The Red Ring

I don't know if I wrote about the red ring or not.....But I remember the first time I coveted something!...It was a red ring. I was in first grade at half days in Lebanon Jr. High while our new grade school was being built. Mrs Bush my first grade teacher was horrid. She gave me my first spanking. Needless to say, she was not on my favorites list!...My first grade was full of so many problems. This year impressed me to count it as "one of the worst times of my life" even at 5 years old. But a memory of that year sticks in my mind. Linda Laskovich was in my first grade class. She wore a beautiful red, shiney, stone ring on her middle finger. It was surrounded in gold. This ring drew my eye and I so wanted a ring like that. When the sun shined in the window, it sparkled on the stone and made it ever so much more inviting!...Along with that horrible year. There was a cute boy named Doug..I don't remember his last name but I had a big crush on him. He was very tall, blone and dressed very nice. He was much taller than I was. Even at six years old, I was the shortest person as well as the youngest in my classes...This was true throughout all of my school years, even into high school. But back to Linda and her ring...I tried so hard to get her to let me wear her ring. I just wanted to have that ring. It was so beautiful and shiney, but she would never let me even try it on. She said, her mother would be mad. I am guessing, now looking back, it was a birthstone and a gift. She treasured that ring but not as much as I didn...and she would not let it out of her sight. Besides that she had really nice clothes and her hair always looked beautiful. Her hair was dark and shiny and she wore very nice clothes. I guess I was jealous even at 6 years old because of the way she not only looked but the way she made me feel. I knew it was because I lived in a trailer court and we were considered "trailer trash" by all those who lives in normal homes. I never felt like trailer trash and didn't know why others called us that!!..but that never bothered me. The thing that did bother me was that Linda and Doug were a thing, not only did she have this beautiful ring but she had the eye of the boy I liked...I remember even at such a young age how I coveted her life...her ring and her life...I asked for a ring for Christmas or my birthday that year...and I got a birthstone ring. A garnet, not quite as big or shiny or as red as Linda's but it was a very nice ring and I loved it...I wore it, spinned it around on my finger and treasured it...until one day while riding home from Dormont with my Dad on a Saturday afternoon...I had it in my mouth and bit it in half....I broke my ring, my birthstone ring...My mother was not happy!!! She took it from me and I never saw it again..And as far as Doug..I guess he went off to a life full of Linda Laskovich's.....and I ended up with an obsession of rings!! Not all red but rings none the less!!! In fouth grade after moving to Cooperstown...I had another episode of total ring fever....this time it was an opal ring. Royene Sterling had a beautiful opal ring...it probably was a birthday or Christmas gift...I wanted a ring just like that...the opal moved in the light as opals can do...and it fasinated me...One day, I asked her to wear it..and she let me. At the end of the day, I wore it home..She had forgotten I had it and I was happy to go home with her ring on my hand. The next day, I forgot to take it back to school, on purpose. I thought perhaps she would forget I had it...and I could keep it!!...But after a many days her mother called my mother and I was forced to return it to her at school!!...Oh how I wanted that opal ring!!...So when I grew up and got a job, after buying everyone in my family a gift....one of the first rings I ever purchased for myself was an opal ring...I still have that ring, it has a big crack in it but when I wear it, it reminds me of how something, material like a ring can lead you down a road of evil ways. To lie, cheat, and covet something that doesn't belong to you. It starts so innocently in a little ring, that shines like the sun!!!

We learn wisdom after the fact!!

