Chirp

About a month ago Sailor found a baby bird that had fallen from it's nest. A cat got the Mama bird and he felt very sorry for it and wanted to take care of it.

He fixed up a cardboard box and tenderly cared for it, catching all it's food and feeding it painstakingly often. He named it Chirp and totally neglected Wags in favor of sitting beside the box and talking to his helpless little bird. But even with all it's care it didn't survive.

There was a tearful little funeral and then the search for the perfect tombstone ensued. He finally found one and brought it to the house to have it inscribed.

It now marks the spot where a little bird that was nearly smothered in love rests peacefully.

Grandpa Swarey's

Every summer Daddy and Mom planned a trip to Canada to visit Grandpa and Grandma Swarey and all the aunts and uncles.

Mom would spend several days at her sewing machine making new clothes for all of us. It was fun watching her sew my dresses and try them on to see how deep the hem of the skirt needed to be.

We would count down the days until it was time to leave. It was very exciting to help pack our big black suitcase with all our new clothes, and watch as Daddy put a shiny black polish on our shoes to make them look new again. We would take a bath and go to bed. The air of excitement made it hard to fall asleep, but the first thing we knew Daddy was waking us up to get ready. Everything was dark and quiet at three in the morning. We would hurry and get dressed and fill several jugs with water to drink on the way and then wait until the driver arrived.

When the 15 passenger van finally drove into the driveway we all hurried outside as Daddy blew out the lamps and locked the doors. Since Mom had several sisters living in Canada yet, Grandpa and Grandma Mast and aunt Emma and Vernie would travel with us to visit them.

John and I sat on the very last seat, it was bumpy but we didn't mind. We liked kneeling on the seat and looking out the back window to watch all the other vehicles. I always breathed a sigh of relief when we were safely off the 4 lane roads. They were more than a little intimidating to me because I had heard the preachers say where the wide and broad way leads to and I was terrified if we stayed on the 4 lane long enough we would end up there.

By late afternoon we would arrive at Grandpa Swarey's and we would all climb out of the van. Grandma Swarey would come bustling out of the house to welcome us and the aunts would soon come and join her. Grandpa Masts would visit for a little bit and then leave to spend time with their daughters.

It was always noisy at Grandpa Swarey's as everyone seemingly talked at once. Since there were still six of Daddy's younger brothers and sisters still living with Grandpa's. His oldest sister, Susie lived there too but after doing her duty in welcoming us she was much more concerned about all the things that needed to be done than enjoy their visitors.

Aunt Ella more than made up for her though. She was very cheerful and had a way of talking with us on the same age level as we were. She had suffered from the dreaded disease of polio which left her crippled. In the evening Grandma would invite all of their married children and grandchildren to come for supper. It used to be fun to play with all the cousins.

Grandpa Swarey was very strict and we never dared to get too rowdy. He never did anything to correct us except bunch his bushy eyebrows together and look sternly at us which always made us quiet down. If we played outdoors we were allowed to make all the noise we wanted to.

Grandpa Swarey's had a very unique set of toys to play with. There were no animals or dolls to play with because of his convictions that they are graven images. Instead there were empty thread spools to use as animals and plenty of wooden blocks for pens. For dolls Grandma saved empty Dawn dish washing soap bottles and cleaned them and then wrapped them in little blankets. With a healthy imagination we had a lot of fun with those toys!

Unfortunate Events

Life in our little corner of the world has been quite busy the past few days. Sunbeam had an appointment to see her surgeon, who was pleased at how she is recovering.


Her days are filled with watching the children play outdoors ..........................

And the many things that keep her occupied while sitting on Daddy's recliner.

I tried to heed all of your advice about not worrying too much about the condition of my house, and just enjoy every moment and all the visitors that pop in to say "Hi."

It led to a series of unfortunate events....

It all started one evening when we sat down to supper to one of the biggest cooking disasters that I tried serving to my family in years. We coughed and choked and gulped water to try to erase the awfulness from our mouth. There was no question about it. It simply was not fit to eat. I went ahead and warmed up some left overs and we had that instead.

As we were cleaning up the dishes I told Sailor to dump the disaster into the woods. He went outside with it, Rosy and I did the dishes and somehow I never thought to enquire the where abouts of the dish that had contained the disaster.

We went to bed blissfully unaware that another unfortunate event was about to unfold because of the disaster. The next morning, right after breakfast, I heard the distinct sound of a tractor coming in the driveway. I looked outside and saw it was a little tractor with an Amish haymaking crew. They wanted to make hay in the field next to our house.They stopped at the house and the lady and her daughter stepped off and the guy and his son went to mow hay.

I opened the door to welcome them inside. We hadn't seen each other in a long time and started talking.

Now when I talk to someone I don't focus on their feet. And apparently they didn't either because to my horror they started slipping and staggering on....... the disaster from the previous night supper.

Sailor had thought Wags would surely be delighted to have a bowlful of food, but Wags just spread everything out on the porch and left it for my unsuspecting visitors to slide on.

I was so embarrassed as I hurriedly tried to scoop everything up and dispose of it properly. We had an enjoyable visit. But now when I hear the crunch of gravel on the driveway I always take a frantic tour through the house and check the porches to make sure that nothing similar happens.




Thankfully no one was hurt. And they were able to pile on their tractor again and leave once the hay was mowed.

Amish In Somerset County PA

These pictures were taken last year in Somerset County PA by my husbands sister and brother-in-law. The circumstances surrounding the reason we were all back there weren't the sweetest but we have enjoyed the pictures.

