I think everyone has things they miss from their "Christmas past". As we get older, there are family members no longer with us and friends in far places, things change and it seems there are always a few empty places in our hearts.
Sometimes, however, it can be the little things that would not seem to be a big loss, but things that loom large as Christmas approaches. I know some of the things I never truly think of during the rest of the year seem to suddenly gain importance at Christmas.
We don't do much Christmas now but for years, when we were still putting up a Christmas tree, I missed going out on the ranch and finding our tree, cutting it down and bringing it home. We looked for cedar trees, because the pines in that area were not very full and cedar usually were smaller and bushier. They always made the house smell so good, with such a distinctive smell, but you can't find cedar trees now at the commercial Christmas tree sellers.
I miss my Grandfather particularly at Christmas. I always enjoyed watching him look through his presents to find the one from my father. Grandpa chewed plug tobacco and it had gotten to be a tradition that Dad's gift to him every year was a carton of Horseshoe plug tobacco. It was what Grandpa always looked for and unwrapped first, took a chew and would always say the same thing "There, now I can relax, I've got my 'tobaccy'."
Another thing I truly miss at Christmas is my Grandmother's mince pie. She made and canned her own mincemeat and made the most wonderful piecrust I've ever eaten. Neither my mother nor I could ever make good piecrust. Although Grandma tried to teach us both many times Mama and I just simply could not seem to get the hang of it. I can remember the big dishpan of flour Grandma used, watching her cut up lard into it, taking it out and rolling it, but no matter how often she guided me through the process I never could get it to turn out like hers.
I finally gave up and started buying frozen ready-made pie crust at the store. While it wasn't all that traditional, it was at least edible. But I remember trying to make mince pie for the first few Christmas dinners after I was married and not home for Christmas. I bought mincemeat in the jars, followed the directions, but was very disappointed. It tasted nothing like Grandma's mincemeat pie.
I finally found a receipe for sour cream and raisin pie that I ended up making a tradition, which isn't bad. But at Christmas I still find myself wishing I could ... just once more ... put a bite of Grandma's mincemeat pie, still warm from the oven, in my mouth ... and ask her again how she made it.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Luxury is ...
Everyone has different ideas about what they consider luxury, what makes them say "it just doesn't get better than this" and for some people it isn't what they can buy.
For me, having been raised in Montana, on a ranch, dealing with lots of hours outside working in below-zero temperatures for months on end, without any "modern conveniences" ... it is being WARM. I actually deal better with cold weather than with hot weather, but it is still a struggle to do outside chores, feeding cattle and horses, pitching hay that the wind blows back in your face, chopping ice in creeks or tanks so they can drink, fighting cold harness buckles or pickup chains.
Clothing has gotten much better over the 40 years I've been doing this. But even if you are not freezing when you come in, for me, I consider it luxury to come in, get out of cold, frozen outer garments and sit in front of a stove where there is actually a real, live fire. A stove that radiates heat and you can actually see flames. I know it is just my imagination, but it "feels" warmer than if you push a button and stand over a heat vent.
This goes back to my childhood. I vividly remember my grandfather coming in from morning feeding, his gray mustash beaded with tiny beads of ice. He would hold his hands over the kitchen cookstove to warm them and pour a cup of coffee from the blue granitewear pot that sat on the back of the Home Comfort range.
Most afternoons, he would stoke up the big black potbellied stove that sat in the living room. Grandpa's "corner" was the corner of the room closest to that stove, with an alcove on one wall that held his built-in bookcase and a couch against the other wall. The couch was close enough that he could sit on the couch and prop his feet on the rim of the stove and his afternoons were often spent like this, reading if he didn't have any minor repairs harness repairs or other inside sit-down jobs.
I often joined him in the afternoons with a book of my own, and ginger cookies if I could coax them from my grandmother, curled up on the other end of the couch. He also had a big black tomcat who shared our space, though I'm sure the cat believed it was his couch and he was sharing, very reluctantly, with us.
