#WANAFriday: Childhood Homes

WANAFriday prompt for October 18. Write about a house you have loved.

Tatiana de Rosnay has written a fiction book called The House I Loved about Rose Bazelet in France in the 1860s when her house was to be destroyed in the reconstruction of Paris into a modern city. “Necessary progress,” Napoleon III called it.

Rose loved her house and the precious memories held in it, but as she watched the destruction of her neighborhood coming ever closer to her own house, she made a vow. She wrote a letter to her departed husband, telling him of the destruction of their home and memories, and finally, after all these years, telling him the devastating secret she had kept hidden in her heart.

. . .

This book made me think of the houses that I have lived in and loved.

Here’s the house I lived in until I was 18-years-old. At that time, went off to college, and somehow never went home again to live until forty years later. That year my Mom passed away, and the old homestead went up on the market for sale. My brother, Adam, lived in the house after Mom passed away, and I joined him there a few months later. I ended up buying the house from my siblings and renovating it. Many great memories here.

My childhood home

Mom grew up in the house pictured below. It is about two miles from my childhood home. My grandparents raised chickens and turkeys and had a large vegetable garden. Families were self-sufficient at that time (early 1900s), lived near each other, and took care of each other. I remember going down to visit my aunts and uncles in this house on hot summer nights. The adults sat inside drinking iced tea and reviewing the news of the family and the world, and the kids ran around outside catching fireflies, playing baseball, or just making noise in general.

My Mom’s childhood home (picture taken in 2000)

 Here is Mom’s house in the early 1900s.

Mom’s childhood home in early 1900s.

Life is different now. My family is spread far and wide, and I don’t get to see them as often as I would like. And as we age, we lose family members. That is probably the hardest bit of all. From time to time, I drive past my old house and my Mom’s old house and relive some of the memories held there. Maybe there were no devastating secrets, but memories were there nonetheless. Good memories. Nostalgic memories. Family memories.

…

Read Tatiana’s de Rosnay’s excellent book and see how it inspires you to review the houses in your past.

The Last Meow

She forgot to tell you how many cats lived at both of these houses. Generations of cats. Kittens galore. And we had real work to do: chasing mice in the barn, sleeping in the sun, and entertaining all the grandchildren that came around to visit.  A basket of kitties was a common sight!

Meow for now.  =<^;^>=

Here are other #WANAFriday responses for this prompt:

Siri Paulson: Childhood Home

How about you? What house have you loved? What place have you loved?

WANAFriday for 9-20-13. Dandelion Dreaming

Ellen Gregory posted the #WANAFriday (last Friday’s) blog prompt for September 20, 2013:

Share your favourite (or interesting) WORD — what does it mean for you? (Note that Australian spelling there!)

I love words like serendipity, scintillating, effervescent, splendiferous, grandiloquent, sibilant, and supercilious.  All these multisyllable words sound pleasing to me. Some of them have somewhat haughty meanings, but they still sound interesting, sweet, and maybe a bit humorous.

My husband likes the word magnanimous and money. Yes, money does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it.

#MyWANA Favorite Word

Siri Paulson already wrote about serendipity, so I had to choose another word for this prompt challenge.

A recent Facebook posting reminded me of another word I like: Dandelion.

Yes, folks, dan-de-li-on. Some folks consider it a weed, but where I come from, we know better.

photo: fcpsdotedu

Not that dandelion has always been a lovely word for me.

When I was a kid, those egg-yolk-yellow dandelions blanketed our football-sized front and side lawns, squeezing out the more desired green-velvet grass. Mom, always looking out for what the neighbors thought, decided that a dandelion infested lawn in our nice neighborhood was not socially acceptable, so she decreed that we kids had to get out there on perfectly good icy-cold-Maurice-River-swimming days to dig out these perverse lawn inhabitants and dispose of them.

