I, along with everyone I know, have used Vick’s at least once in their life. Growing up in Pennsylvania the winters were cold. Like they are this year. Cold and snowy- lots of snow!  Families didn’t make it through a winter without someone getting a cold. That’s when the little, dark blue bottle came out of the medicine cabinet. Your mother, father, or big brother would tell you how it made all the difference in their cold recovery. It was either slathered on your back or chest or put in boiling water for you to breathe the menthol steam. Smelling the stuff now makes almost makes me nostalgic.

There is a new use for the stuff -still helping us get through a cold though. If you have a cough that is keeping you awake at night. Drag out the old Vick’s in it’s new jar and slather it on your feet. Yep, your feet! Then put on an old pair of socks and snuggle down in the covers for a good night’s sleep. Isn’t it marvelous that this over the counter remedy has a new application?

“Son, go buy a new suit, shirt, tie, and shoes. After all your getting married in a few days!” Thank you new father-in-law.

The wedding went off without a hitch. Except for that little hitch where the minister forgot to have us say,

“With this ring, I thee wed.”

Yep, he just completely skipped the ring part of the ceremony. The best man tried his best to remind the minister but he just carried on. He pronounced us “man and wife” and presented us to the congregation. We walked up the aisle as everyone congratulated us only to turn right back around and have the ring thing accomplished. I think we would have been married anyway but the best man wanted his job completed correctly.

The reception also went off without a hitch. Except for that little hitch when we were doing that tradition of cutting the cake together and then giving each other a piece. I got a little enthusiastic and shoved the cake down my new hubby’s throat. He gagged a bit but stopped short of vomiting or passing out. I guess I should have practiced feeding someone cake.

After we left the reception, Herman took off his new suit of clothes, threw them in a garbage bag and changed into his normal garb of blue jeans and work boots. I hung my wedding dress up but changed into jeans too. We climbed into the cab of our brand new pick-up truck and started our new life together as husband and wife.

We both had our own ideas about the role of a spouse. My husband’s was a bit more defined in his mind than my own. Most were never discussed before we said “I do.” But it didn’t take long for Herman to  make clear what he wanted in a wife.

The first thing was he would never get a divorce. He explained it this way,

“I have a gun cabinet full of divorce certificates.”

I replied, “I know how to shoot too.”

So that was settled. No divorce. Murder but not divorce. So far our marriage was going well.

Next he declared his wife would never work outside our home and our children would go to school at home. Okay, I didn’t have an answer for that so I let it slide.

When we married, both Herman and I smoked cigarettes. I smoked Salems and he was a Marlboro Man. So when I ran out of cigarettes I asked my new hubby to please stop and let me buy some Salems.

That’s when I heard the last declaration of what he expected of his new wife. He looked me in the eye and said,

“My wife is not going to smoke.”

Incredulous I asked, “How will you stop me?”

Obviously he had a plan because he answered without hesitation. He said,

“I won’t buy any more Salems for you.”

But what we both hadn’t realized until then was we were pretty well matched. I also looked him in the eye and stated,

“That’s fine. I just switched to Marlboros.”

And from then on my Marlboro Man had to share ’cause I wasn’t quitting till I wanted to.

It’s important to note that we both got smart and quit smoking a couple of years later.

Thirty-six years ago on this day I was getting ready for our wedding. Our engagement was short and most of it Herman was 3,000 miles away.

Not only was he away but there was only one way for me to get in touch with him. I had to write a letter. I had to send my news, views, and requests via United States Mail to a general delivery address. General delivery was exactly what it sounds like. The letter went to the Post Office where it went into a box that held all the general delivery letters. It would sit in the box until Herman went to the Post Office and asked if he had any mail. And 36 years ago mail was not exactly fast. Come to think of it, it was about as fast as it is today.

You might be thinking that I could have at least called him. That presented a problem too. It is true he did have a phone but he had no phone number. No kidding! His phone was the type that the phone company lineman used in their work. I don’t know where Herman acquired his phone but to use it he had to be quite resourceful and not be afraid of heights. To make a call he would climb up the holly hedge about 20 feet and pinch on the phone wires. He had to make collect calls or he would have gotten in trouble for stealing phone service. So I had to wait for him to call me since I couldn’t call him. And he didn’t really feel like climbing 20 feet up a tree every day to talk to me. I guess true love has its limits!