Tom did, of course, prefer the place directly across from the stove, where the heat radiated the strongest. When Grandpa would go in to sit down, he would invariably have to move the cat over before he sat. I used to wait, knowing what was coming. Tom would wait until everyone was settled and quiet, apparantly perfectly content and dozing. After Grandpa got his feet up on the stove rim, had the book open and was engrossed in the book, Tom would open one eye, stretch a bit and straighten out one front leg ... just working a kink out here, people ... then in a flash he would reach over, put the paw against the back of Grandpa's thigh, flex and dig claws in and would be off the couch and gone!
Grandpa's swat would never connect with anything except air ... as soon as he would hit the floor the cat would swagger away with plenty of cat attitude ... and I would be giggling.
Even now, one of the things I consider a luxury is being able to sit in my recliner (definitely a modern convenience I appreciate) in front of the wood burning stove in our living room, with my little terrier beside me, a fuzzy blanket over my legs and a good book, watching the flames flicker behind the glass. I'm always glad when cold weather arrives here in Kentucky, cold enough to start a fire up in the wood stove and keep it going.
So for me, luxury isn't a big screen TV ... or a winter vacation in Florida or Arizona. Luxury and contentment is a wood stove, a recliner, a lap dog ... and a good book.
For me, having been raised in Montana, on a ranch, dealing with lots of hours outside working in below-zero temperatures for months on end, without any "modern conveniences" ... it is being WARM. I actually deal better with cold weather than with hot weather, but it is still a struggle to do outside chores, feeding cattle and horses, pitching hay that the wind blows back in your face, chopping ice in creeks or tanks so they can drink, fighting cold harness buckles or pickup chains.
Clothing has gotten much better over the 40 years I've been doing this. But even if you are not freezing when you come in, for me, I consider it luxury to come in, get out of cold, frozen outer garments and sit in front of a stove where there is actually a real, live fire. A stove that radiates heat and you can actually see flames. I know it is just my imagination, but it "feels" warmer than if you push a button and stand over a heat vent.
This goes back to my childhood. I vividly remember my grandfather coming in from morning feeding, his gray mustash beaded with tiny beads of ice. He would hold his hands over the kitchen cookstove to warm them and pour a cup of coffee from the blue granitewear pot that sat on the back of the Home Comfort range.
Most afternoons, he would stoke up the big black potbellied stove that sat in the living room. Grandpa's "corner" was the corner of the room closest to that stove, with an alcove on one wall that held his built-in bookcase and a couch against the other wall. The couch was close enough that he could sit on the couch and prop his feet on the rim of the stove and his afternoons were often spent like this, reading if he didn't have any minor repairs harness repairs or other inside sit-down jobs.
I often joined him in the afternoons with a book of my own, and ginger cookies if I could coax them from my grandmother, curled up on the other end of the couch. He also had a big black tomcat who shared our space, though I'm sure the cat believed it was his couch and he was sharing, very reluctantly, with us.
Tom did, of course, prefer the place directly across from the stove, where the heat radiated the strongest. When Grandpa would go in to sit down, he would invariably have to move the cat over before he sat. I used to wait, knowing what was coming. Tom would wait until everyone was settled and quiet, apparantly perfectly content and dozing. After Grandpa got his feet up on the stove rim, had the book open and was engrossed in the book, Tom would open one eye, stretch a bit and straighten out one front leg ... just working a kink out here, people ... then in a flash he would reach over, put the paw against the back of Grandpa's thigh, flex and dig claws in and would be off the couch and gone!
Grandpa's swat would never connect with anything except air ... as soon as he would hit the floor the cat would swagger away with plenty of cat attitude ... and I would be giggling.
Even now, one of the things I consider a luxury is being able to sit in my recliner (definitely a modern convenience I appreciate) in front of the wood burning stove in our living room, with my little terrier beside me, a fuzzy blanket over my legs and a good book, watching the flames flicker behind the glass. I'm always glad when cold weather arrives here in Kentucky, cold enough to start a fire up in the wood stove and keep it going.
So for me, luxury isn't a big screen TV ... or a winter vacation in Florida or Arizona. Luxury and contentment is a wood stove, a recliner, a lap dog ... and a good book.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
"I want" ... the comercializing of Christmas
A series of posts on one of the lists regarding Christmas wish lists for underpriviledged children sponsored by various charities caught my interest. The original tone questioned these children asking for expensive items when they "needed" things like coats and warm boot with a tendency to be put off by these requests. I have to admit to thinking a bit along those lines myself but more thoughtful posts made better points and started me really thinking about the situation and remembering my only truly serious "I want" from my childhood.
