Quilts

     I thought about my grandmother Rebecca Miner this morning and about the quilts she made, those that my grandmother Anna Beck made, those my mother-in-law Retha Morison made, and those made by my aunt Dorothy Beck created. Each woman had a special flair that was incorporated in the needle craft they applied.

My grandmother Beck was a very strong Pentecostal woman. Her quilts were more drab made of dark, wool patches, sewn to flannel material with knots of yarn. Her quilts were functional, utilitarian, and warm. The designs were simple, but had a Shaker-like beauty.

The quilts that my grandmother Miner made were things of beauty. Her creativity was portrayed in designs of rings, flowers, windmills, or patriotic flag dioramas. It was rare that her quilting frame was missing from her T.V. room. If we visited, she’d fill a needle with thread and have us sit at her side to stitch the straight lines, while her needle flowed into intricate designs. The cotton quilts were from pieces of clothing that were worn. Looking closely, someone would say, “I used to wear that, it was a skirt or dress, or shirt.” She made one for each of her grandchildren as a wedding gift. If I didn’t miscount, that would be thirty quilts. The one I have is titled, “The Flight of the Wild Geese”

Quilts that Retha made were of double-knit. They wear like iron and are for the most part, just four pieces of material sewn into simple squares with yarn knotted corners. She started by making baby quilts, pastel colored squares affixed with yarn to a large bath towel. Soon that wasn’t enough for her and had her husband Bud make her a set of quilting frames, large enough to hold a queen size flannel sheet. She had graduated to making larger quilts, bright multihued squares of double knit knotted to the flannel with a layer of batting between. Much of the material was recycled clothing, recognizable by those who were them or by others saying, “Didn’t you used to have a dress, pair of pants, or a blouse like that?”  

The last quilt that I’ve seen my Aunt Dorothy make was created using old silk neck ties. The design was a sort of sunburst or flower pattern with the narrow ends of the cravats at the center and the points of the wider ends making the rays or the petals.

The Scary Shed

One year, the adults of our church decided to create a scary shed and a bonfire near Halloween to entertain the youth and have an evening of fellowship. Several days before, I helped others move a few things stored in the abandoned, two-story chicken coop. After we made sure that all loose boards, projecting nails, and other possible dangerous situations were removed, we started to make the maze and set up frightening scenes. We moved the kids into the scary shed in pairs.

The maze was on the first floor and was the entrance to the scary shed. It involved finding the way through a series of hay bales: over, around, and even under. It opened up into a dark room, only lit by a black light that shone on cow skulls with fluorescent paint in their eye sockets. The bones shone white while the sockets were glowing orange, green, and purple.

In the next darkened room, one of the parents had his chain saw, minus the cutting chain. Someone would turn on the light as soon as he started and revved the chain saw. The loudness of the saw and the sudden light really startled the kids and elicited a few screams. It caused the kids to go into the next room filled with headless torsos. Dress forms and dummies along the walls with Styrofoam wig heads on the floor.

The kids were headed up the stairs to the second floor. Unbraided binder twine hung in clumps like thick cobwebs. Moveable doors made a moving maze and several old mattresses made an unsteady floor on which to walk. Overhead, we rolled dried black walnut shells down an aluminum rain gutter, sounding a lot like rats running just above their heads. Another wall of unbraided binder twine greeted the kids, just before they took the slide down from the second floor and escape into the cool, frosty night.

Once all the youth made their way through the scary shed, we ate hamburgers and toasted marshmallows on the bonfire. Bellies filled, the kids relaxed and the youth leader gave a Bible lesson about being afraid.

Teasing, Weather or Not

I was outside to clean the snow out of my driveway early this morning and hauling in some firewood. I almost forgot to type in my blog post. I woke in the middle of the night, that is when I thought of the title and the meat of my post.

