like the young people of today! And the parents had one car and in the case of living on the farm that was a truck!!! But I loved it! Especially in the Spring of the year when all the hills were green and covered with wild flowers!! When we lived on the farm, as I have said before, we lived in this valley between two pretty high hills and the hills were steep!!! On weekends, I would take any of my siblings that wanted to go with me nd start out at the bottom of the hill by the creek and then walk the trails that the cows had made which was in a parallel pattern back and forth from one Spring which had water coming down to the creek in the valley to another. It made for quite a long walk but also one could keep one's balance. We would walk up a couple of these parallel trails and then stop for a nice cool drink of water out of the spring (or creek) and then wind out way up farther to the top of the hill! It was so beautiful up there where you could see "forever" it seemed! The Snake River, the canyon road winding it's way along the creeks and farms! When we had rested awhile at the top, then began the slow walk down the trail to the bottom and then home!! When we moved into Idaho, (Couer d' Alene) we walked the mile and a half or so to school, Fall, Winter, and Spring!! Then in the summer I used to take probably the same siblings with me and walk to Coeur d' Alene Lake. Swim awhile, walk around the Park that edged it and then walk home! Sometimes so sun-burned that you could hardly walk! I think that is one of the things, now that I'm old and it started when I began to get older that I miss! When I was married and we lived in Reseda, and Cappy was alive, we found that by going over to a "wash" in the Tujunga Canyon, we could walk up that dry creek bed, and then up into the hills! We did that a lot when the kids were smaller. Sometimes the older boys went with us but usually it was just the three younger boys. We found the best watercress patch up there by a spring and we would bring a big sack and gather the watercress. I managed to take some of it down to my Mother and Father who lived at the time in Torrance, California, who really enjoyed it since we lived on the farm and had watercress growing by the springs! But time and age takes it all out of you as you get older and the old legs just don't want to make it like they did!!! Maybe I just got lazy about walking but oh, how I wish I had the legs and the same places to hike around in!!!

More thoughts about gardening!!!

You know when I wrote yesterday, I forgot one of the most important things about gardening in the "old days"! Did we run down to the closest garden shop or to the closest hardware, etc. and get some kind of fancy, expensive fertilizer? No! Our cows were in the barns and in the barnyards, doing their thing which was furnishing us with plenty of good old manure!!Nothing like it to make theings grow! So it smelled bad for awhile but it didn't poison you if you ate the vegetables without thoroughly washing them!! Bugs? I don't remember too many tomato bugs or little or big things that ate up the leaves and sometimes the fruit and veggies! What happened here? We had plenty of bees, yellowjackets, wasps, etc. but in a way they were helpful for the pollenization of the fruits and veggies. We had worms, the kind that you could catch plenty of nice trout with in the creeks or rivers but what they did was keep the soil healthy!!!I remember about 10 years ago when my son Tom moved in with me, he loved to garden and keep the lawns nice, etc. This grass in front of my place lacks a lot of things, things that will make it green and healthy! Tom , however, bought a gadget that he would shove down in the grass to open up the root mass and then he bought bags of steer manure and spread it over all the lawns here in the apartment complex! The neighbors, a few of them complained but the grass started looking pretty thick and green!!!Since he passed away and the managers take care of it, it is looking terrible again!!! The gardener, poor old guy, sprinkles a few bags of some kind of "grass feed" on them and they don't do anything!!! This term "organic" really is the way to go!!! But the merchants have found a way to package "steer manure" to make a LOT of money and most people don't want to bother with it!! The old fashioned way of doing things was best for all concerned so what happened?????

Veggies and all...