Now the fact that it was not easy to communicate while I was planning our wedding had its problems. The biggest one was the fact that the date and time  were not completely settled when he left for Oregon. I could have conveyed all the necessary info when he called me but I wanted to be sure he had it. After all I didn’t want to be standing at the altar while he was landing in Pittsburgh.

I figured out a way to make sure he would know when his wedding was. I sent him an invitation. I mailed my groom an invitation to his own wedding. I saved him the trouble of carrying a pen and paper 20 feet up the holly tree to write the information down. All I had to worry about was that he would drive the 12 miles to pick up his “general delivered” mail.

Obviously, he did because we will soon celebrate 36 years of wedded bliss.

As I was a child, when I wasn’t working the rock pile or helping around the house, I was playing. I was too busy playing to see a television commercial to tell me to play.

In the summer, the neighbor kids, my brothers and I played horseshoes. The shoes were actually from some horse that had been re-shod. When the horse was done with them they gave them to the children to play with. Re-cycling at work again.

It was easy to set up for a game of horseshoes. We’d drive 2 pieces of pipe in the ground about 15 feet apart and we were ready. We’d decide beforehand how many points you got for a ringer, how many for a shoe that leaned on the stake, and how many for a shoe that was close enough to the stake that it could be measured with the opening of the shoe. We learned all of the ways to garner a point by watching the adults play. The goal of course was to ring the stake (pipe) with the shoe. Believe it or not, it takes some skill to make this happen. The shoe is heavy, the opening on it is small, and 15 feet can be pretty far away for a child. Sometimes the less even tempered among us could be downright dangerous during a game. One kid in particular had a hard time losing and sometimes he’d fling the shoes at his opponent instead of the stake. I’m sure this wouldn’t be allowed in government encouraged playtime. And truth is sometimes our horse shoe games lasted way more than an hour. I guess we were really physically fit.

When our own children were growing up they never needed a TV commercial to encourage them to play either. It was amazing but they seemed to take to it as naturally as I did. Maybe playing is a gene thing and my kids got it from me. They played baseball, hide n seek, put on plays in their playhouse, flew kites, and a few dozen other activities that I consider play. And they still managed to work around the house like I believe growing children should. Another generation of kids who were physically fit. And they didn’t even have a television to watch commercials on!

And now the next generation is taking up the idea of play (and work). Our granddaughter is always running, dancing, jumping, singing. She loves to play in water or sand. She thinks walking to visit her grandparents is a great way to get here. The kid just knows how to play and exercise naturally.

Knowing how to play just has to be inherited. I’m darn near convinced that if you don’t have the play gene to get physically fit you better watch TV to see how it’s accomplished. I’m so glad it came naturally to me and mine.

I know I have made fun about the physical fitness of the children of our nation but it is a serious problem as can be seen by the statistics below:

• Since 1980, the number of overweight children has doubled
• 1/3 of young people in grades 9-12 don’t regularly engage in vigorous physical activity.
• Out of overweight 5 to 10-year-olds, 61% have one risk factor for heart disease, and 26% have two or more risk factors.
• Hospital costs related to treating overweight and obese children and adolescents more than tripled from $35 million during 1979-1981 to $127 million during 1997-1999.  (http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=389)

As my dear old dad said at nearly every evening meal, “You’ll never get fat if you go away from the table a little bit hungry.” Following this advice, along with lots of work and play has worked for my family fit for 3 generations!

When our children were growing up, kindergarten was a half day affair. You either went to the morning session or the one after lunch. I still think it’s a better plan. That means a 5-year-old only spends half the day away from home. But I’m admittedly old fashioned when it comes to caring for children.

Our daughter was in the morning session and loved every minute of it. Her teacher was a wonderful woman who was old enough to be her grandmother. She was everything I wanted for our daughter’s first teacher. Kind, strict with a sense of fairness, and a handle on the fact that kids need to have fun.

The 4 hours of school were wisely planned each day. Some supervised play time to allow the children to interact with each other. There was the usual rote recitation of the alphabet and counting, and the favorite part for our little darling–story time.