Now that I am older and consider myself wiser. I have learned whenever you want something done. It is best you either entrust it to someone you are sure will do a better job than you, or you will do it yourself!...I have wasted so many moments in my life screaming orders and requests to people that have no intentions of doing ..nor do they even hear what I am yelling. I know now when you speak...speak softly and carry a BIG stick. Getting another person attention doesn't necessarily work when you speak louder or more often. Having six kids seasoned me for this exact practice. I would request something like..."Please run the vaccuum cleaner today" and name the person I wanted to have do it...but on my return it seemed nobody had any idea of what I said, or to whom I said it!!!...Frustrated, I would find myself yelling louder and repeating the request 2 or 3 times..threaten, and scream..and still it wouldn't be done. Or it was done so fast and unmanaged it would have been better left alone. I offered incentives, rewards, and even over and above payment. Still the committment was not fulfilled to my satisfaction. What I learned about this is people (including my own children) do what they want and they do it when they want regardless of the recompense. My mother for example would speak and we would not listen. She ended up doing everything herself. I look back now and see how I could have been a help to her....but she really didn't seem to mind. And without a word...she would finished the chore, on her own. On the other hand, my father said something ONCE...with a tone in his voice that said..."This better be done or else"...instantly you knew it was a priority in your life to obey!!...but why wouldn't we obey my mother as well...Growing up parents are manipulated and formed into obedience from their children from the beginning. The cry, we obey. They smile, we fold into a crumble.. They know after a short time just how to get everything they want and they know how to do it!!! The joy of motherhood is a two fold one. The joy of having a family and children is to be able to convience yourself you are able. You love and nurture them...trying to teach and give them a true sense of who they are. But, self worth is a bit harder to nurture....I don't believe I ever conquered the secret to provide this in my children. My expectations weren't high enough and for this reason they suffered with many unfullfilled goals. Lives that are hanging in the balance of good and evil. Someone told me once I expected too little of my children...and now I know they are correct. If I asked to have the vaccumm cleaner run and it wasn't done in two, three days, I then would do it myself and complain the entire time about nobody listening to me...and doing what I asked!..My mother never really asked me to do much of anything, that I can remember. We did wash dishes at one point my sister and I. But usually as things go..it would last for a time and then for whatever reason the chore would cease and we would be back to my Mom doing everything. I mowed the grass, but always got yelled at for mowing over the wild roses...by accident. I wish I knew the secret to keeping that expectation mode in check for my grandchildren. However, my time has passed and now it is time to sit back and watch those children I spent so many hours yelling and performing tasks that were long overdue and neglected to be passed on to my grandchildren...I see now, the error of my ways, and would love to be able to screw off my childrens heads and place the "WHAT I KNOW, BUT NEVER TAUGHT YOU" button inside of them so they won't look back and see they have made the same mistakes I made. Seems life takes on the role of "HARD KNOCKS" and that includes all generations!! AND SO IT GOES!!

Children and Parents

It seems we make our choices when we get older but when we are children we are subject to our parents choices. When you are a child you go along with whatever your parents decide and never think anything about things being what they should or shouldn't be. You trust your parents always do the right things and you will spend every day of your young life standing up for what they do. You accept them and are sure anything they do is for you best interest. You would never think they are trying to do anything to hurt you or make your life miserable. This is why so many children are found in situations of terrible peril. Their parents choices reflect their futures...good and bad! When we moved from West Mifflin to Cooperstown as children we were excited about the move. Knowing we could live in the country with land, have pets and no close neighbors. We learned to live a completely different life than the one we lived in the trailer park. We had no close friends. We had no neighbors. We had no playmates. When we moved my little sister was very small. She was three years old and remembers very little of the change. However, I remember alot of the turmoil that came along with the huge move. The clearing the ground, the well being drilled, the confushion of lives turned inside out. We all were like fish out of water. My father was never a farmer and my mother has always live in the city. She was raised in the West End of Pittsburgh were there were trolley cars, buses, and city life. My father worked at Pittsburgh Outdoor and worked on huge billboards when he and my mother were married. He was from upper North Side and when he and my mother were neighbors at one point, they fell in love. She was 19 and he was 23. My mother spent much of her time doing what young girls do. Ice skating, playing instuments with friends on a weekend night. Life was so much more social back in 1934. People visited one another, the teens pulled taffy, made popcorn and played board games. They spent their time at home with friends. Life was simple and less complicated in so many ways. My mother had two sisters, Anna and Alice. She was the youngest. My father had a younger sister. Alice was two years younger and a stepbrother, Tom. He was 18 years older than Dad. He was born to my Grandma Davis from an earlier relationship or marriage. My father was responsible for everything his little sister Alice did. He was to watch her and take care of her. When he was 6 years old, his father, Brooks Curry died in the flu epidemic of 1918. He was an alcoholic and those days, alcohol was used for medicinal purposes. His body was so immuned to alcohol it left him vulnerable for the influenza to take over his body and attacked his organs. My father hated his father. He told us his father came home drunk every night and beat him with a slipper. He never told him why, he just told him it was for what he was thinking of doing. When my grandfather, Brooks Curry, died, my father had nothing but hatred for him. He actually was glad he was dead!..I thought that was one of the saddest things I had ever heard! My father at six years old the brundt of a drunkards insecurities of himself. For a six year old to have to face the consequences of an adult life and accept those mature responsibilities forced onto him. Perhaps that made my father try to be a better father. He strived to be the man that his father never could be....I am sure he suffered as children do when they are ponds in the game of life that adults make for them!!!

