Craft Show

The LBHS Band Boosters put on a craft show annually to raise funds. This year I went.

Lots of jewelry.

It was very crowded.

An old teacher from high school days with author Tammy C. Ferris

The book cover was drawn by Dorothy Etzler Barnett (my husband's cousin).

Some of Dorothy Etzler's Christmas ornaments she had for sale.

Like I said, it was crowded.

Cousin Dorothy.

Bruffey Memorial United Methodist Church

Back in May, when we were tooling around the borders of Virginia and West Virginia, we took a side trip over to Gap Mills, West Virginia.

The land there is lovely. From Sweet Springs to Gap Mills, there is a long valley full of gorgeous farmland.

We were searching for a church called the Bruffey Church. That was all I knew about it at the time. Allegedly some of my relatives started this church.

We could not get inside the building, and while we ran into one person there, that person offered no information about the structure or its history.

It's a plain little country church

You see structures like these all over southwestern Virginia and West Virginia.

My husband wondered why the cross was lopsided on the front.

The full name of the church is the Bruffey Memorial United Methodist Church. I don't know if it has always been Methodist.

As best I can tell from an unproductive internet search, about 30 people attend services here. There was no cemetery attached to the church so I am not sure where relatives who attended this structure might be buried.

There is a Facebook page for the church and I've written to see if there is a history available. I'll update if so.

A Poem From Great Great Grandfather

My great-great grandfather, Charles E. Simms, wrote this poem after the death of his son, Cecil James Simms.  The child allegedly died from measles. Grandfather Simms was a traveling preacher and teacher.

Untitled Poem
Charles E. Simms

 

Returning once unto my home

Along a muddy way

The path that through the fields did come

I took that fatal day.

 

Near by a neighbor farmhouse stood

I, weary, sad, thought best

to stop with them, partake of food,

and gain a little rest.

 

Fate lays her hand in silent state

Unwarned on all of earth

Regardless of the small or great,

Or those of noble birth

 

Fate, her silent stroke fell on me

I, measles did inhale,

The billows of life's troubled sea

Rose by the stirring gale.

 

There was a flower in my home,

A darling little boy;

No dearer object there could come,

This precious little toy.

 

I used to take my darling son

When near the close of day

The busy cares then being done

And sing in joyful lay(?)

 

"I never will cease to love him

My, Jimmy, my Jimmy!

I will never cease to love him

He's done so much for me."

 

But when the sickness seized this flower,

It drooping, withered, died.

We strove to save it from that feover;

It perished by our side.

 

We sadly laid him in the grave

To wait that coming day:

One by one the Savior gathers,

choicest flowers rich, and rare,

He'll transplant them in his garden,

They will bloom forever there.

 

 

Here are the original documents. They are hard to read, and I suppose if you're a younger person who can't read cursive writing, you can't read them at all.

 

 

 

 

Remembering Grandma

Yesterday was the anniversary of my maternal grandmother's death. She died on June 28, 2007.

I can hardly believe it has been 11 years.

My grandmother took care of me when I was small, and after I went to school, she took care of me when I was sick. Since I have always been puny, I generally missed anywhere from 30-35 days of school because of bronchial issues. I must have had bronchitis and/or walking pneumonia every year.

When I was sick, Grandma let me watch TV, which was a big deal because she could get more channels than we could down in the country. At Grandma's house, I could watch The Price is Right, which I think was one of her favorites because we never missed it. I also watched Dark Shadows, which I was really too young to be watching but I absolutely loved that show. It was also during this time that I began watching The Guiding Light, a soap opera that my grandmother seldom missed. I was too young to be watching that, too, I suppose.

Grandma was very good about giving me lots of chicken noodle soup along with Granddaddy cookies when I wasn't well. (Granddaddy cookies are what we called Little Debbie Oatmeal Cookies, because my grandfather took them with him for lunch every day. I still call them Granddaddy cookies.)

If I was very sick, Grandma would sit me in her lap, wrap me in an afghan made by Aunt Susie (her sister), and sing me to sleep. She usually sang, "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage. I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two." That's the one I remember the best.

Grandma also had a set of World Book Encyclopedias and she was very proud of those books. I could look at them if I wasn't too snotty or coughing a lot. I liked to sit and read them. I don't know that I've ever met another person who has said they sat and read the encyclopedia, but I loved looking at them and reading them.

