We are allowed to burn, so I put a few little scrawny vines that I didn’t want in the compost heap in our fire pit late this afternoon. Bud was catching up on the Civil War and working on his banjo playing when he heard me piddling around. Having very little confidence in my ability to perform simple tasks on my own, he rushed out to save the world, Continue reading
Month: May 2015
Hard Times With Mettie Knight Swain
Five of Maw Maw’s seven children. My father, Bill Swain is the little boy with wet pants holding the cap. One more child was born after this picture was made. It is likely someone just happened by with a camera and snapped this shot. Continue reading
See What All that Marrying Gets You!
I’ve never properly introduced you to my family. You hear me tease and torment my mother Kathleen in my blog all the time. She’s a good sport, and believe me, she gives as good as she gets. Luckily, she lives very close to me. I see her several times a week, and speak to her at least daily. Mother illustrates my blog. She has always loved sketching but came into professional art late in life. Continue reading
Trial by Fire
I don’t write much about the history of my father’s side of the family because they simply didn’t have the strong oral tradition that my mother’s family did. This is such a loss. My paternal grandmother was abandoned by her mother, raised by her grandmother till she was nine. She spent the rest of her childhood in the home of an uncle whose wife made Continue reading
Aunt Mama Ellen and the Twins
My friend Ellen planned to adopt her sister’s newborn due about the same time as her own. She was her sister’s coach and put the newborn baby girl to her own breast at its birth, taking it home with her the next day. Her sister, the birth mother went back to college, missing only one day of class. Seven days later Aunt/Mama Ellen was sitting Continue reading
Grandpa Was a Dancing Fool
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When my Grandpa Roscoe and his brothers were young, they never missed the rare opportunity to attend a dance or church social, no matter how hard they’d been working on the farm. They’d work like mad all week to get through in time to ride out to any barn-dance, Continue reading
Horrible Booger Story
My five-year-old grandson was all ears as I told him about his cousin who said she liked to eat boogers because they tasted like pickles. He burst out enthusiastically, “”I like that girl,”
Too Much Drama
One little boy in my fourth-grade class had to be co-erced into being into the school play, very much against his will, even though he had only one line to deliver. It didn’t make him a bit happier just before our big performance when the teacher reminded us all that we’d be in view of our parents, grandparents, friends, and neighbors. We had to Continue reading
Watch Your Mouth!
It was my sister’s first day on the job. Her boss handed her a package and said “get this out right now, fat ass!”
Nutsrok 