I was reading the ads for the local stores the other day and got to thinking about what really good fruits and vegetables we had when living on the farm! Mother was quite a gardener and had a good "Green thumb"! Seemed like anything she planted grew!! We, I say we, because when we got old enough, we did help plant our big vegetable gardens! Dad, of course plowed up the field and all and then we helped to plant the garden. We planted radishes and green onions which were the first "spring" vegetables. Dad planted three kinds of radishes. There were the little round red roly-poly ones, some red ones that were a little bit oval and white radishes. I think these were my favorite kind. Each kind seemed to have a taste all their own! Then the rest of the vegetables we planted were corn, peas, beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, tomatoes, (two or three different kinds, all with their individual flavors! But all red tomatoes!) , lettuce, (leaf lettuce) cabbage, cucumbers, big old Hubbard squashes, (no Zucchinis. Never heard of them or summer squash till we moved to California!) watermelons, cantaloupes,string beans,and I could go on and on!!!! It was so nice to just go out into the garden and pick or pull up what you wanted to fix for dinner or supper! To say nothing of the fruit that we had in our orchard. Cherries, apricots, peaches, and pears. If we wanted apples we had to buy them!!! But the town of Wenatchee in Central Washington grew all that one could want and some of my Aunts and Uncles used to go to Wenatchee after their/our crops were done and work in the apple orchards and would make sure we all had plenty of apples in our cellars!!! Mother told me when I was a small one, before we moved to Everett, etc. that she could find me in the garden in the Spring eating radishes and green onions, dirt and all!! Now I can't even eat things like onions, radishes, lettuce, and a few other things that I so dearly love!!! When the watermelons got ripe we would "plug" them, (make a small inch cube right down into the watermelon while it was still on the vine and then taste it to see if it was ripe enough!!!) One year Dad let us put up a "fruit stand" in front of the barn. There was a spring up in the canyon that brought down ice-cold water to the barn, not enough I guess for the house water but Dad put a big tub under a faucet just inside the gate of the barnyard and we would drop those watermelons in that and then when the visitors who came from town to get their fruit for canning (peaches, etc.) we were right there, usually with a watermelon cut open and on a plate and would ask the people if they would like to taste the melon and see how good they were!!!!What money we made and we did pretty good for the times, we got to keep but by the time we divided it three or four ways, we didn't get rich. But did we care? Noooo! We were in the shade of the barn and had that ice cold water out of the faucet over the big tub and were were very happy!!! The people got a big kick out of us and I'm sure we got more money than what we were asking for our fruit!! I can almost taste those watermelons! What happened? Now the farmers or whoever, are so anxious to make that "Big" money that everything is picked green and ripened in a warehouse of some sort. Nothing tastes as good as in the old days!!! The farmers in California, my Dad used to say, water everything so much that there is no flavor in the farm produce!!! Father really DID know best!!!!

Sad, sad news....

I got an E-Mail from Janie today regarding my birthday and she asked me who the person was that had sent a regret that they couldn't come. I read the note that she, Linda Entel had written the reason that her Mother couldn't come was because she had dementia very bad!!! Her Mother is my cousin June Crithfield, who is not only my older cousin, (we always joked about that! She was born in Dec. 1918 and I was born in Feb. 1919!) It was with regrets that Linda had written and said that she could not bring her Mother because she, Linda, had been undergoing all kinds of back trouble for three or four years! June and her sisters, Nadine and Betty, were the daughters of my Uncle Lance and Aunt Gladys. Uncle Lance and my Father were always close and so we, June and I, had the chance to spend most of our childhood years together! Mother and Aunt Gladys were really good friends too! Nadine died several years ago of cancer and Betty, after many years of being practically bed-ridden, developed Alzhiemers Disease and was put into a home in Clarkston near June. June was the one who practically took care of Betty till she passed away! Betty had two sons and they lived in Pullman and had families and so June was the ONE left to care for Betty. She visited her almost every day at the Care Center and literally watched her pass away. June had a great feeling about family history and went on several trips to find out all she could about the geneology of the family! This helped immensely to my Brother Joe's wife Jean, who has taken time ( and I do mean years!) to try and come up with the geneology of the Rabideau, (my Mother) and Batty, (my Father) families. She came down the other day with a huge album of birth certificats, Baptismal certificates, etc., etc., about the families. (Anyone wanting to find out about the Farnsworth, Rabideau, Batty family is welcome to come and have copies made of the family going back to the Civil War and beyond!!!) Getting back to June, I feel so sad that we are getting to "that" age when things are no longer remembered! My Mother passed away in her 99th year and Dad was 83 when he passed away! Mother was very mentally alert and knowing even at 99 but Dad was put into a Hospital and had dementia at 83! He did not last very long, thank God, in the Hospital!!!! I HOPE that I take after my Mother mentally and I think I do! I try to keep busy, that is, I try to keep my mind busy with things that keep me thinking that I'm younger than I am! June was a gardener too, and loved the outdoors! I don't have a "green thumb" and gardening is something that I feel I "have" to do if I want to have a few flowers around!!!! I'll pray for you June, and hope that you continue to be the happy person you always were! I love you!!!

It's that time of year again!