I read anything I could find in the house. I read my aunt's Nancy Drew books, and a series of books that included children's novels like The Silver Skates and Five Little Peppers and How They Grew that apparently were strictly decoration because I think I'm the only person who ever read them. Grandma had a cherished set of The Little House books and I read all of those, too. Being sick wasn't necessarily fun - but since I liked to read I can't say I minded it all that much.

Grandma gave me lots of love, and I was a child who needed lots of love. I needed more love than I did discipline because I wasn't a naughty kid. Inquisitive, yes, but not naughty (my father may beg to differ, but really I was a good child). I asked lots of questions and seldom accepted pat answers. If you told me the sky was blue because God made it that way, you would get another, "why?" out of me. Yes, I was one of those children, always asking why.

My grandmother, who only had a fourth grade education, fostered my love of knowledge. She read the paper from front to back, including the advertisements, and she would read it to me. I was reading the paper without help by the time I was four and I have hardly missed a day of reading a newspaper since. A half-century of reading The Roanoke Times ought to be rewarded with something, you know? Especially when you're just a little older than a half-century yourself.

As I aged, I saw less of Grandma, and when I was old enough to stay by myself when I was sick, I did, unless I was very sick. By then my grandmother would have been in her late 40s or early 50s (she was a young mother and her youngest child is a year younger than I am - my mother was young, too) and probably a little more wary of germs. After my grandfather died when I was 12, her life changed and not for the better. She lived on Social Security because my grandfather died like 2 days before he was fully vested in his pension at Kroger, where he worked, and they refused to give my grandmother any of his pension money. For years after that, my mother and the rest of the family refused to shop at Kroger. I can't say I blame them. My grandmother's life would have been much better if they had been a bit lenient on the rules.

She lost her husband and my mother before she died, along with a sister and a brother. People handle death in different ways and of course I was a child when my grandfather left us. I never really knew how she felt about my mother's death. It had to have been painful and terribly difficult to lose your eldest child.

Some nights when I am lonesome I talk to my Grandma. She doesn't give me advice - she usually didn't do that - but she was a good listener. So I know she hears me even if I don't get a response back. I think I might have to have a good long talk with her very, very soon.

Grandma

My Mother's Birthday

Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 74, but she died in 2000 at the age of 56 - just one year older than I am now.

She had pancreatic cancer, which is a terrible cancer and one that is almost always fatal. You know if even Patrick Swayze and Steve Jobs can't beat it, with all the money they must have had, it's not something the average person has much chance of surviving.

This is a "Glamour Shots" photo of my mother circa 1993:

She would have been 49 when this was taken. Who would have thought she wouldn't be with us just seven years later?

I was 37 years old when my mother passed away. My experiences with death at that time were few - only my grandfathers and relatives who lived out of state and thus not exactly "real" to me anyway. I would like to think I would handle it better now that I am older, but there is no point in second guessing such things. You do the best you can at the time with what you have, and if that doesn't suit, it was still the best you could do so the outcome would not have been different.

She would not have liked to have been an "old woman" so this is pretty much the way she will always be remembered, looking beautiful as she approached 50. Forever young.

California Cousin

My father's family moved to California when I was about 6 months old. He stayed behind in Virginia while my grandfather, grandmother, and my father's two older brothers and his younger sister headed west.

I grew up not really knowing that side of the family. I never met my father's younger sister, who passed away a few years ago. I have cousins out there I don't know and probably will never meet.

My grandparents were people who visited with years in between - people who sent me presents at Christmas and infrequent voices on the phone. While I tried to change that when I became an adult with a lot of letter-writing to my grandfather, distances like that can be difficult to overcome.

My cousins out in California knew my grandparents much better than I ever could have. They saw them more frequently and spent lots of time with them. That side of the family has different experiences than I did.

So anyway, my first cousin, Steve, and his wife, Lisa, came out this past week for a visit. They went to the beach with my father and stepmother, so I did not see much of them. But here are a few shots from our brief visit.

Steve's wife, Lisa. I had not met her before though we are Facebook friends and have had a few brief chats.