The story was always the last thing of the morning so the children went home with what they just heard uppermost in their minds. Some times the story would teach a lesson about manners or morals and sometimes it was just a fun story. Our daughter always tried to get the most out of what was read to her.

Often she would share the story on our drive home but sometimes we never knew what she had just listened to. Then there were rare occasions when she would apply the story to her present circumstances. One particular day it was very easy for me to figure out what she had just heard.

Lunch always immediately followed our return from kindergarten. After lunch on the day I’m thinking of I asked my little girl to do what I had asked her many times before. But I was about to get a response that was entirely new. I said, “Honey, while I clean up the dishes I want you to go clean up your room and put your toys away, please.” She did not hesitate. She turned and walked to her room. In no time at all she was back in the kitchen. A very annoyed child was standing in front of me. Her little hands were on those little 5-year-old hips declaring, “Why do I have to clean my room? I feel just like Cinderella!”

I knew what story was read that morning.

As I sat in the dark I started to think about how we never lost our electricity when we lived in Oregon. It’s a good thing too because turning the light switch in the kitchen on and off was a bit more involved than flipping a switch.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I was a little disappointed with our first house. I know it was only a rental but somehow I expected more. For example the light switch I just mentioned. Actually there was no switch at all. But there were wires! True, there were only two, a black and a white, but still I was used to a switch to turn lights on. In this kitchen I had to connect the wires that stuck out of the wall together if I wanted light. (Trust me I wanted to be able to see.) I will say my husband had made convenient little hooks on the end of the wire so keeping them together was easier.

Then there was the way the washer was plumbed. I wasn’t a plumber but I still knew that the way our washer drained was not exactly going to meet any code (there weren’t any). Not to mention it was just so wrong. Here’s what happened when our washer drained. It ran out the pipe that was sticking out the side of the house. So every time I did laundry it looked like out house was urinating. It was downright embarrassing to be standing outside talking to the neighbors and whoops the house starts peeing. No one ever mentioned it so I guess they had the same fella install their plumbing.

The floors in houses where a logger lived were also a sight to behold. Did I mention that Herman was a logger? The best way to describe the floor in our little place was as if someone with a hundred nails sticking out the bottom of their boots walked on it for years. And you know what? That is exactly what happened! Logger’s boots have nails on the bottom of them for traction in the woods and on logs. More nails means more traction. And the little nicety of taking your shoes off when you come inside was not ever going to happen here. Logger boots went to just under the knee and no man that worked in the woods was going to take his boots off to go in and out.

I also had a shock when the winter weather came. Winter on the Oregon coast came and went quickly. I was used to winter settling in around Thanksgiving and not easing it’s grip until late March. The area we lived in on the coast had about 6 weeks of winter. It was cold, with snow in the higher elevations. Occasionally snow fell where we lived but it mostly rained. The shock was when our water pipe which came from a spring in the mountain above us would completely freeze. No water! It was never frozen the full 6 weeks but it was about half that time. I had to carry water from the little branch beside our house for necessities. To shower we packed up and went to a public facility. I guess the folks who ran it waited all year for people like us.

That little house was always giving me surprises. After surviving the winter, getting a light switch installed, learning to live with a house that had no bathroom manners, I figured I had weathered the worst and could laugh about it. And then came the flying ants!

The flying ants were a real phenomenon not to mention scary and nasty too. These particular ants apparently had a previous lease on the place. I didn’t realize they were sleeping the whole time until they woke up. In the bathroom! Hundreds of hundreds of flying ants greeted me one morning when I opened the bathroom door. They hatched out of the walls and were going stir crazy in that small space. When I pulled the door open they came at me like an army. These ants must have been on steroids or at least multivitamins. They were the biggest flying ants I have ever seen. Their wings resembled bi-planes. I screamed like I was being attacked by an army. My screams got easy-going Herman shook up, until he saw it was only the return of the ants. He almost acted like he missed them. He calmly declared they would only be around for a week or so. Ten days at the most. He explained how they were hatching out, how it happened every year about this time- nothing to get upset about. He told me I would probably want to wait a bit to shower, you know give the little creatures time to get their wings and move out into other areas of the house. Did he think this was really calming me?

