You Need a Song in Your Heart At Night

Birthday Bash

WE always have fun when I get together with Mark and Jae. I love music especially Country Gospel. I think it is the same thing that some people call southern Gospel. Mark loves singing and playing the guitar. We did some of that at my birthday bash.
I wouldn 't want to be in a family that did not love Music. I have four brothers. Three of them are very good at playing Banjo, Guitar and Violin. The oldest
JR. also plays the Mandolin very adeptly.
When I was a still a teenager there was a Gentleman who ask me to sing at his farmer's meeting that gathered on a regular basis. He played the guitar Chet Atkins style , being young and ignorant I said no.
There have been many times since that I have wished a thousand times that I had taken him up on the offer. That opportunity never came my way again. Although my husband and I sang in many revival meetings since then I feel it was not the same thing.

Assignment for Rose

Thanks Jae for putting the picture of Mom and Pop on there for me. Who couldn't write a blog Huh? with a helper like that. That's Pop in his overalls. Nice picture taken by my cousin Libby Curtis when she came to visit from Kentucky. That would be my uncle Joe's daughter. As far as the picture on the hill top is concerned that is my cousin Leroy with our Grandpa Elijah Reeves. There is a picture with my story about The Little Errand Girl part 2 that has a picture of Mom and all my uncles. Uncle John was Leroy's father and my Uncle. That road crosses Blue River which I also wrote about. Back then it was just a country road now it is known as Road 300 in Henry County. When I get practiced up here I might edit that and put this information right on there who knows?? There was several nights that I stood by the window looking for a car to cross the bridge bringing my mother home from New Castle, when us little ones stayed home while the older folks went shopping for groceries on Sarurday night .
Actually I think some of the Women did the shopping while the guys went to the pool room and/or the picture show. But somebody has to do the driving and I'm thinking in those days the guys did the driving of the cars.
We didn't even have to have a Driver's License in 1929 or 1930. Does anyone know if that is true. I know Uncle Joe drove the whippet and he was maybe 16.

An assignment for Rose

Rose, who is in this picture? Signed, Your inquisitive Daughter-in-Law.

Divining A Disappearing Art.

This incident took place at the same location we lived when I wrote
The Little Errand Girl.
Mother used to have me stand on a kitchen chair and wash the dishes.
I was seven and we lived at an old Farm House where we had to carry water from a spring that was across the pasture field to east of us.
On this particular day I was struggling to get every dish clean because I longed to hear Momma say I had done a good job. So I plunged my right hand down in to the sugar bowl--' gotta get them corners cleaned out'-- or
she will make me do it all over again so I thought. Then suddenly there was blood running down the side of my hand , that sugar bowl was broken. I didn't want to tell Momma, she would just say how dumb I was
and "Can't you ever do anything right?" She came by in time to see what I had done. To my surprise she didn't scold, but she was very nice and understanding , in fact what she said was "Oh that's all my fault I should have thrown that old thing away . You don't have to finish the dishes just go on out and play. "

So while nursing my hand I went on outside to sit in one of my favorite places. It was in a little niche on the rockie hillside beyond the yard, looking eastward towards the cornfield in the valley.

Had I not hurt my hand at that time I would not have been there when my Daddy came by with a divining stick and I knew he was looking for water under the ground. As I continued my vigil of the scenery that I loved so well, I heard the sound of a shovel on the rocky terrain, "chink,chonk,clang." sort of . That 's the only way I know how to explain it. He had found the water vein with his little forked tree limb, and he was going to dig for water. He was very good at what he did. Hard work was never a stranger to my daddy . I believe the ground was looser on that rocky hillside than it was other places (and in no time at all it seemed to me) I heard the sound of water. He had already taken the bottom out of a barrell which he placed in the opening to hold the water which sprang up. Now we had a spring much closer to the house and we wouldn't have to cross the meadow everytime we needed water.

It's a strange thing that I never remember getting water personally from that spring. Maybe it was so close to the house that Mother didn't need me to fetch the water anymore. Also we may have moved away soon after that .

Please be patient with me while I tell you of a song this brings to mind. "Spring up ole well, within my soul,
"Spring up ole well and make me whole.
"Spring up ole well and give to Me
"Eternal Life abundantly."

Mother Took Care Of The Mattress Problem

I can see now how Mother made the difference in our lives, from what it might have been. She always seen to it that we had a garden,and I couldn't understand why did she always planted so many beans. I can understand now that beans are better than snowballs as she used to say.

I can remember the time when we had one towel and one washrag. Mother would wash one of us, then wash the wash rag and then wash another of us.

But we never owned a mattress that I knew about until I was ten. Mother and Daddy slept on a straw tick, as did my brothers and I. That's kind of like a bed size
pillow filled with straw and the material was heavier than what Grandma and my Mother made dresses out of and that material was called ticking. Mom and Pop had a feather bed on top of the strawtick . There was a couple of times when we had company and I had to sleep on a pallet on the floor and it was very uncomfortable. Like Pop said we didn't have enough padding to keep the floor from hurting our bones. (Not fat enough ) Some of us had a bed wetting problem and that meant that when the straw tick got wet, mother would pull out the wet straw and throw it away. I watched and became very concerned that we might not have a straw tick left. I sure did not want to sleep on the floor again. To my surprise when the straw tick began to get too depleted, mother just simply got another bale of straw and filled the straw tick up again. I was so glad she did that.
It was long about this time that we got a new neighbor and she had too much stuff, so she sold us a mattress, a Victrola (wind up record player) and something else (I forogt what) for $3.00. This was a lot of money back then as wages were like $5.00 a week. That of course was the first time I remember our family owning a mattress.

Where The Soul Never Dies.

I was wondering if there was some way I could put a song on this blog.
If I can do that this would be a song by my Son and My Brother.
by going to. http://subtleoakflavor.blogspot.com/ I think that will work. People often ask "Is there songs?" when I tell them about my web sight.

Complicated Mess

What's happening in the world today. I'm trying to get in to my email and they keep saying sign in with a different account. Don't they know I'm lucky to be able to remember one account with one pass word. I have already tried different account names and different passwords I just end up forgetting the whole thing. Then it becomes a jumbled up mess to me. Give me a break is what I'm saying They make all kinds of options, for example if you can't read the computer will read it for you. There are hearing aids and seeing aids. How about memory aids?? and then they say copy these letters exactly and the letters look like a crippled kangaroo. Are they having a contest to see how difficult they can make it ot use the computer??