Grave Hoppin'

I grew up going to cemetaries.  When I was little, my grandmother would cut peonies, stack them with layers of wet newpapers in the trunk of the car, and away we would go to decorate graves.  There was rarely ever anyone else there and as we distributed flowers, my grandmother would tell stories about the people whose gravestones we knew.  In a small town this can be quite a lesson, and geneology as well as  history were absorbed as naturally as bedtime stories for me.  Get more than two people of a certain age together at a cemetary, and you will be amazed and delighted at the stories you will hear.

I loved the different stones, calculated how long the surviving spouse spent without their mate, witnessed the babies born who did not survive, and marveled at what their lives would have been like.

I still do.

 It was always a favorite way to spend an afternoon with my mother's family.  Many is the time I have picked up the phone only to have a relative say "Want to go grave-hoppin'?".  It's a little joke, as opposed to "bar-hoppin".  The answer was always yes.  It still is, and I love to go by myself too.  If I'm alone and I pass a cemetary I most usually stop. 

Here are just some pictures I took when I got the new camera, but I have always loved this angel.  She presides at the Catholic Cemetary here in town.  Angels and crosses dominate this cemetary.

Across the road is the city cemetary. Parts of it are very old.  Of course, they are my favorite.  This cemetary also has some angels, crosses, and also little bell shaped tops on the stones.  I do not know what the bell shaped tops mean.  My favorite stones of all are the Woodmen of the World stones, and we have many in the city cemetary.  Here are some from this batch.  I have many more of these taken at many cemetaries, and am saving those for a post just about them.  It is a wonderful story and you should look it up.  If you have never noticed these before you must have not been paying attention, they are immediately recognizable but also have unique features. 

This one I took just for the old tree.  It's in the oldest part of the cemetary and one of my favorite scenes there.

Turning Straw Into Gold

This post was inspired by The Pioneer Woman, who had one day been looking at quilts, in catalogs, and posted some pictures of her favorite ones. 

If you are not familiar with PW, you would not know that she is originally from the city, and so must be forgiven her mistaken idea that you can buy real quilts out of catalogs.  I scolded her for this amateur mistake (lightly) in the comments section.  I was not the only one.  It hasn't been brought up again.  I'm sure they got her straightened right out in Oklahoma.  (wink wink)

What she had picked out were certainly beautiful and expensive, and I must say, if you've been to a quilt show lately you have probably had your breath taken away.  I have.  Quilting has come a long way.  Traditionally, beautiful and expensive does not a real quilt make, at least not to kids from the country.  A "real" quilt is not made from coordinating fabrics bought special for that purpose.  A real quilt is not machine stitched, ever. A real quilt incorporates pieces considered ugly on thier own into a beautiful whole.  A real quilt never needs to be dry cleaned.  A real quilt has weight.  At least, that's the way it used to be.   I can remember always making a "tent" over my feet, so the weight of the quilt didn't give me cramps as a child.  I still do that, actually.

Quilts were traditionally made from scraps of material for the practical purpose of providing warm bedding for your family.  Through the years it has evolved into an art form and I am awed by some of the beautiful work turned out from the luxurious position of being able to buy the material you want and the vision needed to see the end result without benefit of a map.  I have an Amish community within driving distance and they work on their quilts all the time.  You might be surprised at how much they sell for.  Consider the time that goes into them and the length of time the quilt will last, and it will seem like a bargain.  Estate sales that feature quilts are always well attended, even in terrible weather, and the quilts always go last and rarely more than one at a time.  I always see it as a testimony to effort put into those quilts, and I doubt that I'm the only one.
I grew up with quilts made from clothes that had been outgrown or ruined beyond repair.  Every square was not just part of a quilt, making beautiful larger patterns, it was also a piece of your old baby blanket or favorite dress.  Basically any kind of material that would work for a quilt was cut into pieces for exactly that.  These pieces were kept in piles, bags and chests, sometimes for many years before a quilt would be put together.  Some women could have more than one quilt going at a time, and were considered rock stars before that term was even born.


This is the newest quilt I have. It was made by my mother during her illness before her death.  It was a dream she had put off till the last minute, but she got it done with some help.  She did all the blocks herself and some friends, who were life long quilters, put it together for her.  She was very proud of it.  Since this was a dream she put off until the last minute, I have to tell you that she bought all the material to coordinate especially for that purpose.  So maybe it's not a "real" quilt in every way, but it is not a bad first effort from a woman caught between the generation that couldn't throw anything away and the generation that threw everything away.  It's a log cabin, which is one of the easier patterns.  I am beginning to suffer guilt from never making one of my own.  But I'll try it the old fashioned way.  Go ahead and shake your head, it doesn't bother me a bit.  I learned a long time ago this is strictly my own journey, and shortcuts never did appeal to me.  I also learned a long time ago that the value of a quilt has nothing whatsoever to do with it's worth.

