I'm not going to put these in any special order, but I've been told that this little "exercise" is a good thing to "get out there".....
So...
I remember this one name from childhood: Ziglinda Cambell. She was one of my sister's friends, but I was always impressed that someone had been named that. Ziglinda. We called her "Ziggy". I believe she was staying over the night Dad caught a skunk in the shed...and I hadn't realized how the storm windows worked before that night. The fact that you could open the storms (by taking out the lower "catch" and putting the window out on a hinge), even in the middle of the night, and breathe in fresh air was a blessing....and having Ziggy there to joke with was really fun.
I remember singing along with Pepere's radio in the barn while "helping" him. It was turned to a French station, so even though I didn't understand the words, I was trying my best, sometimes drowning out the radio. Pepere would sometimes correct my words, but always seemed to be smiling as he went past.
I had a best friend in fifth grade before her family moved away. Her name was Sarah Bates, and her mom had rented the old schoolhouse that was just the other side of the auction barn's field. She had an Arabian stallion that I fell in love with in the barn (which was behind our house) - and he got out when Princess was in heat, getting her pregnant. Suffice to say, that broke the lease, and Sarah moved, but only after giving a dog to one of the new neighbors from just up the road. (Princess had a filly that the Bradburys named "Misty"....and she was as "full of bull" as her dad had been. But more about her later.)
This was from when I was really little, but we had a babysitter on Christmas Eve. She sat and sang to us before putting us to bed, and her voice, though a little rough, made the songs sound beautiful. I've never really thought of it before now, but it was either my cousin, Becky, or the neighbors eldest daughter, Beverly.....but that was so long ago, I don't firmly remember who the singer was.
On the same line as who was singing, I remember Bev trying to teach us how to ride a horse. She would bring Princess to the wooden barricade that made up the fence, hoist one of us up there onto Princess's back, and either walk along or tell us "You can do this". I was at being able to jump a tree on the way back to the barricade before Bev left, but I didn't try to get up onto Princess again once she was gone. Princess, however, was used to us kids and would come up to us when she was moved to the pasture next to the auction barn. (We could get there through the trees most of the time to visit without having to go out on the road.)
Misty was both the bane of my existence and my life line. She was Arabian enough to make plenty of work for Albert, but her Thoroughbred mother made her pliable, as well. She had a habit of racing at whoever called her, weaving off at the last second to make a second pass or coming to a stop right within your arms, should you be as I was - and she would continue to race toward you if you made the mistake of running away from her. My second-youngest sister found this out the hard way, as she came out to the field to tell me it was supper time when Misty was feeling feisty. Misty, although not called, raced toward Diane. Diane screamed and raced for the edge of the field. She got under the electric fence just before Misty, who passed by close enough that Diane felt the breeze. She hated Misty after that, as Misty came right to me and walked calmly beside me as I made my way to the same place in the fence that Diane had used.
When Albert started to get rid of the horses, Misty was trouble. He'd get close to her, but she didn't trust him enough to let him catch her. After several hours of trying to catch her, he came up to have my mom send me out, having seen me walking with her many times with nothing holding her to my side. When I got to the field, Tammy Haskell was standing there with her dad, having purchased my sidekick. After telling her that they had named her Misty, the same as her pony, Tammy gave me a brilliant smile.
"I'm going to call her Angel."
I smiled before accepting the lead rope to see if I could collect her new horse, moving toward Misty with both acceptance, as I'd been in the same grade with Tammy since second grade (when our schools consolidated), but with a sadness as well, as I wouldn't be able to visit any more. I'm told that everyone gasped when I whistled, then stood stock still until Misty was within my arms for a hug. As I put her onto the lead rope and started leading her back to the group (which included my mom, who wanted to see if I was successful), I was telling her that she would have to answer to Angel, as Tammy had another horse named Misty. She seemed to agree with that, nodding her head. By the time I was handing the lead to Tammy, who wanted to know how I knew not to run, the newly named "Angel" was ready to make a new friend. We talked for a few minutes about her "bad girl things" (like running directly to you), and then with a "be good", we parted.