Or we could kill as many as we could. This was the route I took. I stomped, swatted, beat, and battered every place that even looked like an ant to me. Then I swept up the remains and waited for it to happen all over again. It was a long week and at the end of it I was sure of one thing. I hate flying ants!

But I have never hated old houses in spite of my first experience. I still notice old fixer-uppers and wonder what they would look like given half a chance.

A world without thermostats. A world with wood stoves. I learned quickly how to build a fire in a wood stove. Our stove was not airtight so it had a burn time of about 2 hours. That meant if you left for longer than 2 hours when you returned it would be cold. I always tried to be home in 2 hours.

It was also a world of eating fish and venison. My husband was an avid hunter and fisherman. His reason for hunting and fishing was for the food it provided. I didn’t know what to think when he informed me shortly after my arrival that all we would be eating was either salmon, trout, deer, or elk. How long would I survive was the question because I didn’t eat any of those things! But again I was amazed at how quickly I adapted to my new world. I learned to eat (and eventually love) fish and venison. The will to live trumped the taste buds.

It was a world with out television. No kidding, there was no signal. It was before satellites and the mountains that rimmed the valley were so high no antennae would work. I was glad I enjoyed reading and found the library, which I visited once a week.

It was also a world without radio after 6:00 PM. I found one radio station that came in but promptly at six o’clock it would play the national anthem and go silent. If you weren’t comfortable with yourself or your spouse there weren’t a lot of things to distract you. For entertainment the first year, Herman and I read the entire Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs together. I mean we read each page at the same time through all 24 books. He always had to wait for me because he reads faster, even Tarzan books! Talk about bonding, huh?

It was a world without a lot of sunshine. The months of November through March are when it rains more. I arrived in very early October so I saw more rain and less sun the first six months. I learned to do everything in the rain because it doesn’t quit. I bought a rain coat and read more books.

It was a world with party line telephones. A party line telephone was like having all of your neighbors on your telephone line. I grew up with that in Pennsylvania but by the time I had reached my teens we had a private line. Nowadays every line is private. Being on a party line meant I had to be courteous and careful all at the same time. I learned to pick up the receiver and quickly determine if the line was free to make a call, in other words if I didn’t hear a conversation. I also had to be careful to never leave it off the hook. This would effectively render every telephone on the line useless. The careful part was I listened through my own conversations for that telltale sound of someone picking up. Nosy people stayed on the line to listen to what was talked about. It was a great tool for gossipers. I guess they were disappointed progress brought privacy to the phone system.

It was a world with nice, friendly people. I can honestly say I never met anyone who wasn’t friendly except maybe my neighbor Hannah.

I met Hannah one day when I was baking a pie. My hands were covered in flour and dough when I heard a pounding on the front door. Not a polite knock but an angry pounding. I quickly went to the door and as soon as I turned the knob it was pushed in by a rather stout woman. She stood about 4 and a half feet tall and was about 3 feet wide. She did not introduce herself but with hands on her hips she demanded to know where our telephone was. I didn’t understand but meekly pointed to the corner where our black desk phone sat on a little table. In spite of her girth she moved quick to look closely at the phone. What she saw took all the wind from her sails. She turned to face me and what I saw was a different woman. Her angry countenance was gone. She looked ashamed and contrite. She immediately began to apologize for her behavior. She explained that she needed to use the telephone. Every time she tried to use it, it was busy. The logical conclusion was someone had left their phone off the hook. Since I was the new to the neighborhood she made the leap that I was the guilty party. Since she couldn’t call me and ask, she had to come in person. By the time she actually got to our house she was whopping mad!

I accepted Hannah’s apology. We introduced ourselves and began anew. She was now part of my new world and I wanted all the friends I could get.

I was 18 years old and wanted to try my hand at growing something to eat. Anything would do. I went to my uncle who was a big time (in my mind) vegetable grower. I asked him for help and he agreed. Knowing what I know now, I realize he did not expend much thought or effort but I was so excited and grateful. He came to our house with his rototiller and prepared a little patch of earth for me to plant. At his suggestion I planted onions!

My growing onions gave me a wonderful sense  of accomplishment. I checked their growth every day and could not wait till I could put one in my mouth. I know it was only onions but for a girl who wanted to grow something I was completely delighted. I also learned that sharing your produce was nearly as rewarding as growing it.