Since I am on housing, every year I go through this same thing of having to re-apply! It seems like it takes me forever to fill out a few forms but then when I am again accepted, it's worth it!!! It's rather a gloomy time of year too! Cold, foggy mornings, sunny afternoons, but still cold! With all that is going on in the world, I should be complaining? I do have a roof over my head,(such as it is ) and I have food for my stomach and a heater that works pretty good and an air conditioner in the summer! Got me to thinking how it was when we lived on the farm when I was a kid! We had no air conditioning and I have seen it get up to 109 degrees and stay that way for days! Of course there was the good old creek that we could wade in and if Mother didn't let us go there, ( the rattlesnakes liked the creek too when it got hot!) we turned on the sprinkler in the yard and ran through that! Trouble with that place, Wawawai, was that it didn't get too cool at night either! Mother used to put wet dish towel in the windows and if there was a breeze, it would blow through that and cool off the kitchen somewhat while she was canning fruits and vegetables. The kitchen stove was a wood burning one and then when she canned the fruit, she would put them in a big pot so that the water covered the jars and then when the water boiled it caused a vacuum in the jars and thus sealed the jars! It was like an oven in the house and she used to be in there at least 8 hours a day, if not longer, canning, cooking, heating water for baths, (no hot water heaters)and for water to wash the dishes in, (and rinse them)! It was not an 8 hour day she worked, more like 15 or 20! How did she do it? We, or should I say, she never even thought about it! It was something everybody who had a family did!!! Now, at 90 years old, I'm wondering how she did all she did! She had 10 children, (I'm the oldest) and kept them and the house always spotless! (Or as spotless as one could with six boys and four girls at the age we were when we lived on the farm!) And I'm complaining about a few things like the weather, etc. I remember Mother saying time and again, "Ice and snow, Bless the Lord, cold and chill, Bless the Lord!" She got those sayings from the Psalms out of the Liturgy of the Day, which I say every day but how much thought am I putting into it? God gives us things to try our patience, and how do we repay Him? By griping over the "little things"! If I could just trust God and not try to work things out by myself!!!! Things are rough all over now and it seems like it will get worse before it gets better, but hey, looking back, I've been there, done that, and I'm here yet at 90!!!So chin up world!!!

Time and tide....

I wasn't going to blog for awhile but after reading my son's blog I had to write and tell him that that was one of the first things I noticed about the local news media. Hey, you had it made with even a hint of a notice, (even if it was from the wrong side of the fence!!) There was nothing at all in the Lodi paper. Tomorrow a group of brave souls, (yes, you wouldn't get me near the place!) are having a march in San Francisco!!! One of my friends has been getting together a group from here to go down to S.F. Lydia is an ardent soul with a heart to match, and she is really a worker for the right causes! I saw somebody on T.V. yesterday, yes, EWTN, carrying a sign that said, (What if your Mamma decided to abort you, Mr. President? Would you be standing in the White House making all kinds of laws that are so against human life? And what about your Grandma that died recently, did she abort her baby or did she allow the baby inside her to grow and eventually bring you forth into this world! Just think of all the really GREAT men and women who have good families and bring children into this world who turn out to be maybe even greater than they? Murder is murder, no matter at what age life is taken illegaly and by what means! People seem to forget that the Great God who created us is doing a good job of it but when men and women decide they know better than Him, as a for instance Adam and Eve. God has given us a second chance here. Hey, let's show Him we appreciate it!!Are you really so selfish Mr. President, that you wouldn't like to have Grandchildren and Great-grandchildren to carry on your name! I think all you are thinking about is today and how much money YOU can make and spend and how many "toys" you can accumulate while the taxpayer suffers!!! I really don't think you have a "clue" as to what it is to run a country! But you WILL find out when all your "friends?" in Congress start treating you like the dirt you were made from! God, Please God, help us all! And I ask this sincerely.

Just a few....

Just a few memories that were brought to mind when I heard that my eighth grade teacher's daughter was coming to my 90th birthday party next month! Thelma Earl and her folks came into our lives when I was in the sixth or seventh grade! Mr. Earl was a retired barber and of course Mrs. Earl came as a teacher to the Wawawai school! What a relief after the first couple of teachers we had! Mrs. Fuque was not bad but Mrs. Shawn did nothing but assign the lessons and then sit at her desk eating chocolates or sleeping from what I remember. I do remember that some of the kids, (not me, I was afraid of heights!) crawled out of the window and played around before she realized what was going on! Then Mrs. Earl came! There was no place for them to live since there was the three of them so the schoolboard, where Grandma Batty was the head of that, etc. decided to fix up the basement of the school as living quarters for the Earls!!! If I remember, (Thelma might have other ideas!) it turned out to be quite comfortable. Mr. Earl, having been a barber, cut all the men's hair in the area of the school! That was not all he did! It got very cold there in the wintertime and Mr. Earl would make big pots of soup and bring it upstairs for the students to eat with their sandwiches!!! And if it was not that kind of weather he would help us warm up our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the big pot-bellied stove in the classroom. He did all the janitor work, etc. Mrs. Earl gave piano lessons to all who wanted them! They cost us nothing! My folks bought a second-hand piano and so my sister Genevieve and I took piano lessons! Teresa,our younger sister benefitted from them by learning to play by ear at home after we would practice and go to school!!! So when she and our cousin June's sister Betty went to school, they both took the lessons! Mrs. Earl was a very diligent teacher and we really were taught spelling, (she would have spelling bees!) reading writing and arithmatic! Thelma has kept in touch, along with her Mother and her Father till their deaths, all these years. She called me last summer and told me that her best childhood remembrances of school and growing up were the years that her folks spent in Wawawai and the friendships that they made with the Clarence Batty family! We were the closest farm to the school and so I remember many evenings when the Earl's would walk up the road and spend the evening! Mr. Earl played the violin and so did my father so it was a very musical , what else can I say to describe it, happy memorable time of my life too! God Bless you Mr. and Mrs. Earl, (both gone now!) and Thelma too. I'll be very happy to see you again!!!

