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Kokomo Kootsie
3/02/2002
Nibbles- Bits & Pieces
The Golden Age
Come grow old along with me, the best of life is yet to be; the best of life, for which the first were made.
So said, Algermon Charles Swinburne! However! It seems there is more to growing old than his romantic poem; it's more apt to quote Shakespeare's "All the World's a Stage," from 'As you Like It!'
Shakespeare claims there are seven stages in a man's life, and describes them. The last two stages seem very pertinent to growing old, quoted here:
"The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes,
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
In second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
Swainburn had never gotten there yet. And those who call it 'The Golden Age, hasn't been there either!
However, the alternative, does make it seem more desirable to try for it.
But, oh, to turn back the clock; to have a sort of an age time machine; to sort of look back into the mirror and see all that which is supposed to be, and was, once again back up where it belongs. Not sagging and hanging down to resemble the face of a bloodhound.
See once so bright eyes, grown so dim, one could only guess their original color. The sparkle is gone. Some, swallowed up in layers of fat, and others with a fold of skin hanging over half the eyes.
Some bodies, so thin, there is danger of them sliding down the drain when they shower; while others resemble a big jute bag filled with grain, all the person settled toward the bottom of bag with only upper part of torso jutting out.
Then how do the Golden Age people feel? Ha! Let's start with the feet and work up. The feet are badly swollen, resembling an old pair of rubber gloves, blown up; except for the hard yellow, bent and misshapen toenails, and the twisted angle of the toes, and knots and knobs sticking all over them!
The ankles look as though huge rubber washers were put around them, while the legs resemble tree stumps, except for the purple, spidery veins spiraling all over them.
The knees! So smooth and shiny and round, grown to look like bald heads bowed in prayer. Worst of all, they don't want to do their job anymore, almost forgotten how. Arms are needed to pull up erect, or climb stairs or even walk, holding on to some object.
The stomach because it's all hanging down below; that doesn't keep it for having it's say. First it wants nothing to eat when it needs it most. Nothing sounds appetizing. Next, it demands food, when it doesn't need or shouldn't have food; and the worst kind of fare. It shows it's ungratefulness by tossing it back. No pleasing that stomach. It takes it out on the bowels, by not preparing the food for them. They in turn punish by refusing to take action, not knowing who to blame! The Golden Ager is always at odds with the plumbing!
The belly hangs down almost to the knees, and inside that bloated bag, nothing seems to do it's work right. The bladder lets loose anytime, anywhere; while the bowels have to be primed to get them started.
The hip joints are not on speaking terms with the knees and want help get the legs and feet working, for stiffness and pain.
Then the heart, the lungs! The lungs lets the breath flow because they don't want to be cremated yet; but the heart wants the say so and shortens the breath by bringing up the blood pressure.
Your structure is O.K. until you bust some of it up by a fall or some sort of accident. Then everything seems to fall apart, and there is never a really well day again and then Golden Age has been reached, and 'enjoyed' and soon it's time to fly away!
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| EPM 2002 - 2005 |
Kokomo Kootsie
3/01/2002
Nibbles- Bits & Pieces
It was asked someone once why North America is so rich, and South America is so poor? The answer: They came to South America looking for gold. But, in North America, they came looking for God.
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| EPM 2002 - 2005 |
Kokomo Kootsie
2/27/2002
Nibbles- Bits & Pieces
Faith
The huge waves were battering the ship to pieces. In this extremity, the captain, with his own hands, set off sky rockets in the hope that they would summon aid from some nearby ship.
A lady, evidently an earnest and conscientious church worker, in mistaken zeal, rushed to the bridge and addressed him thus: "Stop unholy men! I protest against this unseemly bravado. We are facing death. This is no time for a celebration!"
Then she promptly fell on her knees and began to pray. Her husband, however did not follow her example. So, she turned to him and shouted: "Obidiah, pray or sing a hymn; do something religious!"
Obidiah, meekly took of his hat and started a collection.
