My Blog
Caution: High Winds
When you live where we do, you get used to hearing tornado warnings on TV, usually in the spring. I've lost count of how many tornadoes have swept through our area with the accompanying hail storms, wind damage, and insurance claims. The weather man's refrain is...
Hand-Me-Downs
I am a fourth-born and a first-born. My parents had this great little family of 3 daughters, each two years apart. Then they waited 8 years and had me and my younger brother in quick succession. Though this technically ranks me fourth, the large gap made us kind of...
George Jones & the Natural Disaster
Most of what I remember of family vacations growing up was being stuffed into our station wagon with all five kids. We'd fight over who had to sit on the hump in the middle of the back seat, who had to be crammed into the rear (car seats were unheard of), and who got...
Rattlesnake
Unbeknownst to my parents, my brother once kept a rattlesnake in an aquarium upstairs in our house. It was housed right next to its friend the moccasin in another aquarium, a duplex of sorts. He'd captured them in the state park across the street from our home, as a...
Centipede
The centipede was happy, quite, Until a toad, in fun, Said, "Pray, which leg goes after which?" Which raised her mind to such a pitch She lay distracted in a ditch considering how to run. Around age 4, I memorized this poem (Katherine Craster, 19th c.). The first...
O Christmas Tree
Charlie Brown's Christmas tree has always confused me a little. I don't know if it was a symptom of being in a regimented, military family or just the fact that over half of us were decidedlyType A personalities, but there was no way our family tree ever would have...