This is the Sunflower Sue, made by Nana, that I have talked about before.  It fits the qualities of a real quilt in every way. 

So does this one.  It is over 100 years old and is a wedding ring pattern.  Each little square, you can be sure, was previously something else in another life and faded from washing before it ever became part of this quilt.  It was made by a teenage girl before her wedding and is still here all these years later.  She would have started cutting pieces for this quilt as a small child, and sewn them together, probably more than once.  You were judged by the size of your stitches then, and they were supposed to be very small.  It must be said that it has spent a significant part of those years in a plastic bag of protection in a closet, because it is over 100 years old.  But still.  You have to admit that machine stitching would have never stood up to the test of time.  When I turned 40 I decided I was going to get it out and use it.  It seemed wrong to be a beautiful quilt over 100 years old and be kept in a closet.  On the other hand, once I got it out it seemed wrong to be a beautiful quilt over 100 years old and be spending the night tangled on the floor amongst teenage boys and dogs.  But quilts have lives too, and they have to live them.  This quilt has had many lives, many of the scenes probably the same, just with different players.  Or dogs.  If it goes down, it will go down with it's boots on, so to speak.  But I imagine it will last many more years. 

Which brings me to my favorite quilt of all.  It's not the prettiest.  Or the oldest.  It is a real quilt because it is hand stitched, and made out of recycled material, but it wasn't made to be displayed or protected.   I can't wait for you to see what the material is, and you will have to be a certain age to recognize it at all.  It is my favorite quilt because it was made by Nana also, and because of the material, it is the quilt that I have never been afraid to use.  It has been to countless ballgames and parks.  It has been spread across lawns and fields to watch fireworks on.  Babies have slept on it and had their diapers leak.  Little children have thrown up on it.  It has languished in the back of a minivan for months until it was needed to cover a seat for a boy who accidentally went into the city lake fully clothed.  In FEBRUARY!  It's had grass stains and grease stains.  I've washed it hundreds of times.  It spends almost every winter in a cedar chest.   It is the one my children recognize as home, even when it's all alone and nobody is standing close to it.  I have never seen another one like it, but surely there are others around.  Check it out:

Ok, now do you remember?  In the early 70's, these were in some kind of laundry powder.  I want to say Biz Bleach, but I can't remember for sure. The theme was flowers, and the tea towels were pronounced  a bad advertising gimmick by one and all immediately after having been pulled out of the powder, where they were always buried mysteriously deep, which usually made a dusting on the floor, which had to cleaned up.  Which, did nothing to improve the mood of these women who were already disillusioned at the thought of having to get some more tea towels after all, because these would never do.  Maybe it was just that the powder wasn't any good, hence the "free" prize, but these tea towels were cussed and discussed all over America, by women who bought that washing powder.  I don't know how many of them used the tea towels or how long they lasted.

What I do know is that though those tea towels were despised by one and all, very few of them were thrown away, and at least one woman saved them up until she had enough to make a quilt out of.  It's just a twin size, so either she didn't like the brand that much or she just didn't need any more big quilts.  We will never know.  We can make stories up about it instead.

That depression-era generation knew how to turn straw into gold.  I miss them.  That's all I'm sayin'.  

When I Grew Up.....

When I grew up, my grandmother's rose with the sun, cooked breakfast, and then cleaned house until noon. Their main job was to take care of their families and their houses, and they took that job very seriously.  They put their hair up in bandannas to dust, vacuum, and do laundry, dishes, and wash windows until noon, when they prepared lunch (for their husbands, who came home for lunch), cleaned up, and then took a much deserved and very much needed nap. 
Afternoon's were for preparing to go downtown.  This meant washing your hands and face, putting on clean clothes, lipstick for the ladies. Often jewelry would be worn.  Brooches were popular, as were scarves, held in place by brooches. 
Going downtown would include a trip to the grocery store, the post office, the drugstore for an ice cream soda, and various businesses up and down a centrally located Main Street, where every business owner and a good percentage of the customers knew you and your entire family for generations.  There were few strangers, and no one was a stranger for long.

If you needed gas, you drove to a gas station, where you drove over an air pump, which rang a bell, which told the attendant that a customer was waiting.  You sat in the car and the attendant came out and pumped your gas, cleaned your windows, would check your oil and various fluids.  These attendants would even be able to tell if you had a belt that was looking worn, or a spark plug problem.  These were back in the days when you opened the hood of a car you could actually see the engine, of course.  These were also the days when most men knew the parts, what they did, and owned tools to work them.  The attendant would also take your money and bring your change to the car, if you didn't want to get out.  It was a long time ago.