Cousin Wilmer is hitching up his horse after most of the people have left after church.

Two youth boys walking home after services. The Amish youth in Somerset County are noted to walk for miles to attend church rather than having to use their horse and buggy or ride with their parents.

Several men catching up on the latest news while hitching up a horse.

Notice the big bonnets these poor women are wearing. I always hated wearing them! It always felt as if you were caged and you had to turn your head to see anything other than what was directly in front of you. The rule was to have them big enough so that a butcher knife could be slid down the front without touching your nose.

After services everyone is leaving to go to a friends house for a lunch that a dozen or so women have prepared. Sharing the road is not nearly as fun when you are driving a car. It is amazing to me that there aren't lots of accidents. Notice the unsafe spot chosen to pass these slow moving buggies.

New House

Somehow Daddy and Mom scrimped and saved enough money to start building a new house. They worked on it in the evenings after Daddy came home from work. It was a long slow process but finally they had the roof on and the outside walls closed in.

They got the partitions up on the inside and by then their house fund was depleted, but we wanted to move in anyway. Grandpa Mast brought several five gallon pails of white paint and aunt Emma brought some coloring to tint it and they spent all day painting the plywood on the floors for us. The kitchen floor was painted a rust brown and three of the bedrooms a country blue. It was fun to watch as they would pour paint into the paint pan and then dip their paint roller in it and turn the plain plywood floor into something much prettier. When they were ready to paint my bedroom floor aunt Emma told me to come watch as she tinted the paint with some coloring she had brought along especially for my room.

I watched as she carefully put several drops of red in the paint and was delighted to see the paint turn a lovely shade of pink. I thought that surely no other little girl was as fortunate as I was to have a pink floor in her bedroom. It didn't bother me that there was nothing but stud walls all through the house. To me there were only so many more options of where to enter and exit my room and all the other rooms in the house.

Once the floors were painted Grandpa went to town with our spring wagon and came back with a load of huge boxes from an appliance store. They cut the boxes open and then took them inside and nailed the cardboard to the walls of Daddy and Mom's bedroom and the bathroom. Once they had it enclosed Mom found several old blankets and nailed them over the doors.

When Daddy came home from work he and Mom started moving in our furniture from the trailer. It was so exciting to be able to finally sleep in our new house.

Of Soup and Snakes

One of the things that my parents required of us when we were children, was that we eat everything on our plates. Most times this was not a problem, but once a week Mom would make chili soup.

Now I have had a lot of chili made by other people, and have found a recipe that we all love, but the chili soup I was subjected to as a child makes me shudder still whenever I think of it

Mom would start by frying hamburger with onions and then dump in a pint of kidney beans and a quart of tomato juice and water. Then to top it off she would pour in brown sugar. If being a sickly sweet, tomatoey, salty, thin watery mess wasn't bad enough those kidney beans totally pushed it over the limit of endurance. I would rather have skipped a meal than to eat it, but eat it I had to.

Somewhere along the line I learned to pick out the beans and swallow them like pills, which helped a lot but I still had to eat the soup.

One day I was once again sitting at the table alone trying to choke down the soup. Mom, John, and David went to get the mail and were gone for quite a while. Once they got in John excitedly told me how there had been a huge snake by the mailbox and Mom got the hoe to kill it. She took a mighty swing and chopped it's head right off, they then watched in amazement as a bewildered frog hopped out and sat there blinking at them. I'm sure thanking them for freeing it from the the horror it had been experiencing.

I didn't think it was fair, that I had to be in the house choking down nasty soup, while they had been outside freeing frogs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The in-law in the previous post is sitting on the right, he has slightly graying hair. My husband is sitting next to him and then his brothers Vernon, Melvin, and Mervin.

Family

Thanks for all the comments yesterday, telling me to not worry about the house. While I won't be putting out any "Dust Bunnies Welcome" signs. I won't be overly concerned when the occasional one appears.

Yesterday one of my husband's brother's were here and brought pictures along for us from various family gatherings over the past year. I never thought to take our camera to these events that include Amish, because I value what little acceptance we have, and I don't have a good quality camera that allows me to take pictures from a safe distance that turn out half ways acceptable.

These pictures were taken last summer when my husband's parents had a family gathering for all five of their children and the 30+ grandchildren. My sister-in-law and her husband took turns running in the house when no one else was there to take pictures through the windows. They didn't turn out too bad even though the screens were in the way.

Here Grandpa is helping one of the little girls.

My mother-in-law is the one in the dark red dress and blue tie on apron, and my husband's only sister standing behind her. (Click on the picture to enlarge.)

Here is my husband with his parents, though one of his nephews is blocking us from seeing his Mothers face.

And here are all the brothers and the one brother-in-law. Wonder if you can pick out the in-law?

The Process of Recovery

I have been in a blogging rut ever since Sunbeam's accident. I'm sure I'll get out of it eventually. But right now my days are filled with taking care of her needs, between all the other things that a family of five needs to have done, and the many people that drop by to see her.

And I have discovered much to my dismay that not only does a house not clean itself, neither does it stay clean once I have it spotless, I think it is safe to say my last shreds of pride and dignity have been removed since we have people dropping by at all hours without notice.

Sunbeam is recovering, and yesterday got to enjoy a makeshift playhouse her siblings built for her on the recliner.


One of my husband's brother's and his family are coming to spend the day here today and my kitchen is still a mess.........