My grandparents were my favorite down-home folks.
Down-home folks are amazing.
They don't spend hours complaining about the government or high prices. Oh, they may get a little feisty sometimes, but never bitter. Mostly they are content and talk about the good things in life.
They are thankful for the few possessions they do have and barely notice that others have much more. If you give them a small gift, they go on and on about how marvelous both you and the gift are.
Down-home folks prefer going to cozy family-owned diners, ones with bottomless cups of coffee. Given a choice between an expensive, fancy-named restaurant and a picnic, they'd choose the picnic.
For entertainment, they like to gather in homes or backyards and sings songs like You Are My Sunshine until the moon stands overhead.
Down-home folks use appliances and linens until they are worn-out. They would consider it a great waste to dispose of something which could be repaired, instead.
They usually have a dog or two. Ones they feed scraps to beneath the kitchen table. They usually plant a garden and grow a few flowers in coffee cans.
Down-home folks go to country auctions mostly to visit with old friends. While waiting in long lines at old-fashioned fairs and amusement parks, they never complain. Instead, they turn around and talk with strangers who walk away as new friends. And down-home folks go to church nearly every Sunday.
They have screen doors that creeeeeak and a TV with an old rabbit-ear antenna.
I like to imagine rows and rows of front porches in Heaven filled with rocking chairs and happy down-home folks continuing the great times they had here in this world.
I love down-home folks. To me, they are the salt of the Earth.
I wish I knew more of them.
Quote of the Day
'I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.' - Bill Cosby
Few things are more pathetic than having generations of your family photos end up in the trash.
Around eight years ago, Tom brought home a couple boxes from the curb. In one, there was an old flour sifter decorated with painted strawberries. There was also a rolling pin and a few other kitchen things.
In the other box were photo albums and loose photos dating from the 1800's~~a whole family history which had been destined for the trash for reasons I can't fathom. The pictures centered around the three sisters, Ella, Esther and Eunice in the above photo. From what I could piece together, Esther outlived her sisters and these photos last belonged to her.
There is a picture of the girls' mother's family~~a sepia-toned affair of many daughters gathered around their parents in 1800's studio style, complete with a little dog and belongings scattered around the thick carpet. Then there are later pictures of the girls' parents and baby pictures of the three daughters. Eunice was the oldest, born in 1892.
Eunice created two photo albums for Esther filled with black and white travel photos pasted upon black pages. It appears that Eunice and her husband took a trip across the United States before relocating in CA in a new home, a cute bungalow. Eunice sent many photos of her life to Esther back here in NY.
The box contained pictures of Esther's husband, son and daughter, too. But mostly, Esther's photos aren't labeled. In fact, most of the pictures outside of Eunice's albums are without penciled-in labels. I nearly drove myself mad for two evenings trying to piece together who-was-who and what-was-what. Yet it was a fun kind of madness to play detective and try to reconstruct a one-hundred-and-thirty-year-long family history.
(Note to myself and anyone else:label all your photos!)
Of course, the real insanity comes while wondering things like, "Did these three girls have happy lives? Did Eunice and Ella also live into their 90's like we're guessing Esther did according to when Tom found the photos? Whatever happened to Esther's son and daughter? Why didn't they rescue the family photos? Did Esther perhaps outlive both her children? Her nieces and nephews,also? Did an uncaring executor of the estate just dump the photos on the curb?"
It's odd, but eight years later, I'm still asking these same questions. And every once in awhile I drag out the box of photos on snowy, winter nights, only to ask myself these same questions again and again.
Well, whatever the reason, I'm glad Tom rescued these pictorial memories. In a way, it has kept the memory of Eunice, Ella and Esther alive a few years longer. And now even more people, like you, will remember them, too.
But my most comforting thought has been that God knows exactly who these people were, just like He knows exactly who I am~~and who you are. He remembers our history. His eyes are always upon us, come what may, and He will never forget us. Yes, that's a comforting thought, indeed.
Oh and by the way... I still use Esther's strawberry-painted flour sifter. It hangs on my kitchen wall to remind me of her.
Not our carport, just kinda sorta similar.
***
Well, the good news is that the contractor and his buddy got the roof put onto our new carport yesterday. These guys are amazing and have un-soured us toward the building profession in general (I'll spare you the gory details of past contractor horrors).
The other good news is that months ago I painted my kitchen yellow.
Now for the bad news--
Because of the new carport, my kitchen is now a perpetually dark, shadowy, yellow Victorian-like box. My two big windows now bring in only a secondhand essence of sunlight and I must leave on the little counter lamp constantly. The old-fashioned pull-chain light over the sink has been "mysteriously" broken for weeks. I say mysteriously, because nobody is confessing to pulling out the tiny chain which I found forlornly under a plate in the sink. We bought a little kit to insert a new chain, but well, these-things-take-time and all that good stuff. There's a light over the stove, but I dislike that one because it shows all the grease.
So I've been playing Pollyanna's Glad Game (being an expert at it) and here is what I can be glad about concerning my so-far-from-sunny-it's-not-even-funny kitchen:
I'm glad I even have a kitchen. And a house, period.
I'm glad that no longer will the sun shine off of our neighbors' fluorescent blue house and cast a ghastly Smurf-colored haze in the afternoons.
I'm glad I didn't paint our kitchen brown.
I'm glad, very glad that the carport will keep the snow off of our car this winter and I won't have as much snow to shovel in the driveway.
I'm glad God provided us with marvelous builders and the money to pay for this.
I'm glad the carport is beautiful (as far as carports go) and that it will increase the value of our house when we go to sell.
Well anyway, I'll play the Glad Game awhile longer and let you know what else I come up with.
******
Quote of the Day: Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies.
Charles E. Jefferson (1860 - 1937)