Mom didn’t like it when the flowers turned from yellow to white puffy balls, and the feathered seeds starting flying through the air on the light summer breezes, seeking new rooting grounds (notably our neighbors’ lawns) to infest. (What would the neighbors say then?) And, beware, if any one of us kids ever, ever, ever blew on those fluffy seed balls, trouble would surely follow. Back then, there were no taboos about spanking children!

photo: legallysocialbledotcom

No. Mom wanted those dandelions out of her lawn. Pronto!

So, day after day, on the hottest of days, my Little Brother Bobby and I sat out on the lawn persistently digging out dandelions, not always with the best attitude, I might add. (A few dandelion flower fights made it a little more interesting, but only when Mom wasn’t looking.)

We thought this whole dandelion destruction debacle was a losing battle, but Mom had different ideas. She was determined to have a lawn as nice as Mrs. Cervini’s down the street.

Well, Mom won. After that summer, our lawn did look as nice as Mrs. Cervini’s. Green, nicely trimmed, and dandelion free. We kids felt pretty proud about that, too.

What? Dandelions Can Be Eaten? Who Knew?

Now, here’s the thing. Dandelions are a cash-crop delicacy in my hometown, Vineland, NJ. In fact, Vineland holds bragging rights to being the “Dandelion Capital of the World.”  (Not far away, in Hammonton, NJ, is the “Blueberry Capital of the World.”)

We didn’t know that dandelions were valuable when we were digging up and disposing those dastardly weeds to make Mom happy.

Yes, dandelion is a valuable food crop in early spring. You can use dandelions in soups, salads, fritters, muffins, breads, and even tasty wine. I haven’t heard of a dandelion dessert, but who knows, some creative chef out there may have dreamed up a sweet, melt-in-your-mouth dandelion dish. Vinelanders hold dandelions in high esteem in a special spring festival each year. A dandelion dinner at Merighi’s Inn on East Landis Avenue is the real deal.

Dandelion Salad Fit for Royalty

We had simpler fare at home. Each spring, Mom made dandelion salads, decorated with hard-boiled eggs sprinkled with paprika, to accompany our evening meals. “Dandelions are loaded with vitamins A and C, iron, and beta-carotene,” she claimed. “Eat!”

“The secret to good dandelion salad,” she said, “is to pick the tender leaves before the plant forms its flowers. (Once the flowers bloom, the leaves taste bitter.) Add a little vinegar-oil-garlic dressing, and there you have it: a delicious, healthy spring salad. Decorate the salad with hard-boiled eggs sprinkled with paprika and enjoy. Simple, but delicious.”

Today’s WANA favorite prompt brought back a lovely childhood memory. Check the following posts for other #WANAFriday Participants’ favorite words:

Di Bell digs deep and finds some wonderful lost words.
Ellen Gregory shares her love of kitties with the word ailurophile. 
Julie Farrar uses her word as a jumping-off point. (Look for a kitty in here, too.)
Kim Griffin goes nostalgic with a Mary Poppins’ word.
Siri Paulson beats me to the punch with serendipity.

The Last Meow

Favorite Word? For a cat? That’s easy. Eat-play-sleep. That reminds me. I think it’s nap time now. Maybe I’ll head out to the dandelion patch and take a snooze.

photo: flickrdotcom

Meow for now.  =<^;^>=

Five Recipes for Dandelion Wine

WANAfriday. Childhood Memory: Scary, Scary Campfire Stories

WANAfriday: Share an early childhood memory, or a photo that brings back a memory of childhood or family.

In my childhood, large family gatherings were common.

Many evenings, my aunts and uncles gathered round the big kitchen table drinking coffee and talking about the events of the day, the weather, and the crops.

The aunts and uncles gathered frequently in the evening for coffee and news.

We cousins ran around outside in the twilight swatting mosquitos and catching fireflies to make lanterns for our bedrooms. Mom’s Mason canning jars, especially the green tinted ones, made the best lanterns.

Photo credit: girlsguideto.com

Sometimes we sat outside on the big lawn in a big circle just talking. Sometimes we even had a campfire. One of the bigger kids invariably started telling scary stories, complete with stormy sound effects and long drawn out details. Here is an abbreviated version of one classic night-time summer tale:

It’s a dark and stormy night, and Bubba and Sarah Lee sneek away from their friends in his new black convertible to go sparking out on the woodsy bluff. In the midst of their tryst, they hear a faint scratching on the passenger door. Then the scratching gets louder. Scratch, SCRATCH.  And LOUDER.  SCRAA-AAATCH.