A Life Change

One of the strange things about life is looking back..and seeing where you've been. Questioning your choices. Wondering if decisions you made would have changed your destiny and taken you down a different path. Just how would that have influenced your life...I do believe in free will, I also believe that what happens has a purpose. It is our choice. We somehow are driven and guided to learn something from whatever circumstance we find ourselves. I guess you could say...we need to bloom where we are planted!! But wondering if our seed would have fallen on different ground...in a different place if our life would have taken a different turn. We are who we are because God made us who we are!!!...We have a desire to place our lives according to his will if we choose. However, so many people, so many times decide not to seek to belong and run off down their own path. I know many times I did that exact thing without much thought about if it was the right thing or not. I always paid for it somehow, some way..We have a mind of our own and we do the things we want and not what we should...This is the reason why my life has been such a mixture of constant striving to be who I turned out to be today. Good or bad I am who I am and now probably won't change. We are all given a measure of faith and it is up to us to excersize it...We can let it stay dormant or we can increase it by hearing and listening to the giver of all faith...God! I consider it like a muscle, use it or lose it!! That is how I see faith. If you don't use it..you will not have any. God has given us that measure and it is up to us to make it grow by reading the Word of God and praying and trusting...with those things our faith grows and we become an instrument of a loving and caring God. These things that you will read on my blog are true stories of my life..they are things I think and feel. Some you may not like and feel they are private and should not be public, but my life is an open book. God gave it to me..to do with as I like. It anything I might say in my blog helps one person, then my life made public has been worthwhile. If there is one person that can grow, or see their way though a difficult time by what I write here than it has all been worth it. So don't judge me for what I write in this blog. It is an instrument to be used to let you see human beings are imperfect. We are needing help. We came into this world naked and we are leaving the same way. Only what has be presented to us through our Heavenly Father and what we have done with it...is the theme. I am a sinner, saved by grace. I know that!! I accept my Heavenly Fathers love for me. I trust He knows me better than I know myself. I also know that He is in contol. I am now owned and operated by the Holy Spirit that dwells inside of me. He is my all in all. Where He takes me I will follow. It is not man who judges me..it is God and God alone. I am in love with him. He is my world!! So read my blogs with an open heart and let the Holy Spirit minister to you by the words of my life....as He has given me!!

