Dear $$firstname$$,

Click for larger image.

Ah, remember late-summer Sundays when the sun was still warm on your face as you enjoyed an afternoon outing with the family? If not, the picture at right will take you back to a simpler time. Says Clara Steek of Brookfield, Wisconsin, who shares the 1958 photo, “After church and lunch, we usually visited Grandma and Aunt Erna, went to the zoo or park or just for a ride in the country, stopping for A&W root beer on the way home. On this particular day, we fed the ducks at Lake Michigan.”

In this same way, we invite you to take a gentle stroll at your own pace through these latest newsletter offerings. You’ll enjoy an especially soothing walk back in time in the story “When the Clock Chimes” about the simple pleasures of visits with a special grandma. Enjoy the escape!

—The Folks at Reminisce

In this issue:

• The Forbidden Peach
• When the Clock Chimes
• The Littlest Milkmaid
• Surviving the Hurricane of 1938
• Poem: Song of Grandpa
• Over the Back Fence
• Time Capsule Trivia
• A Thought to Remember

The Forbidden Peach?

Ronnie Johnson, then and now.

Click for larger image.

Click for larger image.

By Ronnie Johnson
Swainsboro, Georgia

One summer, my sister Polly and I decided that we wanted to earn some money to help buy our school clothes. We looked at clothes in the Sears and Roebuck catalog again and again but were still racking our brains for a moneymaking scheme.

My sister had nicknamed me “Speedy.” I never figured out her reasoning because I was never really quick at anything. To tell the truth, I considered myself lazy, especially when it came to doing chores. But I wanted so much to have something new to wear to school that first day back.

We thought of earning money by picking cotton with Sally Mae and King Fish, our neighbors up the road, and were excited when they agreed to our proposal.

The next morning, my sister and I got up early while the dew was still on the fluffy, white cotton stalks. Even though we were both still sleepy-eyed, we began picking at a furious pace. We were determined to buy those school clothes.

In a couple of hours, my sister began complaining that her back was killing her. “I can’t straighten up!” she exclaimed. Sally Mae gave her a bewildered look and said, “Child, you ain’t got no back yet!” We worked every day for a week.

On Saturday morning, my sister and I walked up the lane to the neighbors’ house to get our pay. As we walked through their yard up to the door, we came upon their peach tree. It was loaded with beautiful, pink fruit!

In school, we often heard the biblical account of Adam and Eve and how they fell from God’s grace by taking a bite from a juicy apple. But in our hearts, we knew it wasn’t an apple they ate—it had to be a sweet Georgia peach!

We ran past the tree and avoided the temptation. We got our money and ran home with delight, knowing we could do our clothes shopping.

Polly Johnson, then and now.

Click for larger image.

Click for larger image.

A week or so later, Mama told us the sad news that Sally Mae had died suddenly and unexpectedly. Polly and I were both saddened by the news.

But a not-so-nice thought came creeping into my mind. I took my sister aside and said, “Polly! Sally Mae can’t see us from her window now. She’s gone and won’t be coming back. Let’s go and fetch some of those peaches!”

We ran up the clay road barefooted. We eagerly climbed the old fence and ran across the cotton field until we reached the tree.

We each grabbed a peach and bit into it! The sweet juice ran down our chins. They were delicious! We each ate another one and then began to gather more in our arms to take home.

Just then, we heard the strangest sounds coming from the other side of the tree. Was the wind making that ghostly noise? Or was it Sally Mae’s spirit, disappointed with us?

The peaches fell from our arms as we raised them in terror and we ran for our lives! Polly begged me to slow down and wait for her. But the more she pleaded, the faster I ran.

We didn’t sleep very well that night, and the next morning, we were still feeling frightened and guilty. Just like Adam and Eve, we were paying for the price of eating the forbidden fruit.

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When the Clock Chimes

By Ann Ingalls
Kansas City, Missouri

It was a good thing Grandma Vanderwerp didn’t live very far away, only about 3 blocks, since my brother Tom and I needed to get away from the noisy confusion we called “home.”

Both of us were kind of quiet and born right in the middle of a large and busy family. We had six other sisters and brothers, a mom, a dad, two hamsters, two birds, a dog and, depending on the time of year, a washtub full of tadpoles waiting to become frogs.

Grandma understood about kids and frogs. She knew about tree-climbing and dress-up clothes and just about anything we had to tell, and she had an old, squatty, just-right-for-climbing cherry tree in her backyard.

Tom and I had dreams about the pies Grandma could bake from the cherries we’d pick. The trouble was, as Grandma said, “The birds have plans for those cherries, too.”

Sitting on her back porch, surrounded by Shasta daisies, we shooed those pesky birds away while we sipped ginger ale from anodized-aluminum cups Grandma reserved for our visits.

Sometimes, a little talking could persuade Grandma to let us spend the night. Sleepovers at Grandma’s were a special affair.

First, there would be a bubble bath with sweet-smelling suds, the result of the magic powders stored in apothecary jars high on a shelf in Grandma’s white-tiled bathroom.