The first place my husband and I lived had about 12 acres. With this much space I eagerly awaited spring so  I could have my first honest to goodness garden. I purchased seeds in the late winter, carefully planning what we would plant. What I didn’t realize was I had married a man who did not share my enthusiasm for gardening. So spring and summer passed and the seeds remained in their packets. I thought, O well! I did plant onions once.

Little did I know that my gardening fortunes were about to change. It was probably the economics of it, after all you can save a lot of money if you produce your own food. At any rate, after waiting nearly 5 years my husband decided a garden was a really good idea. I have never done a cartwheel but I wanted to! We were going to grow stuff we could eat. My husband comes from a long line of farming and gardening folk. His paternal grandfather had a truck farm, his maternal grandfather a dairy farm. His father had a degree in Horticultural and loved to garden (both food and flowers). So I guess it was inevitable that my man would wake up one day and say, “Let’s plant a garden.” And I thank God he did!

Our first garden was not big but quite adequate. We decided on the usual things- tomatoes, lettuce, onions, peppers, beans, and corn. A trip to the feed and seed store was exciting. So many varieties to choose from and I knew so little! What I never knew was the knowledge that this man I married had on the subject. It was amazing and comforting to know that only one half of the garden team was a greenhorn. He walked up and down the aisles like a pro. He picked out bush beans, not pole. He wanted a butter and sugar corn.  He didn’t forget the fertilizer either and he knew what kind to get. O Yeah, this guy was a gardener after all!

Next came the soil preparation. We borrowed a rototiller and worked the ground. Back and forth, tearing up the grass and weeds and softening the earth to lay our seeds in. It was hard work because it was a new garden spot.  We had to rake out the clods of grass, rocks, and roots. Once it was clear of these things we smoothed it all over. Our next big decision was what went where. Again this guy I married happily surprised me. I was just going to take the hoe and carve out a line in the soil but he showed me the way real gardeners accomplish this task. We took string and tied it between two stakes. Then we positioned the stakes where we wanted the row to be. We pulled the string tight and that created a nice straight line to follow. I was impressed.

We dropped our seeds in, spaced according to package directions. Next we put fertilizer right down the side of the rows after the seeds were covered with soil. We were busy as can be.

Meanwhile our children were right beside us. Not only were they helping, they were learning how to garden. That is how my husband learned so much. He was with his own father from the time he was a child and now he was the father.

Our children thought it was a great adventure. They understood clearly that we were going to get the things we wanted to eat from planting the seeds of those things. To make it more special we set aside a little space for our daughter and son to plant their own seeds. They were allowed to choose what seeds they wanted to put in their little patch. Our daughter wanted to plant beans. We found the bean seeds and she carefully placed them in the ground, gently covering them with dirt. She was the oldest and had already put some of the seeds in for our garden.

Meanwhile, our son was busy going through all the seed packages trying to find the one he wanted. He was not able to read but he was looking at all the pictures.  When we asked him what he was going to plant he looked at us with exasperation asking, “Where are the hamburger seeds?” I think he understood the concept of having a garden to feed your family better than we did.

He never did find hamburger seeds.

Since that first little garden we have had many more. And my husband has worked very hard in every one of them. All of our children have gardens of their own. Our granddaughter (age 2) helped her mom and dad plant theirs this year. And so it goes.

I grew up picking berries in the summer. First there were the wild strawberries. We picked them in the field beside the small airport that was up the road from our house. There were always enough for 3 or 4 strawberry shortcakes. When they would quit bearing we would move to the huckleberries.

Huckleberries are the wild cousin of the domesticated blueberry. Most of the time they are smaller and     black. The taste is pretty much the same but they grow on bushes that are low to the ground. (perfectly suited for children to pick) We would pick our huckleberries at a place we called “The Cuts” it was an old strip mining area not too far from our house. It had hundreds of bushes and my brother and I and other neighborhood kids would pick gallons of these berries. My mom would make up pies in aluminum pie pans and freeze them. Then all through the fall and winter we would have huckleberry pies. It was a great feeling knowing there were pies waiting to be baked. When these berries played out we moved on to blackberry picking.