Since Tammy passed away this year (after her husband and before her husband's brother, who had also been a 1979 graduate), I'm wondering who has Angel, as she was born when I was about 12 and would probably still be alive. I'm also wondering, if she started to run toward me, if I have the nerve to let her race up to me for a hug.....
My dad smoked for years and years, and then there came the year that he bet my mom that he could stop smoking if she'd go on a diet. The bet was on, and Dad proved that he meant to stop smoking cold turkey by making a mess in Mom's kitchen by cutting up all the cigarettes he had in the house and "playing with the ingredients". He spent a lot of time cleaning up his mess, but when I was smoking, I used his plan (with a lot of newspapers) to do my own "cold turkey".
It takes at least a pack and a lot of newspapers, but it works. One simply takes the pack, cuts the outer liner off and throws out the liner and the filter, and gathers the tobacco in one space. When all the cigarettes are cut out of their liners, one "plays" with the , noting how quickly the fingers, and then the whole hand, is overwhelmed. One thinks "this is what it's doing inside"....and then, when the tobacco is spent and the newspaper is thrown away, one tries to get the tar off....which usually takes several soakings with something with some "heft" to it, like Lava soap.
And it works.....
By the way, Mom stopped drinking Pepsi and watching what she ate and also benefited. Jack LaLanne was a daily visitor, and now that she's in her 80's, she walks around her city with a friend, still benefiting.
While I'm talking about when I smoked, I often wonder what happened to Kimball Blake, he who came in one evening (he being the roommate of my sister and her boyfriend at the time) and started telling what it looked like when cruising from Orlando to St. Cloud on a motorcycle and "interrupting" the love bugs that were trying to get happy. His description was effective, as he got my sister's meal as well as his own. I've often wondered how he was doing, because it seemed he could eat anything at any time...even in the eight weeks I knew him.
(Oh perhaps I don't want to hear from him. My hubby used to eat three alarm chili once, and we only eat "the mild stuff" these days because he has heart burn......lol)
Since it's the season where we collect together as family, I have to bring up the kid that they swore was my "twin", my cousin, Tim. He was three weeks younger than me, but he seemed to have all the neat ideas to get us in trouble. If there was trouble at the farm, guaranteed that Tim and I were at the base of the idea. Oh, the things we got into trouble FOR! (Tim passed away in September of 1981, and the family gatherings have gone the way of the winds, but I still miss him at this time of year.)
Sometime before Pepere and Memere sold the farm, we were gathered at their house for Christmas. It was tradition that Uncle Dick, who sang in "the key of L" - because it sounded like "L" to anyone else - to lead us in Christmas Songs while the ladies did the dishes, allowing the ladies the time to get settled before we started opening presents. It was the 70's. Three Dog Night had been singing "Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog" on the radio for several months. It was passed kid to kid to go into this version whenever Uncle Dick called for "Joy to the World"....
You should have seen his face when all of us started singing "Jeremiah was a bullfrog" instead of the ages-old "Joy to the World".
(And as I've been digging this up for a week now, I'm going to publish this and continue adding to it, as I have the memories, not the time to record them all at one time. This entry is November 28, 2017.)
(11/28/17: Another entry)
Not being "wealthy", we took money whenever we could. My first "job" was (I think) Lucy Cossar and her peas. She had a son who put the peas out into the field the year I was 10 and she had talked my dad into enlisting help from among his children. The oldest of us was 14/15 and had babysitting jobs. The next was 13/14 and having seizures...so that made me the candidate to go talk to her. I made 10 cents for every bushel that I brought her and she and her son would take them out of the pods while they watched tv.
This was also how I got my work ethic, as I wanted to quit halfway into the season and Dad reminded me that if I quit, Mrs. Cossar would be very upset with me, because that would mean that SHE had to go out and finish the job...
I stayed and finished the job. With very few exceptions, I've stayed until I had a new job.