Published in 1914, "One Hundred Good Stories" by Felix Berol, Funk & Wagnalls
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| EPM 2002 - 2005 |
Kokomo Kootsie
2/27/2002
Nibbles- Bits & Pieces
Happy Holler
There are some things that should never have happened, never should have been.
We, unfortunately, do not know just what falls into that category; until too late! It’s already done, happened. There’s no undoing it or turning back.
We have to just step forward into whatever the future may bring; out of, and away from, what should not have been. Leaving hurt, heartache, sorrow and some times real tragedy behind.
I’m thinking where I lived for three years or longer, a place called ‘Happy Holler.’ It was anything but that! It could have been; should have been. But I was there for the wrong reasons.
But that’s another story and a long one; some day. I’ll bring it forth from the floor of my mind.
These thoughts came to mind as I was thinking about my little brother, who has been gone almost a year. He went to dwell with the Lord a year ago in March.
He came to visit and stayed a year, when I lived in Happy Holler, in Kentucky, just before World War II.
We had such a good time that winter and summer. I know it all seemed a very different world to him as it had to me when I first went there three years before. That’s why it was so enjoyable and fun; it was so different then, from what our lives had been.
I worked in Lexington all week and Jack would have the house all cleaned and a great dinner on the table every night when I got home. He could cook anything - even bake pies and cakes!
We had parties about once a week all that year; someone over about every night. There were about twenty young people on the surrounding farms, and Lee and I were the only very young married couple their age around, and had our own house. Consequently, they all gathered at our house often.
We usually just visited. If the crowd was large, in summer months, we would play games like relay-races or hide & seek!
We played games as we did as children, at birthday parties; spin-the-bottle, post-office, heavy-heavy hangs over thy head! Not so strange, as we were not far removed from childhood, at fourteen through eighteen years. Both winter and summer we rolled back the rug and danced to the new radio I had just bought.
When one of the boys road his horse over, I’d spend most of my time riding the horse. Chester never used a saddle, so I always rode bare-back too. To mount that big horse, I’d get him up to the yard fence, and climb up on his back from the fence, and get off the same way - if he didn’t toss me off first! That did happen more than once. Tossed off.
I never got my fill of horseback riding. The last time I road a horse, was with a girl friend out at Twin Lakes in Nevada. We both mounted and she rode on, while my horse turned back to the stables! They would start me off again and back he would go to the stables - They told me to pull back on his bridle then he would go on as I wanted him to do. Well! I did pull on his bridle and he stood up on his hind legs, waving his front legs in the air, and I lay flat on his back, hugging his mane, for dear life; I ‘let’ him go back to the stables and I left him there! End of Story!
However, in those young days, when the gang came over we just had fun. Nothing was ever served, to eat or drink. It never occurred to any of us to do that! It was a couple years later that I did begin to serve refreshments to guests. None of us drank, and only two boys smoked.
The would pick a large green leaf from a tobacco plant in the field, and lay it on top of their mothers coal burning stove’s warming shelf until it turned brown and dry and crispy. Then they would pulverize it - and use Bull Durham cigarette papers to roll the crumbs up in and have their smoke. Occasionally, they could afford a ‘bag’ of Bull Durham tobacco, or a real treat, a package of Wings cigarettes and not have to roll their own!
I had a huge vegetable garden that I didn’t have a clue how to care for; nevertheless, it always produced a bumper crop of large tomatoes, cabbage, garden lettuce, onions, radishes and potatoes.
Lil Scott, who lived up the hill in the big house, had an extensive garden with a great variety of vegetables, and know-how to care for it. She had peppers, celery, kale, and gourds and all I never grew. She told me to come and get whatever I wanted anytime; but I never did, except some kale once for my mother-in-law.
I had a big hand-turned separator, made to separate the cream from the whole milk. Lee, who worked for Mr. Scott, brought two gallons of milk home every night and poured it into the separator and turned the handle and milk would come out one long spout, with great heavy cream out the other one. I cooked everything I could with cream!
I remember the time I wanted to make creamed corn for dinner one night; there was a cornfield of about five acres, just over the fence from our vegetable garden. So I went over the fence and picked six ears of corn, and brought them home and shucked them and cut the kernels from the cobs and made a dish of creamed corn.