We played in back yards and in creeks until our mothers called us in for supper, then we were right back out there until after dark.  We played games of hide and seek and statues.  We would spin ourselves around until we fell on the ground and then laugh and laugh at how dizzy we were.  Occasionally we would not get up, and instead stare at the clouds for hours, finding shapes and making up stories that usually starred ourselves.  We were the stars of our own world, and we often ruled that world from the tops of trees.  You would be astounded to know what all you can both hear and see from the top of a tree, especially if no one knows you are up there.

Going to a movie was a big deal, and usually would only occur at a drive-in.  You would be piled into the car with various sacks of popcorn prepared at home and a cooler with pop, blankets and pillows, only to be dragged out in the middle of the night, at least half asleep, by a parent.

Saturday nights you would have a babysitter because your parents would go "out".  "Out" often was a "supper club", where they would eat steak, dance, and drink.  It was referred to as a "supper club" because it sounded much better than "bar", but this did not concern me at all.  I was busy teaching myself to tap dance like the guy on Lawrence Welk, which was always just fine with my babysitter.  The babysitter was intimately known to you, if not your cousin.  She did dishes and supervised sibling fights, knowing all the house rules since birth herself, and having no qualms about being sued for child molestation or abuse.  By anyone, least of all the children.  It was a long time ago.

If you didn't have a babysitter for Saturday night, it was probably because it was your parent's turn to have everyone over to play cards until the wee hours of the morning.  This meant hours of running and screaming through dark yards, free reign of the record player, and cake pans full of popcorn, as many as you could eat, all night long.  This popcorn was prepared by using oil, popcorn, and a big pan, on a stove, and always left unpopped kernels, which were scorned by most, but not all, children.  Eventually you fell over and slept wherever you were.  If you were very lucky, you could fake being asleep so that your dad would carry you out at the end of the night, saving you the rude awakening and shuffling over other children's supposedly sleeping figures.

Occasionally, a teenager would do "something bad" and everybody would be upset for awhile.  The kids didn't know what happened, just that it was "something bad".  But then the next thing you knew everybody was celebrating a wedding and planning a chivaree.  A chivaree is an occasion whereupon the newly married couple is set upon by "surprise" and then have their new house basically trashed.  Most times, inexplicably, the husband was goaded into pushing his new wife somewhere in a wheel barrow.  I do not have an explanation for this, other than that you had to get the couple out of the house somehow so you could trash it.  The grown ups seemed to think that throwing oatmeal all over someone's bed was funny.  I thought it was terrible.  They said I would understand someday.  That day has yet to come.....  Possibly it is some kind of ceremonial placing of the new couple on the same side.  Against their family and friends who would trash their house and leave them with this mess to clean up together.  Anyway, after that things would settle down and be normal again, the upset seemingly forgotten.  I do not remember any couple ever taking revenge and trashing anyone else's house.  I guess it would have never ended then, and for the good of the entire town you had to sit up and take your medicine, like a grown up, which you were supposed to be if you were married.  Let's not examine that any further here.  I really don't have that kind of time.

There were no "designer" brands of anything to my knowledge.  This was back in the days when mother's were home and made clothes for their children.  What your mom couldn't make you could order from a catalog.  Catalogs were really big and would be kept in a special place to be poured over for an entire year.  Even after they were out of date, they made very good door stops if one had the patience to fold down every sheet, making a rounded bottom and a pointed top.  Many had such patience, instinctively "re-using" and "recycling" any given material.  I can remember little "rugs" in front of kitchen sinks woven entirely out of bread wrappers, saved for just such a use.

Going out to eat was a big treat, especially if you were a child, as most restaurants were for adults and not designed, even their menu's, for children.  It was more common to get to go to a Kentucky Fried Chicken, or a Dog 'N Suds, where a carhop on roller skates delivered hamburgers, hot dogs, and frosted mugs of Root Beer on a tray that hung right on your window.  There were no drive-thru windows, except on a few banks.

Saturdays downtown, many women would wear curlers in their hair, covered by headscarves.  This was before blow dryers, and I hear that far from being embarrassing, it was a mark of distinction (to be seen in public in curlers, that is) because it meant you had a date that night.   I am not making this up, although I do remember the first time I ever saw a blow dryer and a curling iron.  These items were very popular, sold like hot cakes, and whether by design or not, opened up a whole market for product to use on "damaged" hair that continues unabated to this very day.  The future would see small wars waged over whether these products were "tested" on animals, but that is another story, no less incredible than the rest of this strange story.

The Pledge of Allegiance started every school day.  Most everyone went to church on Sunday regardless of what they had done Saturday night, and no one ever, ever discussed how they voted.  It was considered bad manners not just to ask, but to tell.  I miss those days.

This Fourth of July weekend I hope you look around and examine the world.  Take a good hard look and compare it to what you grew up with.  Try not to cry.  How is America doing in your book?  You don't have to discuss it with anybody, just ask yourself.  That should keep you busy for awhile.  Think about having freedom and what it costs.  Then enjoy your holiday and teach your kids what really matters.  You know what it is, let's get back to it.