Previous post
Next post
A quote: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” ~~ Winston Churchill
I’ll start with a story …
*********************************
Getting old means waking up in the middle of the night, to steal to the porch and sit in the moonlight.
Sometimes I read, look through old photos … or count blessings.
This one of my great-grandma and mom? So happy. But then gardening was about personal accomplishment and not a scramble with that wily devil, Famine.
I am grateful, though. Mom’s knowledge is why I’m still here. Why my family had the skills to hang on when so many didn’t.
Though, I do wish we still had electricity. I’d like to be able to read even on moonless nights.
*********************************
Now, it’s your turn.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. featured image, cropped and modified, Adobe Stock standard license
Cheryl says: What a beautiful photo to treasure. Thank you for sharing.
Dupin says: It’s a Photoshopped faux sepia picture. Way too much color left in it. Click the Adobe link if you want to see the original. Still, it’s a nice picture.
Dupin says: “We’ll have fresh pumpkin pie ready for this evening’s picnic.”
Her granddaughters’ excitement was infectious. Such city kids, but they loved coming here to plant and harvest and bake from scratch. She sometimes had to rest up after they left, but it was so worth it.
She had a couple of things to do before prepping the pie, and her daughter-in-law’s bitching about work annoyed her. Why not kill two birds with one stone? She looked back at her older granddaughter.
“You two go to the pond and skinny-dip. I’ll send your mom out with towels in a little bit.”
Fletch says: Life moves at a different pace in Walters Mill. It’s not much of a town. The only business is Hadley’s Petro-66 on Highway 20. Red says he can’t make ends meet and is going out of business, but he’s been saying that for 20 years.
My folks died when I was four; that’s why I had to move out with Grandma Lois and Pop Pop.
Today, the man on the radio says hail is coming. I see clouds already darkening the sky. Animals are skittish and heading for home. Grandma Lois says we need to rescue the pumpkins – says they won’t survive. I reckon she’s right…
Navig8r says: “A good day in the garden. I wish we could get your brothers to take an interest in the real world instead of whining about slow internet in the country.”
“Break out the Renfest costumes and tell them we are LARPING.”
“What’s that?”
“Live Action Role Playing. Acting out their computer games. You and Gramps play lady and lord of the manor. Peasant costumes and iron rations for the rabble to start. You have to make stuff or earn game coins to purchase anything better.”
“I’ll need your help with the details, but I like the sound of it.”
Dupin says: Oh yeah, I like it.
Back in Concord, Mom always kept a picture on her desk in the Governor’s Mansion. I can still see the girl carrying the pumpkin, the older woman beside her.
You’d be forgiven to think it was a grandmother with her granddaughter. Actually, that’s my grandmother with my mother, when Mom was about eight years old and they still had the house in the country.
Grandma had to grow up fast, you see. She was one of the lucky ones. She survived, and didn’t end up with a number on her arm. But it aged her, and she already had gray hair by the time Grandpa met her at the end of the War. The big one, not Vietnam, and not the Energy Wars.
Mom once told me she kept it there to remind herself of the cost of staying out of a righteous fight. If America hadn’t been isolationist, if we’d come into the War sooner, Grandma probably wouldn’t have had to burn through so much of her lifespan so early, and maybe she would’ve lived long enough for me to have clear memories of her. And she was one of the lucky ones — for every one like her who survived, there were dozens or even hundreds who perished.
I wish I could’ve kept that picture, brought it up here to the Moon even if it took up most of my personal mass allowance. But I was at Annapolis when Flannigan’s goons disappeared her right out of the statehouse, where she was going to give a speech to the New Hampshire General Court. By the time I even found out about it, all our belongings had been cleared out of the Governor’s Mansion, and I never was able to find out what happened to them. Like as not, Flannigan’s hand-picked stooge sold off everything valuable and threw the rest in the nearest landfill.
7 Comments