This is my 1st cousin, Steve. He is my father's oldest brother's son, i.e., "Uncle Ken's boy."
He worked for my father for a while back in the early 1990s and he and my husband
shared a passion for NASCAR, so I did get to know him a bit.

My father and my stepmother, Rita.

Steve and Lisa.

Lisa taking a funny photo of Steve wherein he has horns coming out of his head. She said he looked like Shrek
in the photo.

My father, my stepmother, and cousin, Steve. Can you see a family resemblance between my father and his nephew?

My father, Lisa, and Steve.

Dance Recital

Every year my niece participates in a dance recital through Floyd Ward's School of Dance. It is a two-day affair with three shows.

My brother in recent years has participated in what they call the "Dads Dance" which ends with a father-daughter dance.

Here are some rather blurry photos of the event. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember which of my cameras worked best in the terrible lighting in the auditorium (you're not supposed to take pictures anyway but of course people do).  I was also sitting a little further back than I have in the past, and that didn't help with the photography. No flash, so I needed a better low-light camera than the one I took.

Ah well. At least I was there.

Excited? Or Curious?

My brother has set about on a new course on his life. He has ended one chapter and is moving on to another.

My brother

I'm excited for him. I wish him well and much happiness. He does not ask for, nor does he need, my approval (and he doesn't always get it anyhow), but I am hopeful that he will find happiness and peace. We all need a calm life and he certainly could use a lot less drama. He has plenty of that simply from his position as president of my father's company, not to mention all the mess that goes with having a personal life. Stress is a killer, and I do worry about his stress levels.

I'm curious to see what decisions he makes from here. Who will he be? I've always kept an eye on him, watching him grow up, as he is three years younger than I. As my only sibling, he has always had me in the big sister role. I looked out for him so well that I once decked a boy in high school who was picking on him. You didn't mess with my brother when I was around.

Seems like just yesterday I was teaching him to read. Now he's heading into the latter stages of middle age (he's over 50, like me), and I'm watching him walk through many opening doors.

I hope he wins the grand prize.


__________________
Linking up with the April challenge from Kwizgiver. April 30 done! (Prompt: One thing you're excited for.)  Thanks KG, for the month of prompts.

A Grandmother's Quilt

One of the items we received for Christmas this year was one of the quilts pieced together by James' grandmother on his mother's side.

She was a great quilter and my mother-in-law was able to give a quilt this year to us, my husband's sister, and each of her two children.

 

I thought the pink squares were an interesting color to throw in there. It increases the visual interest in the piece.

 

Quilting has an interesting history, especially as it pertains to women. I don't know much about it because I haven't studied it, but I understand that women have been known to leave messages, advice, and other hidden notes in quilts and other types of needlecraft.

 

This is a great family keepsake.

 

 

Our "Eclipse Party"

As I noted in a blog post on Monday, I had serious concerns about my camera equipment and my ability to get the photos I wanted during our 90% eclipse.

I had resigned myself to trying to use my Nikon D3200, which doesn't have a movable monitor. This meant that in order to see the eclipse through the monitor and line things up, I was going to have to turn myself into a pretzel or something, since I needed to use a tripod and the self-timer on the camera.

Inspiration hit when I went to the bathroom. No, not that kind of inspiration! I figured out a way to put the solar film over my Nikon Coolpix P500, which is a point and shoot and truly my favorite camera.

 



I placed the solar film over the toilet paper tube, cut the tub in a few places so it would slide over the extension/zoom on my camera, and viola! I could now use the camera with the moveable monitor and the one with the best zoom on it. All I had to do was take the solar film on and off.

This worked well, as you can see from the photos.

With that all set, and my glasses available (including some that Amazon supposedly recalled and said they would refund me for, but no money has yet fallen into my account), my husband and I, along with my mother-in-law, settled in to watch the totality on TV and the eclipse from our area.

My goofy husband models his eclipse glasses.

We went old school, too, and made viewers out of cereal boxes.

My mother-in-law with her ball cap and dark sunglasses.

During the 90% part, it was this dark. The world seemed more like a burnt orange color, which unfortunately did not show up in the photo. But it did grow rather dark. The rooster down the street crowed the entire time the eclipse was going on.

My husband takes a gander at the sun through his special specs.