The Night of the Living Ducks

This being Fathers Day, I can't help but to share this story of the time my Mother and Father almost got divorced...Now you might say, "What does that have to do with Fathers Day?" This leads me to the contents of my blog!.. While the MacAnnys were our friends with all their animals..they must have shared a few of their ducklings with us. We built a large circle of wooden fence held together with wire. Placed a large turkey roaster in a pre dug hole. This substitiuted as their lake for swimming. We now had three ducks, the first was a male we named him Sassy..he was my older sisters duck that had survived a prior Easter. My Quack Quack had seen the light and buried up at Mae and Franks Cottage. Sassy thought he was the boss of the other two ducks who later joined the little group. They were Mac and Annie... We knew Sassy was a male because male ducks have one feather on their tail that curls up away from the others and the females don't..Mac and Annie were probably both females because they eventually laid eggs!! And they didn't have the odd feather..Sassy was much smaller then the other two..We enjoyed watching them make the mud in the circle that was their home. They slopped water through their beaks until all the grass had turned so sloppy mud. The rain that continued to fall helped as well..The water pump was up a small grade away from the trailer. It had been raining and all the ground was soggy. So we would not to be walking in the mud, my Mother devised this walk way from the trailer to the pump out of boards. Old boards that had aged and cracked from the weight of those that trailed up to the pump. We filled buckets and hauled them down to the trailer for use. This day the boards were soaked with the rain. The ducks continually escaped their fence and would parade through the yard for grass...Now if you have never had a duck you can't realize just how much waste they make...The drop the biggest globs of slimey goo you have ever seen..and they are no respecters of where they do it..So walking, eating, and dropping all over the yard and the boards, we were victium of poop abuse!!..This day, my father traveled to the pump to gather two buckets of water...filled to the brim, he turns and continues down the soft, wet, slippery boards. Unaware of his footing..and where he was walking, he stepped and slid off the boards into the mud. The buckets flew in the air and came down on my father. Now my father you could say, had no sense of anykind of humor!! And didn't consider this anything but death to the ducks...Leaving the now empty buckets and soaked to the skin and covered with mud...He runs for as many ducks as he can catch screaming...."I am going to wring your necks"...and he meant every word..While he chased the ducks around the yard..grabbing and sliding in mud, duck crap and anything else that was on the ground. Words coming from his mouth could only be considered X rated!!..My mother wondering what was taking my father so long at the pump, looked out to see him running around grabbing to kill the ducks...I guess you could say he had reached that point of impatience where there was no reason!!!...My mother screaming at a level of shrill that a mother can do. "If you kill those ducks, I am leaving you!!..If you kill those ducks that's it. I am done" she screamed over and over..."I am leaving" and she meant it!!..My father, as mad as a hornet..dropped the duck he held in his hands. Seconds away from putting him into ducky heaven. Came into the house and didn't speak to anyone for a few days..Mother finished the water hauling job and for a few days we had a small amount of peace and quiet..with no fighting!!..As hard as it was, we never mentioned the fate of those ducks for many years passed...Eventually it become one of those stories everyone lived on at any family get together...Now I can look back and see the desperation of life my poor Dad had to spend everyday in...and I can only say, The past is over and forgotten..and now that you are gone...we are all still left with the memory of the night of the Living Ducks..Thanks for the memories!!!

When your a child and you are poor, you don't know it!!