Thinking...

I am going home this weekend, after which has been a really enjoyable three weeks or so, visiting with family and friends. Weather has not been all that great but after all this is winter! Went to Bible Study at Cathy and Pat Sullivan's (my niece and husband) last night. There I met a woman who has relatives in Mokelume Hill where I lived at one time! What a small world and it keeps getting smaller! I recognize the woman's last name and am pretty sure my sister Barbara would have known the family since she lived in the area almost all her life! ( And incidently why I moved there at the time I did!) I am now looking forward to my 90th birthday in February! My children are giving me a birthday party up in Lodi where I now live and have lived for over 35 years and have many relatives and friends! One son, Steve, (my youngest living son) lives in Stockton which is only about 14 miles from where I live. The others are scattered from Arizona to Texas to Ohio to Georgia to California! (One reason that the above location was decided on for my party!) I can hardly wait!!! Time flies by so fast! I was at my son Bill and wife,Wendy's house for lunch on Sunday. I see them all when I come down here as I have for the past several years but their "children" now have children and my oldest Grandaughter"s oldest child, my great-grandaughter is almost ready for High School! She will be going to Bishop Alimany High School where her father went, and where three of my boys and two of my daughter-in-laws graduated from!! And speaking of small worlds, our present Bishop of the Stockton Diocese taught school in Alemany but after my boys and their wives graduated but about the same time my Grandson-in-law went to school there!! Ho-hum! Makes me tired just thinking about it! So I probably won"t write any more till after I'm home on Saturday and see, hopefully, see my newest Great-Grandaughter, Liliana Noelle!!

What a holiday!

Despite the weather coming down here to Simi Valley, We, or at least I, had a really wonderful Christmas and I'm not just talking about what I got or what we ate but the wonderful fellowship, friendship, etc. It was truly a wonderful experience! The weather, although cold, was clear and Wintery. The kind of weather that makes one want to stay inside with friends and family and share Memories! We Bob, Marilyn, Mark, Bev. and Maddie went to Mass on Christmas morning at 10:30 A.M. Mark and family got here fairly late from Arizona on Christmas Eve. Everyone was ready then to open their gifts because going to Mass at the time we did and then the dinner that had to be prepared, made opening gifts in the morning sort of bad! I had not seen Mark, Bev. and Maddie since last Christmas and I was not really feeling too hot last year!! The rest of Marilyn's family arrived later in the afternoon for dinner. That included her two cousins, John and his new wife and boys, and Ann and her husband Ken who were the first to arrive. Soon Linda, Marilyn's sister her husband Ted and their daughter Tracy arrived. We had a wonderful turkey and ham dinner with all the trimmings and of coursse the usual pies, etc. Then another exchange of gifts! Mainly then, after we all tried to get Marilyn to rest after her grueling week or two with a bad cold, and fixing up the house so beautifully and really doing more than her share of the cooking,. So all the other women were in the kitchen doing the cleaning up. (I was doing the heavy looking on!) I decided that about 10:30 I was going to go to bed. Ann and Ken, Michele,John and the boys left just before I decided to retire. I don't know what time Linda, Ted, and Tracy left because I was tucked away into dreamland after having thanked God and His Holy Mother that I was well enough this year to enjoy the day. Last year for Christmas Eve I went to my Grandaughter Angela's house because two of my Great-Grandchildren were singing in the Children's Mass! It was beautiful and the fact that I used to belong to that Parish made it really something special. We came back to Angela and Mike's for a Prime Rib dinner that Angela had cooking while we were at Mass. When we came out of Mass the wind had started blowing something terrific and all the lights went out in quite a large area of Northridge, where Angela and Mike live! Thia started a hunt for candles, kerosene lamps or anything for light! After dinner, by candlelight, Angela says "Well we had better open our gifts!" Of course all the lights were out on the Christmas tree and Mike went out and got a big lantern that he used in their camper and put it on the mantle!!! They didn't realize that I felt like I was a child again, remember, we had no electricity at all on the farm where I grew up! It was fun though, and the gift giving went beautifully! Bill and Wendy, Angela's folks took me home and when we started out we had no lights but the repair trucks were everywhere and I understand that a lot of the areas in that part of the San Fernando Valley were without lights most of the night!!!! But that was fun too but after Christmas I got a flu bug that was going around along with son Bob and wife and didn't get back to good old Lodi till the week before Easter!!! I hope my health holds up better this year because I want to be getting home in a week or so!!!! Goodnight and God Bless!!!!