Then… thump, thump, thump.  The door rattles. A deep, snorting chuggle fills the air.

Bubba, remembering tales of terrors in these parts and fearing the worst, puts the car in reverse and blasts out of the woods, the romantic interlude forgotten in the terror of the moment.

When Bubba and Sarah Lee get back to her house, Bubba goes around the car to open the passenger door for Sarah Lee,       and………he……….sees……..   [deathly silence]

… A BONY ARM WITH A CLAWED HAND HANGING ON THE DOOR HANDLE!!!!! 

                        [S-S-S-C-R-E-A-M-M-M-M]

Was it the famed Jersey Devil?  Who knows. But this story has been told and retold at many a campfire.

It was all too real to us little ones because we knew that the Jersey Devil did live in the woods of South Jersey, not that far from our home.

The Last Meow

Ha. You think that’s a scary story. You want to hear about the night I met the Jersey Devil on a moon-less night in the dark woods and chased him out of town? That Jersey Devil was so scared that he never came back again. So much for him, the big lummox. I never got much thanks from any humans for saving them from terror either. Oh well, what can you expect from those superstitious scaredy-cat humans. They probably think THEY chased the Jersey Devil away. Humph.

Meow for now. =<*!*>=

Here are a few more WANAfriday childhood memories:

• Ellen Gregory   A Campfire Memory (Dad reads the Hobbit)
• Liv Rancourt   When I Was Very Young  (growing up with three other sisters)
• Siri Paulson    Hide and Seek

P.S. Did you ever hear that scary story when you were a kid?   What scary stories did you hear at camp?

Embarrassed? Moi?

Blog Every Day in May. Prompt 10. Most Embarassing Moment

Me? Do something to embarrass myself? Well, yes. Regularly. Don’t you?

I did it almost daily in elementary school. I didn’t have the right clothes or the right shoes or the right hair cut. And I couldn’t hit the softball worth a darn on the playground. (And, yes, we played in dresses in those old-timey days.)  Kids teased me.  I was painfully shy, and every tease added to my shyness.  

In retrospect, I have to say that those monumental moments of childhood embarrassment amount to a mere nothing at this point. Once I realized that other people’s opinions about me didn’t matter, then the teasing didn’t matter either. I focused more on other things and learned how to hit the softball better. By seventh grade, my classmates realized that I was one mean pitcher, and I got chosen for teams early on in the starting lineup.

Of course, as adults, our children have done their rightful duties by saying things or doing things at such opportune times that maximum benefit could be made out of the embarrassment. There was the time that. . . well, never mind. No point in going into all that. Besides, my children have children of their own now! HaHa.

Now, as an adult in my, ummmm, more mature years, I feel embarrassed when I am the center of attention. I have made my My-Heck-Of-A Husband (MHOAH) PROMISE that he would never, ever give me a surprise birthday party, anniversary party, or any other party where I would be the center of attention. It’s written in our marriage contract, right next to the clause where he promises to do all the vacuuming, and I promise to watch. We review this contract periodically, so HE KNOWS. You can see that our marriage is loaded with Double Happiness! (Double Happiness in Marriage, Guaranteed!)

She’s got it right!

I let it go by when MHOAH told our church choir director, Glen, that it was my birthday last month and had the choir sing to me after our Thursday night practice. That error on MHOAH’s part was marginal. Noted, but not in concrete. I turned it around by announcing that MHOAH would bring cookies to choir practice the following week. Then when he forgot, someone in the choir embarrassed HIM by asking where they were. Got him there, didn’t I?

The Last Meow

What some humans do to us cats is embarrassing. A pink cat? Give me a break. This is not fair.

Dogs and cats are not supposed to be friends. So DO NOT tell anyone about this embarrassing moment in my cat life.

Meow for now.  ={^;^}=