Decoration Day

Next Monday is Decoration Day at the Ott Cemetery. I will be in Texas visiting my kids and grandkids so I will be going out to decorate graves next weekend. I bought flowers today.

Back when I was a kid, Decoration Day(s) was a big event. We have family at the Ott, Cowan, Pleasant Ridge, Fairvew and Flippin Cemeteries (and a few more). But the Decoration Day that I most remember is the one held at the Ott cemetery. We all got new clothes because people dressed up for Decoration back then. My Granny Ott often wore a hat.

Lots of people came to the Ott Decoration. I would see cousins that I didn't see very often. Like us, they would all be dressed up. It's always windy at the Ott. Even on the hottest day a breeze will be blowing there. After cleaning and decorating graves we would have "dinner on the ground." Everyone would bring food and come down to our house and we would eat.

It's an old cemetery with several graves. There are 5 generations of my family buried there. Not just Otts - my Granny's Bundy family is buried there too. My Granny had a sister named Mahlia Melvina who died at a young age. I used to wish my name was Mahlia and I would wonder what she looked like. Iwould look at the graves of my Ott great-great grandparents, John and Sarah, and wonder about them. They were the first Otts to live here and homestead the farm. There's been much discussion over the years about Sarah. She is a mystery to us.

There are several other graves that I used to really wonder about. A young Kaler girl, who's family put stones around her grave so it wouldn't be lost. And the many baby graves used to worry me. Now I think of those who have been put there in my lifetime...my Daddy, Granny, Aunt Opal and favorite cousin, Earlene, my nephews, David and Ronny.

Decoration Day isn't what it used to be. It's becoming a dying custom. Now people just come and go as they wish to decorate and some cemeteries don't allow deocrating at all. The headstones must be flat and only a small vase for flowers is allowed. That seems very sad too me. I hope that never happens at the Ott cemetery. It's a beautiful place and anyone is welcome there to visit or to be buried there. We're still "country" enough to hold to old fashioned Decoration Day.

Branching Out

Last night I had the honor of speaking to the Flippin Graduating Class of 2011. I taught these students when they were in the 7th and 8th grade. Every few years in a teacher's career a bond will be forged between a class and teacher. There was an immediate bond between this class and me. Some of my fondest memories as an educator have come from the time that I spent with these students.

They had asked me to speak at their graduation back when they were sophomores and I honestly figured that they would forget about me since I no longer taught at Flippin. Back in October I got a call from the senior class sponsor and she told me that I had been voted as their commencement speaker. I didn't take this responsibility lightly - in fact I saw it as one of the biggest challenges that I have faced as an educator. I wanted to make sure that I got it right.

As teachers, we sometimes forget that everything that we say and do is making an impact on students. I try to stay conscious of what I say and the tone with which I say it. Every day I tell myself to remember to guard my tongue and my actions. I never realized how much of what I had said and done was being "absorbed" by those middle school kids. As I sat down to put on paper what I wanted to say, a flood of emotions ran through my head. This was a large class, by Flippin standards, but I could tell you something about each one of those kids. I wanted to be able to write a speech that made each of them feel that I had written it just for them. I hope I was able to do that.

This morning those kids are alumni. No more will they walk the halls of Flippin School as students. That safety net that comes from being part of a group is weakened now. That feeling of belonging and being in a safe, familiar place is altered now. They will all go their separate ways and develop into their own unique individual adult personalities. They will come together again for reunions, but it will never be the same.

I hope the things that I chose to say will help them a little along their journey. I want the best for each of them. I wish they would never stumble or feel inadequate but I know that they will.

The them for my speech was the same as the title of my blog spot; "Don't Be Afraid to Climb on the Skinny Branches." I hope that they climb as high on the tree of opportunity as they can. And I hope they enjoy the view from atop those skinny branches.

"Mom, You're addicted to exercise."

I just read a friend's blog about her exercise routine and as I was writing comments on her blog I began to think about my past 34 years as a regular exerciser.

