Family Gathering

Hey, this is such a great picture shot about 1950 at my aunt and uncle's farm near Calvin, West Virginia. That's me in the middle of the front row leaning against my Grandma Rose's knee. On either side of me is my sister Shirley and my cousin Clark. In the back row is my mom Katie, my Grandpa John, Aunt Luella and Uncle Silmon. My dad was taking the picture.

I used to love to go to their house...just getting there was an adventure. You turned off onto this little windy  dirt road that hugged the mountains and hoped you didn't meet anyone going the other way. I was prone to car sickness so it seemed a long way to their farm but probably was only a couple of miles.

Once we got there, it was a kid's paradise, though. There were my five boy cousins and all they were into (they had a box of comic books under the bed!). I especially remember my aunt's homemade mincemeat pie with whipped cream straight from the cows. There were animals and always kittens, it seemed. And there were the mountains (need I say more?).

Look how happy we all are! I'd like to step into the picture and relive it for a couple of hours.

Field of Flowers

The background here reminds me of the WV fields of my childhood in Nicholas County. We didn't really need toys in the country; we had the fields. I remember the smell, kind of weedy-sweet, of all those plants.

Milkweed was fun. In the summer, my sister and I would break off a leaf and this white milky substance would come dripping out. We were both charmed and repulsed (ewwwww). We would break open the seed pods in the fall and blow the downy seeds in all directions.

We would collect a bouquet of goldenrod, Queen Anne's Lace and chicory (we called it corn flower) and take it to Mama or Grandma. We would make daisy chains and put them on our heads or do "he loves me, he loves me not" with the petals.

We would lie on our stomachs and watch all the activity down below - ants marching around carrying stuff (sometimes another wounded ant). All kinds of colorful bugs, pretty and scary. Who needed DVDs?