Did I ever catch it! I was told that I had stolen the corn! I was very indignant, I no way stole the corn; I didn’t sneak over and get it; never occurred to me I was stealing. Corn as far as I could see, thousands of ears, and to take six was stealing? They had a hard time convincing me it was stealing; nobody helps himself to a neighbor’s corn from a thousand acre field, anymore than he would go into his garden and help himself to whatever he wanted. Somehow, I didn’t see it that way; there was a difference there! Especially, since my mother-in-law, herself, had gone into my garden the week before when I wasn’t home and helped her self to the few tomatoes that had ripened, that I had my eye on for Sunday dinner!
The corn was so good; but I was a bit put-off for all the scolding I got over it!
I had a pet pig someone gave me and she grew up and had a litter of six piggies; they grew up to be country hams and bacon! The little lamb I had, would nurse from a baby bottle and I played with him; when I left there, he was sold, and so was gone when I returned. Everyone wanted to bring me a pet.
I had a pet chicken every spring, and he was always the one who was long-legged, long-necked and qawky looking - and I always named him Robert.
One spring, I stood helplessly in our yard, and watched a big chicken hawk, circle and circle, would not be driven away, and finally picked-up Robert and flew away with him squawking! I cried and cried, and was so mad, I got my 410 shotgun and went shooting right and left in the air and did scare some away, but at that time I was no Annie Oakley. I never had another Robert.
I had three coon dogs, Nigger, Sounder, and Ringo. All three pulled the sheets from the clothes line on wash day, and scolding didn’t faze them!
Our water came from a spring at the front of a fairly long, steep hill, outside of our yard. There had been built a shelter, a small house, over the spring to keep the cattle and sheep out of it. The water flowed from a dark overhanging ledge that went far back under the hillside- - into a solid rock basin, that had been carved out of the bedrock bottom, and flowed on out of the other end of the little shelter, making a small brook, all the way to the next farm, where it went under the fence and underground. A dipper with a hole in the bottom, for a slow leak was kept on a nail to dip up a bucket of water. The hole was to discourage anyone from carrying a dipper of water away and there be no dipper for the next person who needed one. That water tasted so good and fresh!
There was a big pond across the brook and up a hill in the next field. I used to listen to the big bull frogs croaking on still summer nights.
The boys would take their hound dogs out and go coon hunting; many a beautiful spring and summer and fall nights, I’d sit out on the stoop, listen to those frogs, katydids, and a sleepy bird call in the beautiful, sweet smelling catalpa tree by the door way.
I’d look at the moon, so bright it could serve as a lamp to read by; I would dream all the dreams that took too many, many years to come true. Not once did I ever think that one day, that man in the moon that was only shadows that real men would walk up there one day. I was so young, the nights were so very beautiful; and I was so very lonely then! All I really had was my dreams that I held onto - for someday.
One summer, when my family came to visit me, from Kokomo, I wanted to go back home with them. I remember I cried, and my sweet Uncle Street, took me in his arms and tried to soothe me, asking what would poor Lee think when he came home and I was not there? My reply to that was, "I don’t care. I don’t care what he thinks; I want to go home!"
I stayed, but I eventually left, went back, and again left, finally for good. I’ve never gone back to Happy Holler.
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| EPM 2002 - 2005 |
Kokomo Kootsie
2/25/2002
Nibbles- Bits & Pieces
O Ye of Little Faith
When you have nothing else to hold on to, nothing whatever to cling to, you’d better have faith. Without faith there is no way you can make it through each day.
Faith gives hope, and hope a way to carry on. If God has closed a door in your life, He has said He will open another one for you.
Look for the door and walk through it, whether you want to or not. It has to be God’s will. You do believe the bible? Then you can’t just pick and choose what part to believe and accept, what to reject and pass over.
It is hard to have a death sentence passed on to you; to be told you have a fatal disease. I had it passed on me, so I do know how hard it is.
