Be Still and Know...Then and Now

Do you have any memories of gardens from your growing-up years? My Grandma had this great house. In my Grandmothers neighborhood the streets were lined with very old very tall trees and the streets were shaded almost to the point of being dark all the time. It was wonderfully cool as you walked down the sidewalk. It had a true story book feel to the memories. It was like walking under a leafy canopy. Her house was up on a small level plateau and there was a small set of concrete step with a black iron railing to hold on to. Her house was on the corner and as you walked up the steps on either side and all the way around the house on the other side of the street was this amazing bank of  dark green ivy. Once you got the the top of the steps the ground leveled out and there was a small expanse of grass in front of the house. I remember it always being a deep green. There was a thick hedgerow growing across the front of the house. Off to the left in front of the hedgerow was he...

I don’t have much to add about many of this weeks questions. But when I read them there was one memory that popped into my mind. What significant news events do you remember from your childhood? What stands out about them? In 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated I was almost four years old. I don’t remember this, however it is one of those stories that my mom always told. My memories are more associate with the retelling of the story than actually remembering the event. She shared many times that she was watching the television when they were transferring Lee Harvey Oswald to the county jail and Jack Ruby jumped out of the crowd and shot him. My mother tells the story that I was watching the television and when it happened I turned to her and said “Mommy that bad man just shot that man!” What is the earliest historical/news event about which you say: "I'll never forget when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on Jan. 28, 1986. I had been married for four years a...

When I read the prompt for this week there was only one thing that flashed in my mind. The memory sent me scurrying for my old year books! Gym Uniforms! Surely there had to be some evidence of our forced group humiliation and sadly there was!   Thankfully I was not captured in this year book picture. However I remember these gym uniforms very well! We had to endure these lovely fashion statements at one of the High Schools I attended. It was horrible, unattractive, hot and sweaty and to top it off it was a wonderfully flattering dirty gold-ish mustard color. It was a one piece jump suit that snapped at the shoulders made out of polyester and I HATED it! For more Flashback Friday y’all head over to Mocha with Linda and link up!

I needed a bit of memory reinforcement so I bowed to the powers of the internet for a bit of help. I found this website Crazy Fad’s , you can click over and see various list of the fad’s by decade. I chose 1970. Let’s see how many I can remember or how many I actually purchased or participated in shall we! Muscle Cars (Trans Am / Camaro) - Didn’t have one but had a huge crush on a boy in high school who did. Star Wars action figures - Loved the movies and secretly wanted to be Princess Leia Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific - Yes, I may have even bought a few bottles of the shampoo. CB Radios and CB radio sayings ( like "breaker, breaker" and "That's a 10-4 good buddy") – Yes, I used to be friends with a girl in high school and her family was into CB radios big time and we would play around with it on sleep over's. Acupuncture - No Creepy Crawlers - No Streakers – remember seeing them on the nightly news. Rocky Horror Picture Show - YES Leisure Suits – NO, remem...

  I saw this over at skoots1mom and I tried to get it to work but being a bit challenged in some areas of internet savvy-ness I was not able to get it to work. I did however get the numbers generated over at the random.org website and this is what they were. True Random Number Generator Min: 1 Max: 12 Result: 1 The first commenter was Bug over at Bug’s Eye View , congratulation to my wonderful blogging pal! So y’all head over to her blog and give her your congratulations. So Bug send me an email with your snail mail and I will get your prize out to you in the mail ASAP. I also need to know what flavor of Jelly Belly Jelly Beans you want. Click here to see a list of the flavors you can pick from, I need your first and second choice. As soon as I pick up your jelly beans I get your prize in the mail. Thanks again for stopping by and for being a part of the blogging community. Now on to my Flashback Friday , it’s all about the choppers. But first I just could not res...

Wow, it’s been a while since I did a Flashback Friday,but since I am trying to post every day this week I thought I would join in on the fun!   Thinking primarily of your growing-up years and your early years of driving, have you ever been in an auto accident? When I was very young but officially out on my own I was on my way to work one morning and as I was pulling through an intersection a young man (teenager) who was late for school went blowing through the four way stop and clipped me on the front of my car. Thankfully it was not a T-Bone situation. My car spun around a few times and I was thrown about a bit in the car. My car at the time was my 1962 Ford Fairlaine so it did not have a shoulder strap on the seat belt. I was thrown sideways and I hit the dash a bit and whacked my head pretty good on the steering wheel, but other wise was unhurt. My car was a bit dinged up but given the solid steel construction of those cars it was like driving around in a tank so I was fairl...

Having just spent the day at the grocery store getting ready for next week I am a bit tired and a bit overwhelmed as the pending holiday approaches. I think the older I get the need to simplify become more and more attractive. My tolerance for family drama and an all the wonderful things that go into those holiday family gatherings can be a bit much for me in my hormonal stage of life. However I am trying to breath through it and remember what it says in the the instruction manual Romans 12:18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. I think I may have that tattooed on the palm of my hand so it will be readily available to me a a moment notice. Thanksgiving is really one of my all time favorite holidays, not because I have a lot of warm and fuzzy memories but because most of the good memories I do have revolve around spending time with my grandmother in her kitchen. When I am in my kitchen and getting a meal, even a big production like Thanksgivin...