After a soak and a scrub and a warm rub-a-dub, we crawled into the flannel PJs that Grandma kept “just in case.” We parked ourselves by Grandma’s knee sharing the needlepoint footstool that doubled as a doll bed when upturned.

Grandma read short stories from her large-type copies of Reader’s Digest. Sometimes, she would cry if the stories were sad, but mainly she would read humorous anecdotes and would throw back her lovely white hair and laugh. Soon, we’d be laughing, too.

Then we’d talk for awhile, each of us hanging onto one of her prominently veined and wrinkled hands. We’d ask questions like, “Why do your veins stick out, Grandma?”, “Were you sad when Grandpa died?” and “Just what kind of a little boy was Daddy?”

All the while, Grandma’s clock ticked away the time and Westminster chimes reminded us of each quarter hour.

Grandma often asked, “What does the clock say to you, little Ann?” Depending on my frame of mind, its message would vary. Once, when I had stayed a week and was an especially homesick 5-year-old, the clock said, “I’m sad because I miss Mama.” Grandma responded, “Well, climb on my lap, and we’ll think about her together.”

A brass fire screen with a fierce dragon, its tail arched and swirled to show its authority, stood before Grandma’s black, marble-faced hearth. It was rumored within our family to have been gold-plated at one time and to have belonged to Marie Antoinette, a famous French queen. Grandpa had acquired it from an antique shop in New Orleans for 50¢ in the early 1920s, shortly after he and Grandma were married.

At some point, the dealer realized what he had sold and tried to buy it back for a lot of money, but Grandma would have none of that. By that time, the dragon had become the backdrop for so many family pictures.

Eventually, Tom and I would start to yawn, signaling that bedtime had arrived. Up the double flight of stairs we’d tread to a room filled with contradictions—disconcerting in some ways, yet cozy and comforting in others.

A large mahogany bed heaped with lavender satin quilts and eyelet-trimmed pillows awaited. Lingering on hand-crocheted, lace-edged, linen sheets was the scent of lily-of-the-valley. On the walls, glaring ominously, were the framed faces of medieval Dutch ancestors—I hoped not ours. Severe hairstyles and stark dress betrayed their dispositions.

On a spoon-footed vanity, where Grandma kept hair ribbons, were displayed the loveliest porcelain boxes with painted flowers. Each box held a secret—a shiny button, a hairpin or a spiral shell. Accompanying these were perfume atomizers of every shape and description.

China dolls, which once belonged to Grandma’s sisters Cora and Nell, rested in a black-painted child’s rocker with a braided cloth seat.

Grandma tucked us in and reminded each of us with a kiss and a smile that she would be downstairs if we needed her.
 
Many years have passed since then. I’m grown now and still remember all of this as I write it down with Grandma’s tortoise-shell fountain pen filled with ink from Grandma’s crystal ink well.

Sitting at her roll-top desk with burled walnut trim, I remember the woman who painstakingly taught me to sew doll clothes, who read Winnie the Pooh stories a hundred times, who spit watermelon seeds and who stitched Halloween costumes and homecoming dresses with a flourish and fantasy in mind.

After a while, I intend to sit in her wingback chair, read short stories and humorous anecdotes and wait for the clock to chime. It will say, “I miss Grandma.”

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The Littlest Milk Maid

By Doris H. Jones Cle Elum, Washington

When I was 5 years old, in 1917, my father bought a 17-acre farm on the outskirts of Sugar Grove, Pennsylvania. It was the first place off of the residential section in a small village of about 600.

My father raised chickens. For our milk needs, he also bought a cow, but soon, the cow was giving us more milk than we could use. Some of the neighbors up the street expressed an interest in buying milk from us.

My father put the milk in glass quart bottles, sealed with a cardboard cap. When I was about 8 years old, I would take the bottles up the street and set them on the porches of the customers, picking up the empties from the previous day and bringing them home. The price was 10¢ a quart.

After a time, with more surplus milk and the addition of another cow, my father fixed up my wagon to hold the metal milk carriers that each held 8 quarts of milk.

I would pull the wagon up the street every morning on my way to school and leave it in my uncle’s yard, a block from my school. On my way home for lunch, I’d pick up the wagon and take the empties home. I had a big collie named “Lassie” that always walked along with me and would even wait by my cart until I came along at noon and walked back home.

Delivering milk in the morning wasn’t the end of my workday, however. In those days, there was no such thing as refrigerators or electricity in our area and people wanted milk in the evening as well. My father had no way of cooling or pasteurizing milk, so every evening, after supper and milking the cows, my father would bottle more milk and I’d once again take my wagon up the street.

I had company on my route. The younger children would run out and want to walk along with me. They would say, “Tell us a story.” I was good at making up stories, so I’d spin tales as we walked the route together.

In 1924, when I was 12, I got a bicycle with a large basket on the rear fender. Father would put a carrier of milk in the basket and hang a carrier on each handlebar so I could carry 24 quarts of milk at once. Thankfully, I don’t remember ever having an accident.