How do I know it's been 34 years? That's how old Ryan is. I was skinny when I got pregnant with Ryan. I weighed in at 118 the day I found out I was pregnant (I'm 5'7") and I got down to 105 for a time after he was born (I was anemic), but after I got well I gained back up to my normal weight. Though I was still on the low side of the height/weight chart I looked flabby around the middle and my thighs jiggled. I had never really had a formal exercise routine so I didn't know where to start. Enter my sister-in-law (now ex - but that's another story). She was a jogger. I had never known anyone who jogged and I was a bit curious so I took her up on her offer to jog with her. What an eye-opener! I barely made it to the end of the block and I was only 21 years old! I kept on trying and added a few calisthenics that I remembered from high school PE and pretty soon I was hooked. I graduated to fitness tapes - not made for the tv, back in the 70s - but the cassette tapes that you listened to and used a paper that came with them to figure out how to perform the moves. Then came Body Electric on PBS. I still work out with Margaret to this day. Every weekday morning at 6 am I workout to her show. Other tv shows were "The 20 Minute Workout" (which I hated), and "It Figures" with Charlene Prickett. I became a fitness addict. My kids hated my early morning jumping around and told me to seek help for my addiction. LOL

I guess I am still an addict. I own so many fitness tapes and dvds that they fill an entire cabinet. I have running shoes, cross trainers, and dance shoes. I own weights of all sizes, stretch bands, fitness balls, kettle bells, and the list goes on. I've spent years being lean and muscled but now menopause has taken it's wrath on my body and I have to work even harder to just look "OK." I no longer weigh what I wish I did and I have to restrict my eating. I've learned to embrace the 130's and sometimes the 140's (when I don't restrict my eating). I've come to accept that you can't change some things and I try to focus on my health more so than my shape. A couple of years ago I had gone to the mobile mammography unit and this young nurse put my foot in the bone density machine. She looked kind of baffled and went to get an older nurse. She checked me, then asked me if I did weight bearing exercise. I replied that I did almost daily. She told the young nurse that the machine was working fine. I had registered with a bone density of a 24 year-old.

I worry about the youth of today. I look around my classroom and I see over-fat kids all the time. They have flabby bellies and fat arms and the worst of it is that they complain about getting Ds and Fs in PE. When I ask why, they tell me that they refuse to dress out and participate in the class! Each quarter they have to run one mile (only once). I see them crying, acting like they are going to pass out, calling their parents because they are light headed and on and on. I tell them that I can run a mile backwards! And I'm old! That will shame some of them but not all. Their lifestyle today is very different from pubescent kids' lifestyles 25 years ago. They play video games, watch tv, and talk on their cellphones. They eat junk and drink gallons of sugared drinks. You don't see these kids out riding bikes or playing ball.

I'm not saying that you have to devote your life to fitness. I know that I go to the extreme, but I do think exercise helps the quality of life. I love to hike, work outside, and just keep up with my students and grandkids. If I wasn't fit I couldn't do those things. Will I let up anytime soon? I doubt it. It's a part of who I am and a part of my daily routine.

I'm not trying to scold those who don't workout. Everyone has the right to live their own life without judgment. This is just the way that I choose to live mine. I may not live as long as some who have never been physically fit. We can't know our future but I can work hard to prevent high blood pressure and keep my heart and bones strong. To me that's worth the effort.

Growing Up Country

I have come to realize that I am the epitome of the saying "You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl." And the truth is - I like being a country girl. I copied and pasted the recent facebook post about being from the south but I think there is a distinction between a southern belle and a country girl from the south. Country girls get dirty, southern belles try not to. I love being outside, be it working in the garden, flower beds or hiking. This involves getting dirty, so I must fall into the country girl category.

