Wedded Bliss

When I was eighteen, World War 2 was going full blast and my mother decided to leave her

responsibilities to me and off she gleefully went to another state to work in a munitions plant.

She took her widowed sister-in-law with her and left me with my two younger sisters and my father to cook for.

So I figured as long as I was a cook, a housekeeper, a child-sitter, a laundress, a shopper and all the rest, I may as well get married. So without much thought, I did.

I married a young man that had been discharged from the US Navy because of his sleep-walking episodes. He had throw a navy guard over his shoulder and knocked him cold. He was unaware of what he had done of course. I, again, didn't give much thought to what he would do to me during one of his sleep-walking episodes, but I found out later.

Without any advance notice my mother came back home soon after we had tied the knot, and of

course, I had been planning that we were going to live in my parents' house. I was glad to be

free of my mother's duties, but now we needed a place of our own to start our journey of wedded bliss.

I found two rooms on the third floor of an old house very close to main street. Furnished! It

consisted of a bedroom and a kitchen. At least the landlady called it a kitchen. There were no

cupboards, no sink, no stove and no refrigerator. Well, that was not exactly true...... there was a

sink out in the hall that was shared with the other tenants, there was a shared bathroom, too.

To cook anything, there was a two-burner hot plate with a portable box called an oven that you

put on the hot plate if you wanted to bake a pie. A former clothes closet was fitted with shelves to store food and things like that. The ice box was a cubby hole under the eaves. It was winter in Northern Minnesota, so the food was kept nice and cold.

I cooked a lot of macaroni and cheese because meat was rationed. Butter was rationed. Coffee was rationed. Gee, I think even chocolate was rationed!

I used to walk a few blocks to the grocery store to buy our food supplies. There was a nice young man behind the butcher's counter that used to slip in a little extra meat for me as I would discover when I got home and unwrapped the meat package. That was so nice of him!

After a couple of months of this we packed up and went back to live with the folks.

Was I Mistaken for a Terrorist?

I have taken quite a few trips by air, and one or two are especially memorable. It was about nineteen years ago, and I was more on the young side than the old, but as soon as I got off a

jet at the Minneapolis airport, alone, on my way home from Illinois, I was commanded to sit in a wheelchair by somebody (?) with power! So I although I balked at sitting in a wheel chair for no obvious reason, she insisted that I had to, but wouldn't give me an explanation. The attendant wheeled me where ever I wanted go, true, but I couldn't understand why they thought I was either decrepit or a danger to other passengers.

When we arrived at my intended gate, I was told to stand up, which I did, and a female (thank heaven) attendant frisked me up and down and sideways. Well, after that ordeal, I wanted to have a smoke. (I quit smoking quite a few years ago) So the attendant wheeled me outside where I polluted some Minneapolis air. I also visited the ladies' rest room and the attendant waited patiently for me to get back in the wheelchair. She never passed the time of day with me or was friendly in any way.

I was the only passenger that was treated this way, as far as I could see. So all I can think of is

that I had a very suspicious look about me! Maybe I shouldn't take the next trip I was planning by air!

Bah, Humbug!

Not really! The blizzard kept me from having a Christmas dinner with my family. I opened a

can of spaghetti and meatballs and that was my feast today. But I didn't shed even one tear because I know how lucky I am in spite of blizzards.

But I am plowed out now and I can get to my garage thanks to my son-in-law.

I can't wait to see my granddaughters tomorrow. I hope!

One will be on her way to those islands (galapagos) off the coast of Ecuador in a few weeks. There she will be studying birds and basking in the warm sun. I heard that there is a bird called the blue-footed boobie that makes its home there. I wish she'd capture one and bring it home to me for a pet! It would be fun to have a boobie around the house!

I hope anybody who is reading this had a wonderful Christmas Day.

Grapes and Math

Grapes are $4.00 per pound today! I bought over two pounds! I shelled out $8.50 for a bag of grapes! I must be nuts.

