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Christmas Songs

As a child, Christmas was all about me.  I would get the Montgomery Ward or Sears catalog and circle all the toys I wanted.  Every toy commercial was something that I had to have.  I would lay awake on Christmas Eve, as long as I could.  Sometimes I thought I heard Santa.

Before I became a teenager, the wonder of Christmas dissipated from finding out things about the season that I had believed since I could remember.  I’m trying not to ruin it for any young readers.  But the one thing that always made me have a little wonder were the Christmas songs that were played on the radio and on records.

Johnny Mathis, Elvis Presley, Nat King Cole, The Carpenters and many more made me dream of being a grown up.  I thought there were chestnuts roasting and sleigh rides in my future, cozy fires and a partridge in a pear tree.

Those things would still be nice but my mind goes there whenever one of my favorite songs are played.  I seem to love them more every year.  That, along with the decorations on my Christmas tree, the memories of who made or gave them to me over the years, the ones my children and grandchildren have made.  The angel one that I made when I was eight months pregnant, was stuffed so tight with stuffing that I must have been trying to mimic how I was feeling.  I still smile when I look at it.

When I was in my early 20’s, I needed a clothes dryer.  With two very young children, it was hard to hang the clothes outside and corral them.  I can only go one direction at a time, and they usually went different directions.  I had a friend offer me to sell some popsicle stick sled ornaments, at her booth at a local fall festival.  I started several months ahead of time and had lots ready.  When I told her I wanted to sell enough to buy a dryer afterwards she said I never could sell that much.  Back then, a dryer could be bought for around $250.

I sat at the booth and would paint the names on any sled that was wanted.  I sold them for one dollar each and the week after the festival, I went and bought a brand new dryer with cash.  I was so happy.

As a young woman with a family of my own, I would plan family parties around the holidays.  I always wanted to see my aunts more then I got to growing up, so that was a way to do it.  Plus, lots of cousins made it fun.  As I look around, with Christmas songs playing, my family generations all around, from the age of 77 down to 4, I am again in wonder.

One, how fast it has all happened, secondly, to see my four year old granddaughter singing Jingle Bells and Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.  Thirdly, is to love that the traditions and things that I love about Christmas, is being presented to the generations that come after me.  They can choose what they like best and will continue to pass along what they love.  Maybe two hundred years from now, my lineage will still be singing, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire”, and dreaming of a day when they will have their own families with their own Christmases.  And that is something to really be in wonder about.

 

My Papa’s Acres

My grandfather we called Papa and I loved him very much.  He passed away in his early 50’s when his coal truck went over the side of a mountain because the road fell away.  I was eleven years old.  The funny thing is that his training told the drivers to ride the truck out.  That their chances were better then jumping out.  He panicked and jumped out, rolled and hit his head on a rock.  They drove the truck out of the ravine.  It never even turned over.

I am told that I am a lot like he was.  I have wished through the years that he was beside me giving me his gardening and beekeeping wisdom.

Some of my happiest memories are of being on his three acres.  He had five gardens of vegetables, about 15 apple trees, pear trees, three different colors of cherry trees, plum trees, lots of different nut trees, three colors of raspberry bushes, and three colors of grapes on a big wooden structure, and gooseberries.  When the apples started growing and were big enough to eat, I would climb a tree with the salt shaker and eat green apples with salt.  What a treat!  The whole place was like a wonderland to me.

He started his own seeds in a coal heated workshop.  That workshop was amazing, and still, if I can smell the right oily smell, it takes me right back to that place.  There were, what seemed like, hundreds of cubby holes with all sorts of different shapes and objects.  Jars with screws and metal coffee cans. It was a delight to look through.

He was always trying something different and one year, he planted peanuts…in Ohio.  He preserved cabbages, by pulling them out of the ground with the whole root, turning them upside down and burying them in dirt.  Mid-winter, with lots of snow on the ground, he would go push the snow off and pull that cabbage up, good as new.

He had ducks and chickens. He would kill a couple chickens on Saturday, hang them in the cherry tree and have for Sunday dinner with homemade noodles.  My mother says there was no better meal on the planet then those Sunday dinners.

He was a beekeeper and would get calls to go get bees that were in walls, hanging on trees, etc.  I got into beekeeping and asked my Nana about his old equipment.  She had sold it just six months before I had asked.  She had them for about 20 years after his death and decided to sell them.  Sigh…

This has been a rough year for our family and I don’t know if I’m nostalgic or just thinking of simpler times, but Papa’s acres are a place that my mind likes to rest and stay awhile.

For the Love of Salt

My love of salt started when I was a baby.  I chewed every wood surface I could find and sucked on it.  My mother asked the Doctor about this and he said that I was trying to get salt out of the wood.  He then said that some bodies just need more salt then others.

The first picture is the different kinds of salt that I have on hand at this time. Plus, the third picture is a Persian Blue Salt that I forgot to add to the pix.  I also have a Ghost Pepper salt that I just bought.  The middle picture is my collection of salt dips that I collect.  My favorite find was the little salt spoon that is laying beside the green one.

My love and absolute need for salt continued through my grade school years when I lived beside my grandmother’s house and there was a field that used to have cows in it.  There was a wonderful salt lick that I would take a rock to, and chip off small chunks and put in my pockets to eat on the bus or whenever I needed it.

I also knew where our church kept the rock salt that they used to salt the sidewalks in the winter.  I would fill my pockets with that on Sundays to eat through the week.  It was behind the pastor’s office door, by the way.

If all else failed, I would just go to the stove and pour salt into my hand and lick it out.  In my early 20’s, at a doctor appointment, he asked me if I was thirsty a lot.  I said yes, but I eat a lot of salt.  He still sent me for blood work, but it was all normal. Heh heh.

My current doctor said I may want to cut back a little on salt and I said that it was my favorite food group.  She didn’t even crack a smile.  I thought I was funny.

So here is a list of the kinds of salt that I have right now:  I have 2 Himalayan salt blocks, 1 Himalayan salt light, 2 Himalayan salt candle holders, Himalayan salt chunks, also in white, a Himalayan salt heart, white pretzel salt, tobacco spiced sea salt, roasted garlic sea salt, spicy garlic salt, sriracha salt, chipotle salt, green herbs salt, rosemary lavender salt, curry salt, plain sea salt, hickory smoke salt, cherry wood smoked sea salt, seasoned salt, garlic salt, Himalayan pink salt, smoked salt, Hawaiian red salt, Eurasian black salt, pure ocean salt, sel de guerande, Persian blue salt, jalepeno pepper sea salt, sriracha pepper sea salt, Cyprus citron flake salt, Carolina hickory smoked salt, Trapani salt road sea salt, Cyprus chili flake sea salt, and ghost pepper salt.

P.S.  I haven’t found anything that salt is not good on.