I now as an adult can look back at the wonderful childhood I had. Realizing at this point and time how terribly poor we were. How even a small bottle of cola and small bag of potato chips were like the best thing in the world. Somehow my parents made friends in our new surroundings. Usually by being in need and asking for help I would imagine. God knew just the people to bring into our lives to bless us..when we didn't even know his name!!..There was the little grocery store call Luethharts. It was owned by a women and her husband and brother. They allowed my mother to buy food and not pay. We had a charge on a paper bill we paid from time to time. I am sure what we owed always out weighed what was paid. But we survived..sometimes on canned gravy and noodles. Sometimes on canned creamed corn and bread. The only meat we got was usually from a couple of wonderful people at the bottom of our hill. I don't know how my parents befriended them...maybe our car broke down and the gentlemen came out to help us. Eventually they became family friends. They were wonderful. They had no children. Probably in their 60's and had animals everywhere. Geese, little banty chickens and regular ones, ducks, cats everywhere, goats and lambs to eat the grass. They had a few cows...They were what we would call a gentleman farmer!...I can still see her face and the way she talked. Her name was Annie. Her teeth kind of pointie and broken in the front. When she spoke she had a lisp that allowed sprays of saliva to push out between the broken part of her front teeth. She always wore red lipstick and her hair was always tied up with a scarf..When she spoke her voice always had a kind smile in it..you knew you were always welcome. Her husband Mac was heavy in the stomach, I think he smoked and drank alot. He usually sat in a living room over stuffed rocker watching television, not much for conversation especially childrens. Looking back now, I am sure these animals were Annie's doing!!..We would spend alot of time there and she taught us all so much about so many things...Farming, gardening, animals and things that we would need to know later on to survive..After all we were city people and never had any idea how to grow an ear of corn...Perhaps it was the eggs my parents went to Pittsburgh to sell that led them to the MacAnnys. This turned out to be their last name, but everyone called them Mac and Anny..We all learned about raising chickens of our own..all about animals and farming..so for whatever reason they were our friends...Friends we had alot to learn from and ones we would never forget. They were kind, helpful, and loving. They gave us food, most of which was out of their freezer and old. I remember my mother crying sadly saying people think we will eat their freezer burnt meat because we don't have any...but the fact of the matter was...we didn't eat it...my mother would throw it away!!!... We would eat spagetti with butter on it for dinner!!..This was a time when I began to learn when you share or give anything to someone..don't give them the stuff you don't want...Give them your best..the biggest..and you take the least...this is the "Christ like" way..and with this concept, we all had alot to learn!!

The Double Dexter Washer

Can it ever be said, that looking back so many things that happened to you when you were just the smallest of a human being has prepared the way for where you are now!! I know it is true for me..My entire life has been like a puzzle laid out on a big table and one piece at a time was placed just in the perfect spot...Many pieces had to be spun around and tried several different ways but in the end..the perfect spot was found and the piece fit correctly...things I now see were just the right time for such a person as me!! My mother always trying to apease everyone and make things right. My father the quiet, but all knowing person that knew about so many things finally got a job being a cyclotron supervisor..He supervised one of the first atom smashers owned by the U.S Government and run by Carnegie Tech...now Carnegie Mellon University in Saxonburg, Pa. It was in the very early 60's . Finally after all the terrible times of the sherrif banging on our door. People suing us for debts owed, wolves literally at the door. I remember when a strange car would come up the driveway my mother would tell us run inside and she would close the door!!!..They came and would knock and knock sometimes leave but most times not until my mother would go out. She would always say, "Don't let them look inside or they will take all of our stuff away"...I can't imagine now anyone wanting any of our stuff!!! But, I suppose the repo man would show up and carry the chair out with you in it..That never did happen thanks to my mothers protection. But, one time our dog bit one of the collectors..and he was going to shoot the dog. We grabbed our dog and he ran off.. It was horrible, we lived like common criminals. Our only crime was that our government was not willing to compromise on my fathers bankruptcy of his businesses. I remember one specific time....When we where outside, it was summer. We had a very old Double Dexter Washing Machine with a wringer. An extention cord led to the plug inside and the washing machine was outside under the tree. Both tubs filled with water one for washing and one for rinsing. The water heated from the stove inside and carried out, dumped then dumped into the tubs. First whites, then colors then darks. The ringer spun around from one tub to the other, it was great and kept us from having to wash our clothes out by hand. Then we would hang the clothes out on the line to dry. One day a man showed up..a collector. We could not run, he caught us in the middle of washing and this particular day the motor caught on fire and flames were shooting out from the machine. Not being an mechanical my mother just put out the fire...and unplugged the machine..while all this was happening, the collector stood and watched the preceedings..He couldn't believe his eyes..He stood speechless watching...and finally came over and introduced himself. He explained he was there to collect a debt...but then he turned and said. "My wife complains about her dish washer when it isn't working ..I should bring her out here and see how lucky she is." We never saw that guy again. He left shaking his head in unbelief...I guess the debt was considered PAID!!