The one "store bought" thing I can remember wanting very desperately when I was a child (maybe 7 or 8) was a child-sized saddle in the saddle shop. I rode bareback because the saddles we had were adult sized and my parents wouldn't let me ride with one since they were afraid I'd slip and get my foot through a stirrup. This saddle was light enough for me to pick up and carry, I could reach the stirrups and it smelled so good ... that new leather smell. I can still remember how very desperately I wanted that saddle and struggling to blink back tears as we left the shop.
But when we got home, my mother sat me down and went over the $$. Even at that age, I was raising "livestock" for my spending money, chickens at that time. I sold them in the fall, gave half the money to my folks for the feed and then put as much aside as I could to buy more chicks the next spring. I knew how much it cost to buy a chick, how much I would probably get when I sold them, that some would die so I wouldn't have all of them to sel. I knew I'd have half that money to buy more chicks the next year and if I chose to spend it on something else, how much I could spend and still have money for more chicks. At that age, I was already not expecting my parents to buy things to give to me ... not "big" things. Special little treats, an ice cream cone when we went to town, a particular kind of cereal, material for a new shirt ... but not "big" things.
I could see in black and white the numbers showing that it would take me 3 years to save enough money to buy the saddle even if I didn't increase the number of chicks I was buying each spring. By that time I was already planning sell enough chicks in the next year or two to buy my first pig ... for more potential income. I realized that I couldn't do both and agreed that more chicks ... and then the pig ... was a better decision.
I was able to make that decision though because I knew how much money I could selling those chicks, how much it cost to raise them to butcher weight and what my profit would be. It was obvious I couldn't do what I wanted to do with the chickens ... and the pig ... if I took most of that money to buy the saddle. My parents didn't say I couldn't save to buy the saddle, if that's what I wanted, they just showed me the numbers and that it wasn't possible to do both.
I'm not sure that it is as easy for parents to explain the economic facts when they are working a job that pays "X" $$ ... and having to explain that the house payment, car payment, utilities and food and everything else has to come out of that ... and there isn't enough left over for whatever it is. It was difficult enough for me to realize how much money something cost when I had something as concrete to refer to as "X" number of chickens brings me "X" dollars ... and to make more I need "X" dollars to buy "X" more chickens. If I can't buy more chickens, I don't get more money. I could understand that.
Children rarely connect $$ with "want". They see things advertised on TV, hear other kids rave about things they have and of course they want "one of those" too. It takes time ... and careful teaching by the parents to start them along the path of "if I want this, it costs this much and means I can't have that" as a part of maturing.
Without the advertising and hype generated by the companies producing these products, my parents weren't dealing with the problem of advertising targeting children and designed to convince them their product was a "must have". So for them, it was just taking the time and patience to present the actual facts to me in a simple enough way that I could understand and then give me the freedom to make a choice.
I have ended up coming to the conclusion that the "I want" syndrome is really not the fault of the child or even of the parents who are dealing with explaining economic realities that are more complex with fewer concrete examples. And you can't even really blame the companies who build the toys and then advertise them ... they wouldn't be in business, employing people, if they didn't.
But I do feel fortunate that I did not have to contend with those pressures as a child ... and am very glad I am not raising children in today's society.
The one "store bought" thing I can remember wanting very desperately when I was a child (maybe 7 or 8) was a child-sized saddle in the saddle shop. I rode bareback because the saddles we had were adult sized and my parents wouldn't let me ride with one since they were afraid I'd slip and get my foot through a stirrup. This saddle was light enough for me to pick up and carry, I could reach the stirrups and it smelled so good ... that new leather smell. I can still remember how very desperately I wanted that saddle and struggling to blink back tears as we left the shop.