I’ve lived on death-row for two years. I hang on to that rope of faith with both hands; as I dangle there, not able to climb up away from death, and I look down and see it far below me, I cling ever tighter to the rope of faith. I do it to survive and, I have perhaps only these moments.
So time passes and it’s always ‘just this moment’ as I cling there day after day - and I know I must learn to enjoy these moments; that’s all I’ll ever have, until my hands grow weary and tired and, I’ll let go of the rope of faith, as the angels take me in their arms and we ‘fly away.’
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| EPM 2002 - 2005 |
Kokomo Kootsie
2/24/2002
Nibbles- Bits & Pieces
First Day of School
I couldn’t wait to start school; I thought I’d be a ‘big kid’ then! However, since my birthday came close to Christmas, I was not allowed to start school until I was close to seven years old.
My grandmother took me to school and set in the back, that first day, with the other parents. I had a seat about the middle of the room. I was enchanted to be in school and felt so grown-up.
The wind was soon taken out of my sails, however. The teacher passed out little squares of white paper with pencils to each of us. When I got mine, I immediately drew a rooster on it! My grandpa had taught me to draw birds and chicken, and dogs and cats.
The teacher came around and saw the rooster and said to me, "Did I tell you to draw that?" I hung my head, and miserable shook it, ‘no’.
I was a shy child, so it took very little to make me fear someone. A fear of teachers was born at that moment, on my first day of school. A fear, later a dislike, and later still, disrespect. I had a few teachers that were good teachers and I really liked them and in those classes I excelled; the ‘fearsome’ teachers never inspired me to do so well, and I usually got ‘c’ and ‘e’ in their classes. I remember every teacher I ever had, face, hair, disposition and name. Miss Demmit was my first teacher.
I remember turning around looking at my grandma, and got a dark forebidding look from her! I never recall what I was supposed to put on that paper.
I was a timid child, and made more so that first day of school. I was never able to relate to a teacher, never felt they were a friend; they had become the enemy on that first day of school.
Today, I look at the teachers, and wonder how even a child could be intimidated by them; they are just people - like me - no more - no less.
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| EPM 2002 - 2005 |
Kokomo Kootsie
2/24/2002
Nibbles- Bits & Pieces
The Hot Dogs
On the next street over from our house, lived Haze and Idie, from Kentucky. They were not married, just lived together.
Our back yards opened up onto the alley; therefore, when my grandparents wanted to visit, we all went down the alley and through their back door into the kitchen. The older folks went on in to the next room, while we children usually stayed in the kitchen to play, or outside in the yard.
When they came to our house, I don’t recall them ever going any further than the kitchen. The two women would sit around the table with big white mugs of coffee and visit, while my grandpa pulled a chair out into the room and conversed with Haze, who sat in the opened doorway, his feet resting on the stoop, so he could spit tobacco juice into the yard! My grandma hated to see him come visit because of his tobacco chewing habit.
I recall Haze, as a dour, unforgiving man, and I stayed clear of him. Ida was an unsmiling, complaining woman; she never seemed happy.
Perhaps they felt they had little to be happy about. Ida had a grown daughter named Goldie, who had a daughter of her own named June, and a son named Buddy. Both were a bit younger than my brother and me.
They came to play almost every day, but for some reason we were never allowed to go play at their house, unless our grandparents went along.
They were the only children in the neighborhood. Until we entered school, we never knew what it was like to have other children around to play with. Jack and I played alone for nearly seven years.
I was shy but nevertheless made friends very easily. I soon had several friends in the first grade. One has remained my best friend all my life. Playing alone for years didn’t seem to interfere with my learning or knowing how to interact with others and make friends.
Yet, the only clear memory I have of going to their house, is one evening after we had our supper, we all walked down the alley to visit. As usual, we went in through the back door, and as the grown-ups moved on into the next room, my eyes honed in as if a magnet to the big kitchen table in the center of the room, because I saw a platter of hot-dogs on it!