No crib for His bed.....

Well Christmas has come and gone and so I was in my room saying my Rosary and came to the Nativity Mystery. Then got to thinking here the God of Gods, Lord of Lords was born in a cave because there was no room for Mary and Joseph at the Inn! And then I was thinking how I never really had a "grand" house but I never had to live in a cave, yet my Lord came to earth as an infant in a cave, or barn where animals were kept! When I had my first "knowledge" of a house was in Wawawai, Washington and I must have been two or three. This house, even though it was a farmhouse, had ten rooms. It was a two story building and was really, it seemed to me to be spread out! On the ground floor were two bedrooms. a large living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. The bathroom was outside in a small buiding with a crescent moon on the door! The top story had three big bedrooms which were off a hall and then over the dining room and kitchen was quite a large room that was used for storage of things like our winter supply of flour, sugar, dried beans, rice, etc. There was no plumbing, or electricity, and the stoves for cooking and heating were wood-burning. An Aunt and Uncle lived there too. They had one boy at the time and my Father and Uncle had purchased the house together. My Uncle passed away and somehow or another Dad lost his "half" of the house. I then remember living in Everett. Washington in a two story but smaller house. My Mother's Father and Mother lived with us and a cousin of mine who was older and working at the time shared one bedroom with a co-worker and they paid rent for the room. We had couch that folded down and made a bed in the dining for some of us. Of course there we did have electricity and indoor plumbing! One night a young 17 year old boy in our area was setting fires and everyone was evacuated at that time for several hours. Now whether that was the reason or not we moved out into the country again to Beverly Park, Washington. Again we were pretty well crowded in a small house and again my Grandparents were us! By this time there were five children in the family and my brother Gerald was born there! We heard from Aunt in Wawawai that Dad could have the big house and she was deeply in debt and could not pay the bank payments on the house! We returned and this was really at the start of the Depression. Mom and Dad had one more child while living there, and then the bank took over the house! Another Aunt of mine had a small house adjourning this property and so she let us move into that! It had one bedroom, a living room, and of course the usual outdoor toilet! My Father built a large room at the back of the house and most of us children slept there, the boys on one side of the room a curtain down the middle and since there was three of us girls and four boys, the boys got the bigger half! I was in the eighth grade while we still lived there and Barbara, the last of the girls was born while we lived there. I went away to Spokane and boarded my first year of High School and then my Aunt had to get someone in her house to pay rent or lose it! So by this time my Maternal Grandmother had died and my Grandfather was living in the family "homestead" with my Aunt Josie. They told us to come to Couer d' Alene, Idaho and move in with them. This was O.K. with me because there was a Catholic High school there and a Catholic Grammer school which delighted Mother and Dad! This house was another small place. Two bedrooms, living room, dining room and kitchen! So Dad built a bedroom on the front porch for he and Mother andwalled it off from the dining room. Then he built a murphy bed in the living room, for us older two girls. My Aunt Jo took one of the children with her in her bed and my Grandfather had one of the boys with him in his bed. Now this still had a few children to have beds, so with a small bed in their (porch) room they took the youngest and then in the back yard we had a big woodshed and Dad finished off a nice room for the bigger boys. They had a kerosene heater for heat and he put a window in the room for light and also that could be opened for air in the summer. They had electricity out there for light, etc. And actually, if I remember right, it looked quite comfy!!!! We lived there until after Genevieve and I graduated from High School and Mother had two more boys. Then Dad got a job in California! It was there that we lived in the tent houses and then a rough lumber house from which I was married. I have told you about these places before! Some of these places were palaces compared to some of the places I lived after I was married!!! More later! Even so, all of these places were roofs over our heads and we were warm and well-fed! AND NOT A STABLE WITH THE WARM BREATH OF ANIMALS FOR HEAT!!!!