This see-saw, back and forth, up and down of temperatures is driving me crazy. I just can’t get used to one temperature until it changes; not just slow gradual changes, but these wild swings wreak havoc with my psyche and body. The temperature can go form fifty degrees to below zero in less than seven days. Canada needs to close their refrigerator doors. I’m just kidding to those neighbors to the north and to Judy Ferguson.

In years past, the cold usually makes a gradual appearance and slowly disappears with a few backslides. I usually have hauled in two dump truck loads of firewood from a local saw mill, but because I want to move sometime this year, I didn’t want to leave a lot of the wood for others to deal with.

I am left with just a small amount and with the cold snap over the next few days I decided to buy a pick-up truck load to carry me over. I like to keep some extra in case there is a power outage. I have plenty of fuel oil, but if there is no electricity, there is no heat. I have been hoarding a small amount, but now that I have made arrangements for more to be delivered, I can get the wood burner fired up and I can feel more secure. I always like to have something in reserve and hate to be cold.

Barbequed Bear Balls

I was invited to and I attended my first wild game banquet. My brother Ken had a spare ticket and asked if I wanted to go. Just like almost every Saturday night, I was free and readily accepted. I had no idea what to expect. It was all new to me. The only wild game I ate was the animals in my youth and the venison that I got during deer season.

The first things on the menu were trays of hors d’oeuvres of cheeses, deer sausage, homemade pickles, pickled peppers, and crackers. The next course offered the soups: regular chili, venison chili, white bean moose soup, turtle soup, squirrel navy bean soup, and wild mushroom soup. I tried the turtle soup and the squirrel bean soup.

The next round of foods introduced the main courses. Fresh cloverleaf buns, small buttered potatoes, green beans, elk meatloaf, slices of venison roast, wild turkey, bear goulash, venison meatloaf, some type of sausage in sauerkraut, and the barbequed bear balls. The bear meat had been ground up, rolled into meat balls and cooked in a barbeque sauce.

I didn’t try the sauerkraut and sausage and I wasn’t impressed with the bear goulash. I didn’t like the flavor of the spices used and I didn’t like the mushy consistency.

A large urn of coffee and several coolers of iced water and lemon Blend graced a small table at the end of the line to wet the whistle and clear the palate between the different meats.

Another small table was festooned and piled high with a plethora desserts. Cakes of all flavors with their varied icings, small muffins of banana bread, and a few cookies, were bundled in individual clear plastic containers. It made them easy to select and to carry back to your table.

Door prizes and other ticket prizes for T shirts, car care items, cash prizes, framed pictures, appliances, and several guns were given out to those with matching ticket numbers.

I’m sitting at my computer typing, reaching around a full and rotund abdomen and my daughter’s cat Willow. I hope that it all settles and that it allows me to have a quiet night of sleep, because I am rather full right now. I pray that the wild game doesn’t start to fight for territorial rights at some time during the middle of the night.

 

Volunteered

     Yesterday, I was asked to lead the meeting of writers at the public Library in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania. It was a slightly shortened meeting, because our illustrious leader, Dr. Fred Adams was ill and couldn’t attend. His teaching of writing skills during the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the gathering was missing. I had handouts of writing tricks or techniques, but I wasn’t able to go into the depth that he does to make it more memorable.

The good thing was, the group wasn’t subject to our puns and repartees and feeble attempts at humor. The group did secede on the next project for display in the library. The theme will be poetry or a short essay or story about the coming season of spring.

With the help of the library staff, we were able to put on display our Valentine’s Day poetry for any who would like to view our offerings. Our usual display area has been taken over by the “vile” tax forms, necessary for taxpaying citizens to empty their pockets in the ever hungry maw of the state and federal government, so our works are on the window sills in the same area.

As I wrote the title of this blog, I was reminded of the real meaning of the Navy: Never-Volunteer-Yourself. While it’s not quite true, it was the expression many of my comrades in the thirteen button dress-blue pants would say. There were three types of uniforms in the Navy: the dungarees, the whites, and the dress blues.