Of all things in the world to eat, hot-dogs, were just about the tops with me; I can’t really recall ever having them at our house, though I know we surely did, or I’d not known to be so fond of them. I know grandma would have thought it a waste of money to buy hot dogs. Hamburgers and wieners weren’t real meat to her. Beef - ham and chicken was all worth serving!
I looked at those hot dogs with such longing, and wanted one so badly, I could think of nothing else. I recall wondering how they, or anyone, could get up from the table and leave them uneaten! Amazing!
I didn’t want to go in the other room or outside to play; I wanted to play in the kitchen, keeping an eye on those hot dogs. I devised every game I could dream up that kept us playing close to that table!
I desperately wanted a hot dog! I didn’t know how I was going to get one. As near as I could act like I never even noticed them, I said, "You had hot dogs for supper didn’t you?" June said, ‘yes’, and went on skipping around the table!
I wouldn’t have taken one without asking, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask, even if it had occurred to me. But I wanted one badly.
I guess I thought some magic would happen, and a hot dog would just pop over into my hands!
But I wanted one very badly.
I never got it.
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| EPM 2002 - 2005 |
Kokomo Kootsie
2/24/2002
KoKoMo Kootsie
Little Red Hen
I remember when I had a library of three books, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Black Beauty, and Helen's Babies, and my love for them. I couldn't read at four years old, so grandpa read them to me over and over. He never tried to teach me to read, however.
I evidently thought when I went to school, I'd automatically know how to read! So when I opened my first reading book, I was so shocked to see the pages still looked the same and meant nothing to me unless someone read them to me. It looked hopeless!
Somewhere during that school year, there developed two classes of readers in my room. The best readers in the Little Red Hen class, and those who stumbled over their words or forgot them entirely!
I was in this last class!
I'm sure it was because the words looked confusing, and I didn't pay attention as I should have. But that was soon to change!
One day as we sat in our little circle reading for our teacher, while the other children took their turns to read, I ran my forefinger down the print in my reader at a speed of light, as though I was reading that fast.
The teacher said, "Elenore, can you read that fast?" Down went my head, as usual, as my face grew hot. Then she said, "We'll see when your turn comes!"
Well, we saw alright! I seemed to know only every other word; I'd read haltingly one word, the teacher would tell me the next word. When the teacher was through scolding me for lack of attention, I was so embarrassed, so ashamed to not be able to read.
I decided right then and there, I would learn, and I would be in the Little Red Hen circle, and I did! And I was in The Little Red Hen Class!
I have thanked that teacher many times over the years. Her spurring me on to be the best reader - opened up for me the whole world, the rest of my long life. It gave me a love of reading and a longing to have far more than a three book library and a desire to own as many books I could possibly get - to read and build my own library one day.
I discovered the public library and brought as many books home each trip as allowed; I averaged at least one book everyday all my life. I'd read all night long, many many nights. I'd turn down or break a date because I was in the middle of a good book!
When my best friend came for a weekly visit, I read a book all the time, she said. I wasn't interested in playing outside; I loved to curl up with a book in my room.
My best loved classes in school were Geography, English, Literature, Mythology, and Ancient History. I became enamored with words - the play of words upon words. I kept a dictionary by my favorite reading chair and by my bed table. No matter how late I retired, I always read as long as I could; if I came across a word I didn't exactly have a definition for, or was strange and fascinating to me, I'd look it up and put in my notebook immediately!
In freshman year, we had to give book reports and get credit for each book read; some books were worth more credits than others, and had the points listed on opening page.
We had all year to get our points in; if we failed to get the required points, we would not get promoted to next grade!
My girl friend and I always tried to pick a book, a big heavy tome.We wanted small print also; if it was a good story, we wanted it to never end!
So I'd pick a heavy book, look at the print, read synopses, note the author, and his credits, and make my choice.
I had all my points in, the first month of school!
There was some still struggling to get all their points at end of school.
I've traveled the world in books. I've solved the toughest murder cases, in books. I've been a psychiatrist in books.
Today, I have my library, it has grown from those three little books of long ago, to thousands of books today. It's my favorite room in the entire house.
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| EPM 2002 - 2005 |
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