I eat grapes everyday. They do me good, and I really like them, so I never want to be without grapes. Seedless, of course.

But grapes do not keep very well even in the fridge. So I Goggled to find out if you can freeze grapes. I do not want to ever throw grapes away again.

Yes, grapes are freezable!!

Here's what you do. Wash them. Get out a cookie sheet. Put some waxed paper on the cookie

sheet. Spread the grapes out on the cookie sheet. Put cookie sheet into freezer and freeze them solid. Remove grapes from freezer. Transfer frozen grapes to plastic bags and seal. Put the bags back in the freezer.

When you want grapes, just take out a few and enjoy them even if they are frozen. They are a

great treat when they are frozen. I'll bet little children would like them better than candy.

I think I froze about 200 grapes. If I eat 10 grapes a day, they will last me for 20 days. I think

these grapes cost me about $.04 per grape. That really is outrageous.

But, what the heck, I really like grapes.

Civilian Conservation Corps

Commonly known as the CCC, this program put to work hundreds of unemployed single young men during the Great Depression. I knew only one. He came home from the CCC camp occasionally in his khaki uniform looking like a soldier on leave.

I think he really liked living and working hard in the forests of Minnesota even though when he

came home he would sing....

"I don't want no more of the CCC,

I only want to go home.

The coffee that they give you,

They say its mighty fine,

It's good for cuts and bruises.

It tastes like iodine.

I don't want no more of the CCC,

I only want to go home."

Why don't people start demanding that the government, using its infinite wisdom (?) and its unlimited (?) power, start this program again and keep it going? Our forests need help, our

wild habitats need help, and there must be many other things that these young men could do, and they would feel good about helping where help is needed in our country. I'll bet they would

feel better than they do today after going to a gym for a workout. I'll bet they would be happier and healthier and I'll bet they would be leaner in many cases.

Even as a young lady, when I worked hard outside, I felt good. I suppose it was what today you

call a "high". I hope that there would be a CCC for young single ladies, too.

The new CCC could have a slogan. " Join the CCC and get a natural high!"

Well, this is all for now, I think I'll go and wash some walls or something.

Down in the Dumps

When I was very young and times were very tough, the town dump came in very handy for some people.

Our little town had a wonderful dump where people brought the stuff they didn't want and I knew people who wanted that very stuff. Some people made a hobby of visiting the dump every week. I suppose it is more sophisticated now as it is called dumpster diving.

Even my aunt's husband came home with his little treasures rescued from the dump. Getting something for nothing always made a person feel good.

I remember having a neighbor who furnished their whole house with stuff from the dump.

The chaise lounge was especially interesting, upholstered in real leather! Who in their right mind would throw that away? Who ever it was they knew someone would find it and put it

to good use.

These neighbors were in the process of building a house next to my folk's home. They had lived in a caboose before moving in. Yes, it's true! I don't know how a caboose came to sit right in

the middle of a residential section of town. And somehow it disappeared after the neighbors moved into the house next door to me. Something about zoning, I suppose.

Our new neighbors were quite interesting. The mom played the piano by ear. They hadn't found a piano at the dump yet, so she would come over and play our piano. She was the mother of two teen-agers. The girl could jitterbug really well and skate with one leg held up in the air behind her and was a champion swimmer. Such talent was awesome. The boy played the guitar and got expelled from high school for a spell. Not because he played the guitar, but because he skipped school so often, I guess. The war came along and he enlisted in the Navy and made it a career. When he got out he became a executive in the McDonald company, owned a beautiful

house in Las Vegas and came to our neighborhood reunion in the sixties and danced with me. So I always tell people I danced once with a McDonald big shot (who once lived in a caboose).

Vacation Fun

Two weeks had gone by since we first arrived in British Columbia. I was so glad it was over and we could get back to normalcy, whatever that was. But my husband had changed to a new wallet for the trip and forgot to put his driver's license in his new wallet. His mother realized (through her alcoholic fog) that we might not get back into the states without the proper ID. So we went to an attorney to swear out an affidavit regarding his legal citizenship, and paid fifty cents in American money for this service.