The dungarees consisted of a pale blue work shirt, worn over a white T shirt, denim trousers, brogan shoes, and the either a ball cap or the white cap. The whites consisted of a short sleeve dress shirt or a long sleeve tunic, white trousers, a rolled kerchief, and the white navy cap. The blues were made of unlined wool tunic top, the stove pipe legged pants with the thirteen button fly, the rolled kerchief and the inevitable white hat.

I was so glad when I left the Navy. By that time those unlined, itchy, heavy wool trousers had eaten away all of the hair from my thighs and parts of my lower legs. There are still areas of my legs that the hair is afraid to grow.

Sure Am Sore

     When I woke this morning I was sore across my shoulders and back. Even the muscles between my ribs were painful, as though they wanted to go into a spasm. What happened to those days when I awoke and felt rested and relaxed, old age? I can remember when I actually had to dig ditch. The task was for my dad. The old galvanized pipe that ran from the springhouse on the hillside ,about one hundred and twenty yards above our home, became corroded until barely a trickle of water came out of the tap.

It was time to reopen the ditch and replace the old corroded pipe with new plastic lines. Dad gave my brother Ken and I orders as to how much of the ditch he wanted us to dig before he came home from work. I believe it was about ten feet per day. Not too much, but my brother, Ken would torture me as I wielded the mattock until I chased him. He would run back to the house and hide behind Mom’s skirts. I would have to trudge back to the chore of digging ditch, solo. You would think that I would have learned to ignore him and have him stay there to help, but no. It must have been the lead from those pipes that “dumbed” me down.

The biggest thing that I remember was a huge rock that I encountered. It was fully as wide and long as a dining room table with one extension leaf inserted. It spanned the path of the ditch. I scraped the soil from the top of it and even went to the basement for a sledge hammer to try and break it up so I could finish my assignment. It wouldn’t budge, so I continued digging on its far side. Dad was a little upset when he came home and “we” hadn’t finished the length of ditch. When he tried to shatter the boulder, he found that he couldn’t do it either. The slab of stone was about twenty -eight inches thick. Dad finally decided to make a passage to slide the new piping beneath the behemoth instead of going around or continuing to try and remove it. I continued to dig ror the next few days “with” my brother until the pipe extended from the springhouse in the woods to our house.

But Would You Now

When I was a kid I would do things that would make me think twice and probably not do today. Climbing trees and almost falling out or hanging by my heels upside down are two things that I wouldn’t do now. I don’t think I would swim nude as we did as kids after playing several innings of softball in the hot summer sun. The water was cool in a secluded spot downstream from the bridge near Indian Head, Pennsylvania.

I don’t think I would swim sky clad before the end of April in the deep water beneath the arching bridge where Poplar Run Road meets Route 711. It was a spot close to my home and it was sort of a dare to get into that frigid, spring fed, and melting snow fed mountain stream. A large bonfire was necessary to prevent hypothermia.

 

There are a few things that I might do again, like making “beetle boppers” and having a jousting match. A beetle bopper was a nylon stocking with a pair of thick socks tied in the toes. It was a weapon much like the mace on a chain in medieval times. It could be swung at your opponent and make a loud smacking sound, without causing injury. It was all fun until the light bulb in the ceiling of the room shattered by a misplaced swing.

One thing that I never did with my kids that my mom did with us was to make an indoor skating rink with talcum powder, a linoleum floor, and socks. She would sprinkle the powder on the linoleum and with socks on her feet. She’d take a run and slide the entire length of the hallway floor. We would take turns until we were tired, then we hat to scrub all of the powder from the linoleum to prevent accidental slips and falls as we’d hurry through the house in bare or stocking clad feet.

There are some other things I wouldn’t do now, because I’m older and hopefully have more sense than I did as a kid, but who knows when I enter my second childhood. Beetle boppers anyone?