In the winter, Father fixed a large box on my sled to deliver the milk. By the time I got older and my job passed on to my younger sister and brother, the milk route had become much more extensive and involved. My father had a pickup truck and my mother took on the job of driving it. My sister, brother and I would take turns jumping out at every stop and take the milk to the porches.

My father’s milk route ended when laws requiring cooling and pasteurizing came in. He switched to selling his milk wholesale and people began to buy their milk in stores as they do now.

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Surviving the Hurricane of 1938

By Bill Flynn Nashua, New Hampshire

It was dark and sultry that day in September of 1938. I’d been home from school about an hour when chaos hit Northboro. A hurricane, rare for our environ, struck our town in central Massachusetts without the warnings and advance hype of today’s television storm tracking.

The hurricane of 1938 came at us over 100 miles per hour after passing over Long Island, New York and Cape Cod, leaving a path of devastation as it moved to the northwest. I was a very scared 8-year-old as the wind howled at our house.

Small things started to fly around outside. Then I saw something huge take flight. It was the church steeple from the Baptist Church at the corner of School and Main Streets, across from our house. Its bell hit Route 20’s cement with 3 bounces and deep ringing sounds. The copper-racehorse weather vane on our barn cupola spun around on its spindle without any sense of direction.

My great grandmother, who lived with us at the time, had fetched her Bible and convinced us little ones that the end of the world was upon us. This proclamation was soon buttressed when no less than six large elm trees were uprooted to come to rest against our Victorian-style house, breaking a few windows along the way.

Flynn Family House before the hurricane Click for larger image.

A glance to the backyard told us that our small grove of tall pines was now lying flat on the ground. The hurricane raged on to a peak until its quiet eye presented a false calm that fooled some in believing the wrath of it had ended.

During that quiet time, as the eye of the storm passed over us, we were evacuated to a next-door house void of fallen trees. This move was suggested by some men who were concerned about the weight of all the elms leaning against our house.

We were carried through downed electrical wires lying on the ground. We later heard the adults tell of a man killed when a tree fell on his car after he stopped on Main Street, near the library.

It took my dad the whole night to make it to our house, because the road from his place of work was completely blocked by downed trees. Walking home in the dark over live wires was perilous, so he found refuge in a diner after abandoning his car.

Flynn Family House after the hurricane Click for larger image.

I can only imagine that my dad and the others stranded in that diner must have bonded on many levels as the first New England hurricane of the 20th century ravaged the land outside.

It was 2 months before power and phone lines were restored. Fallen trees blocked our roads for days and the smell of saws ripping into green wood is one that has stayed with me, bringing back the memory of a time when nature’s wrath hit our town with a vengeance.

We got used to reading by candle and kerosene lanterns and boiling our drinking water for some time after the big storm of ’38.

Our barn cupola with its antique weather vane somehow survived. The horse was retired from hurricane racing and resides in New Jersey.

Our Victorian domicile had shrugged off the fallen trees and still stands strong today.

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Song of Grandpa

By Dorothy M. Cameron
Bridgeville, Pennsylvania

As a young man
Dashing and neat,
The sounds of a dance band
Put strings in my feet.
And I’d schottische and two-step
My every chance,
With Mollie and Nellie
And blond, pretty Blanche.

When the waltz played out
I flirted away,
With any cute chick
Who glided my way.
Oh! Those were the days
I dearly loved
When life was free
As the stars above.

Now, aged I am
With joints a mite sore,
I wince every step
To the corner store.
But, I oft reminisce
Of those days so sweet
And the carefree young man
With the wings on his feet.

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Over the Back Fence

Check out this list of chairs and corresponding thoughts sent by Norman Wesley of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You’ll notice the aging process as you go along.

High Chair—Teddy Bear
Potty Chair—Kiddie Care
Barber Chair—Lots of hair
Dentist Chair—Dental care
Swivel Chair—Office lair
Restaurant Chair—Medium rare
Deck Chair—Mal de mer
Easy Chair—Thinning hair
Rocking Chair—Medicare

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Time Capsule Trivia

Check out these historic tidbits as you try to guess which year they’re from. The answer is given below, but no peeking!

1. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus defies a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against school segregation, calling in his state’s National Guard to prohibit nine African-American students from entering Little Rock Central High School. President Dwight D. Eisenhower eventually sends federal troops to intervene.
2. The Space Age officially begins when the Soviet Union launches Sputnik I, the world’s first Earth-orbiting satellite, and Sputnik II, which carries a canine passenger.
3. Sony markets the first commercially successful transistor radio.
4. Dick Clark brings American Bandstand to television.
5. Popular movies include The Bridge on the River Kwai with William Holden and Alec Guinness, 12 Angry Men with Henry Fonda and Peyton Place with Lana Turner.

The year of desegregation landmarks, Sputnik and the premiere of American Bandstand is 1957?

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A Thought to Remember

We could take a lesson from the weather…it pays no attention to criticism.

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