There's also some confusion about country people and hill people. I think hill people are those that lived a subsistence life. They owned a little spot of land and hunted to provide meat and maybe grew a little garden. Country folks, by my definition, owned several acres, farmed the land, raised cattle, hogs, chickens, maybe ran a dairy farm and raised crops, as well as a big garden.

I grew up on a working farm (heavy on the working). My Daddy milked cows when I was little but government restrictions tightened up and he later got out of the dairy business and raised beef cattle. We also raised hogs and chickens, grew hay and made a garden, picked blackberries, huckleberries, canned and preserved any fruits and vegetables that we could. One of my memories is the day that the baby chicks would arrive on the "mail car." They would come in a box and I couldn't wait to pet them. I thought they were so cute. We would take them out to the chicken pen and put food and water in old tires cut in half. Sure enough some would fall in the water and drown. Later when they got bigger, they became "fryers." So much for the cute little chicks. We always had hogs and it seemed like an old sow would wait until the coldest day of winter to have her pigs. Daddy and Mom would have to go to the hog pen and check on things all night. Sometimes one would be frozen and Judith thought it was great fun to wrap the pig in a blanket and rock it. We learned the facts of life living on the farm. You can't hide that stuff. We knew how calves and pigs came about. We helped in the garden, picking up rocks, pulling weeds, picking off bugs - whatever needed to be done.

Our Granny churned butter in a jar. She would rock it back and forth until it made butter. Judith and I tried our luck at it but I'm not sure we ever made butter. When it was done we would spread it on a biscuit and sprinkle it with sugar. We thought it was good eatin'. We also learned to cook at a pretty early age just by helping out in the kitchen. We didn't know anything about cooking "fancy" food but we could put a country meal on the table.

If you grew up country you know about wilted lettuce, radishes, and onions. You would melt bacon grease and pour it over the salad. I miss that sometimes. I always thought you should have pinto beans with wilted lettuce, and of course cornbread (without sugar). The older folks ate milk with cornbread crumbled up in it. I never really like that.

Mom and Granny sewed our clothes. We would go to "Zula's" and get patterns and material and they would make most of our clothes. Mom ordered us shoes and underwear from Aldens, Sears, and Montgomery Wards. There weren't any trips to the mall back then. We had pageant dresses and prom dresses and even our wedding dresses handstitched from home. Our Granny had an old treadle machine and Mom had an electric one. There wasn't a week that went by that one or both those machines weren't busy making something.

Looking back it seems that being country was a hard life but never once did I go to bed hungry. We had lots of food and I never worried that we wouldn't have food. I always had lots of clothes, a warm coat and shoes, pajamas, and warm quilts on my bed.

I remember at about junior high age thinking we were poor because we lived in the country on a farm. My friends and family who lived in town seemed to me to have a much better life - they even had dishwashers and I was so envious of that. I got my eyes opened real wide though, on a school trip. I won't tell the story here but suffice it to say, when I got home from that trip, I realized that we weren't poor at all. My parents just chose to live a country life and raise country kids.

I'm thankful that I know how to cook, can, preserve, raise a garden and sew (not very well). I know that if desperate times called for it, I could make do with whatever I have and survive. I'm not sure that most folks could do that. JC was also raised country. We live modest life that's within our means. We draw pleasure from the simple things that life has to offer.

Animal Crackers On Your Breath

I wasn't going to blog this week. I have had a rough week and honestly nothing had given me any inspiration to blog about...until today after school. I was so tired and I just hate staying late on Fridays but I needed to put some grades in the computer and set up a lab for Monday. Late this afternoon our resource teacher asked me if I could stay after school and sit in on a special ed meeting. My heart sank but I said that I would.

Following the meeting the resource teacher and I came back to my room and we were just talking and somehow in the conversation it came up that in many churches most of the kids don't sit out in the sanctuary any more. Most churches have children's church or other programs for kids. It wasn't like that when my kids were growing up and I remembered a funny church story about my kids.