Blackberries were picked at a place called “The Pits.” It was a very large area with a huge, deep hole in the middle of it. A factory used the place to dump garbage in when I was a kid. I don’t know what the original purpose was. It had tons of blackberry bushes. The berries were usually big and juicy. We would pick gallon after gallon of blackberries. My mom would repeat the pie process with these berries but she would also make jam. I still love blackberry jam but with less seeds than my mom made. The last berry to ripen was the elderberry.

Elderberries grow on small trees or large bushes. You can find elderberry bushes just about anywhere. They have a very sour taste on their own. (No problem getting all you picked home with these berries.) My mother used the elderberry exclusively for jelly. They are easy to make juice from and the jelly has a wonderful taste.

All of these berries have a limited time to be picked before they dried up or critters would eat them. That meant when the berry picking season began you could not procrastinate. I guess as kids we felt like it was our responsibility to get the berries while we could. And it felt good to know we had contributed to the food supply. Especially the one that answered the sweet tooth cravings.

Berry picking continued to be a big part of our children’s lives as well. While my husband was at work, I and our children would often go blackberry picking. Because my husband loves to use jelly on hotdogs, hamburgers, and other sandwiches, this meant using every available berry around for making jelly. One year we managed to pick enough berries of various kinds to make 100 jars of jelly. Now that’s some serious berry picking!

No matter where we have lived we have managed to find berries to pick, and with those berries make wonderful desserts, jellies, or pies.

Berry picking is not only how it used to be but how it still is.

Now I haven’t been camping for a long time. The sleep on the ground inside a tent kind of camping is what I’m talking about. At my age I like to sleep in a bed (preferably my own) and take a hot shower. But I always did enjoy the experiences we had when we’d pack up and spend time in a tent.

When our children were very small we bought a canvas tent. Canvas tents can still be purchased but they are a bit pricier and they are not as easily erected. Ours was 8′ x10′ with a window in the back and a zipper on the doorway. The first time we used our tent it had to be conditioned for rain. That meant setting it up in the yard before we ever actually went camping and running water on it from the hose. Set up was not too complicated as long as you could read. It was not as easy as we had thought but we were so excited about our future as campers.

Every year the company my husband worked for would shut down for a week during the July 4th holiday. We didn’t have a lot of money so we decided we could go on inexpensive vacations with our new tent. We would attend the annual family picnic on the 4th of July and then pack up for the week.

Our children were both under the age of three. So we packed all kinds of things besides the necessities for staying a week at a state park. We also had a large German Shepard that was part of the excursion. The place we camped was called Twin Lakes. The lake was fed by natural springs and so the water temperature was never much above 55 degrees. It was a very lovely spot to spend a week.

Our days were spent with early breakfast at the picnic table followed by camp clean-up and then a trip to the lake for some fun in the sand if not the water. Next came lunch and a nap followed by swimming, playing, with maybe a walk around the lake. It was a wonderful adventure for our children and despite the work of camping it was relaxing.

The evenings meant showers that were provided by the campground. Now just as the lake was fed by cold springs, the water for the showers was too. The showers and bathrooms were a good distance from our campsite so my husband would take our son, I would take our daughter and we would get them showered.

The bathroom/shower building was partitioned by a wall that did not go all the way to the ceiling. That meant that there was no privacy as far as sound was concerned. So when the water at 55 degrees hit our children’s little bodies what followed were simultaneous, ear shattering screams- on both sides of the building. It was embarrassing and funny at the same time. Every evening about 7:00  we would walk to the showers and about 5 minutes later the screaming would begin. (I guess if it were to happen now we would be investigated for child abuse.) When we were finished we would quietly walk back to our campsite hoping no one had noticed the caterwauling. It happened every evening for 6 days.

What is interesting was the fact that the kids never complained about the showers. They never fought going even though they knew it would be cold. I guess one explanation is they loved every other aspect of camping enough to endure some cold water on them for a few minutes.

We continued to do the lake camping trip until our 3rd child came along and other things took precedence. When we moved away from our home town we did camp again numerous times. We actually camped while   we traveled across the country for 5 weeks. Today both of our sons enjoy camping. I guess the experiences as kid campers worked out okay.