So I packed our luggage and was about to close the suitcases, when I realized that my little 17 month-old toddler needed a diaper change. Again. We didn't have disposable diapers those days, so I changed her, wrapped the soiled diaper in newspaper, put it in the suitcase and closed the lid. We would be home in just a few hours, so that wasn't a big deal.

We hopped on the bus with said luggage and made our way to Nanaimo where we had a rest stop. The bus driver said, "Be back on the bus by 1:30." So we had some tomato soup and crackers in the bus station which was also the train station. We didn't know that the bus was on daylight savings time, and the trains were on standard time. So we sat there impatiently for an hour and a half because we went by the clock on the wall.

Then we went out to get back on the bus. But it had left an hour before!

Oh, God! Now what do we do? We found a taxi and the driver said he could drive us to Victoria which was about 60 miles down the road. Luckily, we still had some American money in that nice new wallet, because this was going to cost us.

My little girl got car sick on the way and suddenly threw up the tomato soup all over the back seat of the cab. The taxi driver was the kindest person on this planet. He did not complain and he helped us search for our luggage when we arrived in Victoria. We found out that the bus driver had left our luggage at the bus station where we had that soup. So we left for home without luggage.

We managed to board our DC 4 after gaining a legal entrance back to our wonderful United States of America. We had an uneventful trip back to Minneapolis, Minnesota and my father was there waiting to bring us back to Northern Minnesota. Bless him.

We had to wait more than two weeks for our luggage to arrive by train. It came to Duluth. We lived 60 miles north, so we had to drive to the customs office in Duluth in order for

the luggage to clear customs. While there, the customs officer opened the suitcase in which I had placed the soiled diaper more than two weeks before, and I was frozen with fear as he went through our luggage looking for contraband or something. Instead, he found the diaper!! My mind goes blank at this point.

TREES

One heathen superstition I can't get rid of is the practice of knocking on wood for good luck.

The heathens believed that powerful spirits lived in trees. So they took notice of the power these spirits had and tapped on the tree, hoping that acknowledging that power would bring them good luck. Or so one legend has it.

Joyce Kilmer wrote a beautiful poem entitled "Trees". Then somebody put that poem to music and it is a song high on my list of favorite songs. I got acquainted with this song when I was a young teen and had a boyfriend that used to sing it as we walked down the road. Once we found a big tree, climbed up it and sat together on one of its strong branches. What fun!

Every Christmas season in days gone by, my sisters and I used to harmonize on one of our favorite songs "Winds Through the Olive Trees".

When I was about three, my father made me a swing that hung from the tree in our back yard. But I soon learned to avoid it because huge, ugly, bright green worms would fall from that tree, sometimes on little me. Something like that happened even after I grew up. We had a beautiful Mountain Ash whose branches extended over our back steps. This time the offending worms were little yellow things that would fall on the steps and in my hair! Not only

that but this Mountain Ash was leading our visiting birds to moral destruction as in late fall the red berries fermented. The birds couldn't fly a straight line after sampling those berries. So, with sorrowing hearts, we cut down that tree and planted a lilac tree in its place.

On the other hand, I saved a tree once. My husband had planted an apple tree in our yard and a

few years later a terrible windstorm split the little tree right down the middle. As by now, my

husband had departed this earthly life, it was up to me to try to save this badly injured tree. So

I fashioned and applied a splint or two with duct tape wrapped it round and round, hoping this was the right thing to do. The tree trunk grew back together as time passed and through the years has produced many, many pounds of really good apples. I have given many bags of apples to strangers and I have had many dozens of deer enjoying a feast on the fallen apples.

Trees give us lumber to build our homes, fruit to feed our bodies, beauty to feed our souls, shade to protect us from a hot sun. Trees are the source of countless blessings.

Trees deserve to be hugged!!