My son, Ryan, is 3 1/2 years old than Misty. For much of their childhood we attended the First Christian Church of Flippin. Back then a wonderful elderly lady named Bevie Hodges kept the nursery during church. In the nursery there was a rocking chair for Bevie, toys for the kids and a BIG cookie jar always filled with animal crackers. Ryan started going to church with me when he was only about 2 weeks old and he had always stayed in the nursery with Bevie. After Misty came along I got to thinking that it might be too much for Bevie. She was old and there were several kids in the nursery. When Ryan turned 4 I told him that he was going to sit out in the sanctuary with me during church. My kids didn't sass or talk back but I could tell that he was NOT a happy camper. That first Sunday rolled around and Ryan slid into the pew beside me. He had his little papers from Sunday School and some other papers and crayons that I had brought to keep him occupied. He didn't make a sound during church and I was so pleased with his behavior. Once Church was over we went back to the nursery to pick up Misty. When we got to the car Ryan got in the back seat and as I was strapping Misty in her car seat he forcefully pulled Misty's tiny little head around and said "Misty, I smell animal crackers on your breath!" This may not seem funny to anyone but me, but it cracked me up. His big brown eyes were so serious and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

I almost gave in the next Sunday but I didn't. What I did do was bring animal crackers for Ryan to have a little snack during church. I'm glad that I made him sit out in Church with me. I think that our kids need to learn that there's a time and a place to talk and a time and a place to be quiet. My kids learned that in the First Christian Church. My daughter, Misty, is a grown Mom now and she recently wrote a blog about "Write it down in your Notebook." It's her story of how I dealt with her when she got old enough for her turn to sit out in the sanctuary with Ryan and me. The days of the animal crackers were over.

Old Books - New Adventures

I LOVE to read. Whenever I fill out a form that asks to list my hobbies reading is usually listed first. I can't remember not knowing how to read. When I was little we lived with my Granny Ott and she was a voracious reader. She read, first of all, the Bible, followed by the Reader's Digest, the Mountain Echo, and any other publication that came into our home. Well, let me clarify that, she wouldn't have read the Watch Tower, and if I've stepped on any toes, forgive me. I'm just being totally honest here. But, back to my storyline; I think I got my love of reading from her. I'm not sure who taught me how to read. It was probably a mix of my Granny, my Aunt Joyce, and my parents.

We had lots of books in our home. My Aunt Joyce gave us lots of books and our parents always let us order several books from the book sale at school. We had a lot of comic books too. We would typically go into town (Yellville) on Saturday's and all 3 of us would head for the dime store. The comic books were up front by the door (if memory serves me right). I loved the Archie comic books. I couldn't wait to see what Betty, Veronica, Archie, Jughead, Moose and Reggie were up to. Bruce and I read more than Judith and we shared books. I don't think I was really interested in Louis La'mour but I read them anyway. Bruce and I even read the encyclopedias when we were desperate for new reading material. I can still quote a lot of useless information about plants, animals and other countries from all that encyclopedia reading. We would read the Reader's Digest after Granny and Daddy finished with them and I loved the Laughter: The Best Medicine section.

I currently read a book a week during the school year and in the summer that rises to 3 or 4 books a week. I take a book or books with me when we travel. It drives JC nuts. He's not a reader. I hide them in the compartments on my luggage when we go on vacation and there's always one in my beach bag when we go to the shore. I read every night before I go to bed. I'm sure there's a 12 step program out there for reading addicts, but I'm not ready to admit that I have a problem.

Books can take me anywhere that I want to go. I can shut out the "mean old" world and travel to far away lands. I can learn about other cultures and religions, national parks, other countries - you name it, I want to read about it. I don't have a favorite genre. I like to "spice it up." I may be reading a murder mystery today and a Christian romance tomorrow.