(12/5/17)
With the holidays upon us, I get very nostalgic about the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It seems that everything for that period is tied up and presented with a bow for vivid remembrances...
Like the time that Tim and I were having a discussion about Tolkien, both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", and were "outed by another cousin" for "kissing"...and we had to continue on with the discussion in front of a couple of grown-ups for a while to prove that was all we were doing. (I think the grown-ups went away with a whole new way of looking at our books that we were reading "on our own"....lol)
Like the time that we were taking turns seeing who could get away with getting a treat from Memere's special treat jar (made of glass) on the television set before Uncle Dick was sent in to make us "behave" by singing that first Christmas. I wasn't tall enough to take a chance that time, but I would sneak a treat when it was summer and the "ladies" (Mom and any aunts who were visiting) were outside on the porch. Just wait for someone to laugh and make the move....
and I would lay awake at night wondering (1) if anyone had heard anything and (2) if Memere ever counted the treats to know someone was stealing a few. (I would pray to God, go in and visit the Priest - and actually "fessed up" at their new house while passing my new son among the ladies. They laughed.)
Like going up through the barn via the "tunnel"....a ladder that went all the way to the top of the barn and allowed one to go to the back of the barn or the front of the barn in a small space below the beams. In the front of the barn was a section where the bails gave out that was lightly lit by the sun were we would gather to tell ghost stories. We would hear someone calling, answer that "We're coming" and dash back out the small space. We would always catch ourselves before tumbling down the ladder....
Like the times that I was working retail somewhere and wandering around silently "dissing" the Christmas music by substituting other words for those being piped in. For some reason, I'll be wandering around with a weird smile.....
(12/12/17)
I like wandering through the stores looking at things, trying things on, etc. - but not buying anything. Usually, this is when I've bought everything I'm going to, but I just like to get out and DO something. Try explaining that concept to someone whose main goal is to get you to BUY SOMETHING! (It's especially good at this time of year, when you going to the door WITH NOTHING IN YOUR BASKET!) Good thing to do at the Mall, where one can snack out while "mystery shopping".....but don't do it at your local Shaw's or Hannaford. They recognize you there....(spoken from many years of doing this very thing....lol)
(12/17/17)
A family memory shared on Facebook made me think of this:
My Memere and an aunt that lived "a hop, a skip and a jump" apart from each other were sisters. Their husbands were brothers. They had all moved to Exeter, Maine from Ste. Claire, Canada at various points, so my grand-pepere and my grand-memere are in the same cemetery with my memere and pepere - all on one stone. (We used to bring flowers on Memorial Day and understood that, if one picked up the phone to a woman's voice saying "Matin" - or "Morning", it was for Mom.)
When Dad was diagnosed with non-hodgkin's lymphoma in February 1979 and Mom & I went down the wrong road and bashed our car by coming out of a skid and landing on the front wheel (which, effectively, made our car barely driveable), Pepere came to help me out by driving behind me to the dealership (so they could assess the car) and drive me home in his pick-up. He let me know that I was to quit school, get a job, and make sure that my mother was taken care of. I had only months left before I would graduate.....and I had "other plans" that this would "interrupt"....but I was the "oldest one at the house" and I would have to "do as [he] had to - buck up and take care of [his] brothers and sisters".
Needless to say, Dad found out about it - and threatened to "break [my] legs" should I consider it...
I keep going back to the Find A Grave and visiting both Memere and Pepere - Raoul and Marie Anne Laflamme - and my great-grandfather and mother, Alfred and Marie Louise. Alfred, as Pepere stated,
died when Pepere was 18. His mother, Marie Louise, died 8 years later - and Raoul didn't marry until two years after that, a third cousin. (In other words, Memere was a Fournier, the daughter of a Laflamme, who was a cousin to Pepere's kin. Yeah, it's one of "those marriages", so I can claim "canadian redneck" as part of my heritage....lol)
But I never skipped a day of school between February and June, when I graduated....