My mother-in-law looking through her special specs.

It was fun to take the afternoon off and enjoy a Mother Nature show. For me, the best thing was that for a few minutes there, we were once again a united people, with a lot of us, anyway, enjoying a spectacle that didn't involve death or destruction and nothing but warnings to not look at the sun (which you shouldn't do anyhow). See, we can come together and overcome our differences. We just have to do it in the 2 minutes of darkness during a total eclipse.

Remembering Grandma

Ten years ago today, my grandmother passed away.

She was my mother's mother.  Here is a picture of my grandmother with her daughter as an infant:

My mother, the eldest of six children, passed away in 2000, seven years before my grandmother died at the age of 84. I know that was a great loss to her. Losing a child would be among the hardest things a parent would have to endure.

My grandmother was a homemaker. My grandfather, who died in 1976, worked at the Kroger warehouse in Salem. He had a strange shift; he went in very early and was always home by 4:15 p.m. That was also when he wanted to eat, so I remember many early dinners at my grandmother's house.

She kept me and my brother when we were young. My mother's office was only a block from my grandparents' house, so she could drop us off and pick us up without problem. After we started school, Grandma also kept us if we were sick, during school holidays, on the weekends, and during the summers. She did this until I was old enough to take care of my brother and myself all day.

Grandma was not overly strict. We had a few rules I can remember. Don't mess with Granddaddy's tools in the basement. Don't go near the river (she lived on the Roanoke River, in the area that is now a greenway, though her old home is one of the few that still stands along East Riverside Drive). Don't ride your bicycle in the middle of the street. Things like that.

She would rock you and sing A Bicycle Built for Two if you skinned your knee. She made chocolate pudding in the summer for special treats. Occasionally, if we were very good, we'd get a Granddaddy cookie (an Oatmeal Crème Little Debbie Cookie). (My grandfather carried them in his lunch.) She read to us, too, even though she never finished school. I remember one of her proudest possessions was a set of World Book Encyclopedias. I loved to sit and look at them, though I always had to do it with clean hands.

My grandmother's family is from Salem, while my grandfather's family hails from where I now live. My grandmother grew up on Front Street in this house:

My grandmother grew up in the house on the right; in her later years,
she lived with my aunt in the house on the left.**

After my grandparents married, they lived on Front Street, too, but above a general store. My mother was born in this store.

My grandparents lived in the apartment above. My mother was born there.**

Grandma loved to quilt. She gave me a beautiful maple leaf quilt for a wedding present. I have it safely stored away.

My mother, my grandmother, and my aunt
at my wedding in 1983.

Me and my grandmother at my
wedding.

One of my best memories of my grandmother was when I was going to the prom (with a guy not my husband), and I made him drive all the way to Salem so I could show my grandmother my prom dress. She cried.

In 1985, we had a big flood and the Roanoke River, for about the 4th time, invaded my grandmother's house. She lost everything in the basement again. Fortunately the river never got into the main part of the house, but it sure made a mess of the basement.  Grandma was rather depressed after that. She didn't have my grandfather to help her clean up, so my husband and I, along with many other family members, volunteered to help haul away the smelly mess. At Christmas, when she refused to put up a tree, I resolutely went to the store and bought a small one and put it on a table for her. I don't know that it helped, but Christmas at Grandma's had always been special. I wasn't about to let that tradition go away. I did my best to buoy her spirits.

Not long after that, my aunt returned to the area and she built a house next to where my grandmother grew up. She moved my grandmother in there to live with her and my young cousin.

My grandmother fell in the late 1990s and broke her shoulder. After that, she became somewhat timid, and she moved to Georgia to stay with my aunt after my mother passed away. She came back here because she wanted to die "at home," which was in Salem. She stayed at an assisted living facility for several years before she passed away.

My grandmother in her older years.*

I think Grandma had a good life. Her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren have gone on to do interesting things. She took good care of us all.

Most of all, she loved us, all of us, no matter what we did.


*I just today learned that my grandmother's middle name prior to marriage, when her last name became her middle name as it is traditionally done here, was Odell. I found it on Ancestry. Her nickname was Rosie, and that was what most people called her.

** The photos of the houses came from Google Earth, so they are current pictures. Or as current as Google Earth is, anyway.