My favorite haunts, naturally, are book stores. I get giddy with excitement just walking in a Barnes and Noble or Books A Million. I could spend hours browsing the book jackets and covers. I also love the used book stores. They smell musty and old but those old books hold new adventures. There are no baristas, no comfy chairs or magazine racks - just books - lots of books. My favorite is the Book Nook in West Plains, MO. It's in an old building off the square. There are two stories filled with books. You can bring your books in and get credit and get more books to read. What a deal! They know me well there and no one bothers me while I browse. I wander up and down the rows and up and down the stairs looking for some new adventure. They don't have a debit/credit card machine so you better bring cash if you don't have credit. I don't re-sell every book that I read. I have received many books as gifts. Those I keep. I inherited my Aunt Joyce's book cases and they are filled to capacity with books that I want to keep. Bruce gave me a set of vintage "Book of Popular Science." There are 10 in the set. They make me laugh when I look at how far science has come since the 20's. I have my original set of encyclopedias that I bought for my kids when they were little. The FG is missing - one of the kids took it to school and lost it. I have a set of children's books, fairy tales, bible stories, and words to know. They are covered with chocolate and koolaid smudges. I wouldn't part with those. The Children's Bible, Daughter's of Eve, and many gift books line those shelves. I typically buy a book when we travel to a new place as a keepsake. Someday I will have to add a new bookcase.

I know that the new e-readers are all the rage and I plan to buy one this spring. It makes more sense to pack a Kindle than a book when traveling, but I will never give up my hard copies. I love the covers, the jackets, the paper smell. I love all the bookmarks that students and family members have given me over the years.

But whatever media I choose for my adventures it will be a wonderful experience and I'm always ready to make the trip. Won't you pick up a book and join me?

Where Have All the Good Daddies Gone?

I was watching Oprah the other day and the story was about twin girls from Wichita who had been repeatedly molested by their Dad and their older brothers. A day or so later Inside Edition ran a story about the 5 Browns, siblings that are extraordinary pianists. The siblings disclosed that their father had molested the girls over the years. The father has since pleaded guilty and will be going to prison. So, I wonder, where have all the good Daddies gone?

I know there are still good Dads out there but I think it's the exception rather than the rule these days. You hear the stories about the sexual and physical abuses, the deadbeat dads, and the dads who are just too overworked and tired to spend time with their kids.

Where are the Dads who loved their kids enough to teach them right from wrong? Where are the Dads who showed their kids how to bait a hook and cast a rod and reel? Where have all the Dads gone that loved their kids enough to make them pick up rocks when they had misbehaved and explain to them why they were being punished? Where are the Dads who came home from work smelling like grease, or barn yard, or sweat? Not liquor on their breath because they stopped off for a cold one before they got home. Where have all the Dads gone that hugged their little girls and let them climb into their laps because they loved their little girls, not because they saw them as a sex object? Where are all the Dads who taught you to stand and place your hand over your heart to say the pledge, salute the flag, to respect your elders and your teachers, to give the ladies a chair or a seat on the bus? Where are the Dads who would teach you the difference between a red oak and a white oak? Where are the Dads that would stand out in the yard, even though they were tired, and watch you twirl you baton until you got all the twirls and tosses just right. Where did the Dads go that made you get up on Sunday morning and go to Sunday School? Where are the Dads that helped you do your math and give you out your spelling words? Where did all the Dads go that brought home 7 Up for you when you were sick? Where did all the Dads go that would put someone in their place if they said a vulgar word in front of your Mom or Granny? When did they go away and why?

My Daddy didn't have much training in how to be a Dad. His own Dad committed suicide when he was 9. He was with my Granny when they found his Dad. It was something we didn't talk about in our home. I don't know if Daddy tried to be a good Dad because he had lost his own or if it was just the way he was. My Daddy is gone now and I am pretty certain that he's in Heaven, so I don't have to wonder where one good Daddy has gone. I had uncles that were good Daddies too but they are all gone now. I wish we could bring all the good Daddies back. Maybe they could be role models for all the young men today so we wouldn't have to wonder where all the good Daddies have gone.