It’s all about Halloween this week. I don't answer all the question and I did a bit of rearranging but here’s my Flashback Friday …Trick or Treat y’all! What  was Halloween like when you were growing up? We did the traditional trick or treating. When we were little my mom would walk with us but when we got a bit older we would make trick or treat plans with friends and map out our strategy to make sure were hit all the best neighborhoods to ensure the biggest bang for our Halloween buck! Halloween was a big treat that we always looked forward to. The best part was dumping out my bag and then sorting through the can at the end of the night and then seeing how long I could make the candy last. Have you ever bobbed for apples or been on a hayride? When my daughter was little she saw something on television about bobbing for apples. For several years after that she wanted to bob for apple on her birthday. Her birthday is in the spring. I am not sure why apple bobbing is traditio...

Y’all remember that television show from back in the day called ‘One Day at a Time” about a single mom raising two daughters? I used to watch that show all the time. Looking back on it I always wondered why I tortured myself every week. I really hated that show but I still watched it. I remember thinking about how I would have loved to have been as lucky as those two girls in that show. They always had nice pretty cloths and they lived in a really cool apartment. My childish brain could not distinguish between the story line that they manufactured for purely entertainment value, all I saw was that the life that this single mom and her two daughters lived was so very different from the life I lived every day. How was your family structured when you were growing up? I don't really have any memories of before the divorce. I have very faint memories of all of us living under the same roof but they are very fleeting and they fade in and out. Basically for as long as I can remember it ...

I almost passed on this one, but then I got down to the last couple of questions and decided to give it a go. Coming from a background of being severely financially challenge growing up I will try to refrain from whining and complaining about how much we did not have growing up. I remember things like my mom having to go to the local food pantry and getting those cans with the plain white labels and bold green type on them. We from time to time lived in subsidized apartment complexes. Money was a very difficult concept for me growing up because we never had it and it seemed that everyone else did. Isn’t it strange how children perceive things. Many people grow up in economically challenging situations but as a child in my limited vision I could only see what directly impacted me.   I am thankful as an adult I have learned to look at things with much more maturity and with a broader scope.   For reason that are obvious, being so financially challenged, I will skip to the las...

Did you play many games when you were growing up? That would be a BIG yes! What were they? (Include outside games as well as board & card games.) Outside Games: Red Rover, Simon Say’s, Follow the Leader, Hide & Seek, Duck Duck Goose, Red Light Green Light, Farmer in the Dell… Board games: Candy Land, Life, Monopoly, Clue, Toss Across, Battleship, Dream Date, Twister, Chinese Checkers (my grandparent had a Chinese Checker set and I have wonderful memories of playing this game with my grandfather),Checkers, Dominoes. Did your entire family play games or just the kids? Usually just the kids! I remember games were generally played at sleepovers or parties. Summer time outside games were played with other neighborhood children. One of the things I do remember about living in an apartment complex is that there were usually lots of other kids around. Were there any traditional games your family always played? The one thing I do remember playing as a family were the Car Games....

It’s time to play! Tag you’re it! What toys do you remember from your childhood? Memory is a funny thing! I will just start with the snippets of what I can remember. The Chrissy Doll. She was a big doll and she had red hair. The unique things about Chrissy was that you could make her pony tail longer by puling it out of a hole in the top of her head. She also had a button on the middle of her back that would retract her hair and then it would wind back up and she would have short hair again. Of course I played with Barbie's, my mom was a part time seamstress so I had access to all her scraps. I would spend hours making outfits for them out of the scraps. I remember getting very excited when she would get a customer that wanted something made with sequins or shiny material because that meant that I got the fancy scraps. I remember paper dolls and spirograph the Easy Bake Oven The problem with the Easy Bake Oven was when I ran out of the package mixes then the fun was o...

Did you like to read when you were a child? I enjoyed reading when I was a teenage, I don’t remember if reading was a huge part of my elementary years! I have one very specific memory of my grandmother. It was a little joke we played on her every time we went to visit her. We would ask her to read Pinocchio to us. She would always say yes but the real reason we wanted her to read it to us was she always struggle with the name Geppetto. Sometimes she would try to skip the pages that had his name on it then it would become another game to try and catch her trying to skip those pages. I would giggle and laugh as she would struggle to pronounce his name. She new that we picked that book because she couldn't say his name but she always read it to us every time. It was a fun game and when I remember it make me smile!  What were your favorite genres, books or series? I loved Pippi Longstocking and I remember a series of books about a bunch of children who lived in a boxcar “The Boxcar ...

So here is my Flashback for this Friday, y’all grab your remote and enjoy! Tell about TV when you were growing up. Did your family have a TV? Although my daughter thinks I came from the ark ages we did in fact have a television as well as indoor plumbing, running water and even electricity when we were growing up. Was it color or b&w? If memory serves it was color, however seeing as my hormones have pushed all possibility of things like memory retrieval from my brain, this fact can not be positively verified. I do, however, have very vivid memories of making sure we were all seated in front of the television for the door opening scene of the Wizard of Oz! This tells me that we did in fact have a color television or I was delusion even as a small child! How many TVs did your family have? I think we only had one! Did you have one in your room? When I was in elementary school that simply was not a concept that was even considered. However I do think as the televisions got mor...

I have to tell y’all that movies are about one of my most favorite things! They hold for me an wonderful escapist quality, which in looking back is probably why I enjoyed them so much growing up. A perfect day for me are those Saturdays when there is a movie marathon going on on TNT , TCM or any letter combination you can put together!  I just love movies!!!!!!!!! So with out further ado… her is my Flashback Friday! What movies were popular when you were growing up? I remember when Star Wars had just come out. My grandparents were in town for a visit and my Grandpa took me to see it. I was overwhelmed by how wonderful the experience was and I was even more shocked in the reality that he was not as profoundly effected by the experience as I had been. I was hooked from then on! Did you go to the movies very frequently? When I was a little girl we did not go to the movies very often. I am sure a trip to the theater even back then was an expenditure that was saved for...