But when we got home, my mother sat me down and went over the $$. Even at that age, I was raising "livestock" for my spending money, chickens at that time. I sold them in the fall, gave half the money to my folks for the feed and then put as much aside as I could to buy more chicks the next spring. I knew how much it cost to buy a chick, how much I would probably get when I sold them, that some would die so I wouldn't have all of them to sel. I knew I'd have half that money to buy more chicks the next year and if I chose to spend it on something else, how much I could spend and still have money for more chicks. At that age, I was already not expecting my parents to buy things to give to me ... not "big" things. Special little treats, an ice cream cone when we went to town, a particular kind of cereal, material for a new shirt ... but not "big" things.
I could see in black and white the numbers showing that it would take me 3 years to save enough money to buy the saddle even if I didn't increase the number of chicks I was buying each spring. By that time I was already planning sell enough chicks in the next year or two to buy my first pig ... for more potential income. I realized that I couldn't do both and agreed that more chicks ... and then the pig ... was a better decision.
I was able to make that decision though because I knew how much money I could selling those chicks, how much it cost to raise them to butcher weight and what my profit would be. It was obvious I couldn't do what I wanted to do with the chickens ... and the pig ... if I took most of that money to buy the saddle. My parents didn't say I couldn't save to buy the saddle, if that's what I wanted, they just showed me the numbers and that it wasn't possible to do both.
I'm not sure that it is as easy for parents to explain the economic facts when they are working a job that pays "X" $$ ... and having to explain that the house payment, car payment, utilities and food and everything else has to come out of that ... and there isn't enough left over for whatever it is. It was difficult enough for me to realize how much money something cost when I had something as concrete to refer to as "X" number of chickens brings me "X" dollars ... and to make more I need "X" dollars to buy "X" more chickens. If I can't buy more chickens, I don't get more money. I could understand that.
Children rarely connect $$ with "want". They see things advertised on TV, hear other kids rave about things they have and of course they want "one of those" too. It takes time ... and careful teaching by the parents to start them along the path of "if I want this, it costs this much and means I can't have that" as a part of maturing.
Without the advertising and hype generated by the companies producing these products, my parents weren't dealing with the problem of advertising targeting children and designed to convince them their product was a "must have". So for them, it was just taking the time and patience to present the actual facts to me in a simple enough way that I could understand and then give me the freedom to make a choice.
I have ended up coming to the conclusion that the "I want" syndrome is really not the fault of the child or even of the parents who are dealing with explaining economic realities that are more complex with fewer concrete examples. And you can't even really blame the companies who build the toys and then advertise them ... they wouldn't be in business, employing people, if they didn't.
But I do feel fortunate that I did not have to contend with those pressures as a child ... and am very glad I am not raising children in today's society.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Thoughts on "Black Friday"
Black Friday is a modern happening, a term I never heard as a child or young adult and my personal feeling is that like so many developments in the last 30 years or so, it is another step in the wrong direction.
An employee killed in a "customer stampede" in a major store? A shooting in a Toys-R-Us store? This is progress?
I remember the "day after Thanksgiving" not as "Black Friday" when you went shopping, braving hordes of people all scrambling after the same item on the sales tables but as a day when you stayed home. There was still plenty of turkey and ham left over, plenty of dressing, cranberries, fruit salad and still a choice of pumpkin pie, mince pie or chocolate cake as well as a cookie jar full of ginger cookies I'd helped my Grandmother make and frost.
Because there weren't meals to cook, you got to skimp on some of the usual household chores and talk about getting the Christmas packages wrapped and sent out. Since nearly all of the gifts were handmade, they were mostly finished ... things from handquilted pillow tops to fruitcakes that had been sitting on the shelves in the pantry since fall. There would still be fudge and divinity and cookies to make for some gifts and the few "store bought" gifts were already ordered through the Sears, Roebuck or Montgomery Ward christmas catalogs.
There were very few store-bought gifts that I can recall from my childhood. Most of those, in fact, were books. With a former schoolteacher as a mother I was a reader at an early age and she encouraged books as gifts, I'm sure. The Will James books were favorites for many years and in fact I still have some of them on my bookshelves now and the Black Stallion books were probably the reason I have always been enamoured of Arabian horses and horseracing.
I can't help but think how long I've enjoyed some of these gifts ... I may not still have the actual book I received as a child, but some of those books are still on my personal bookshelves now some 50 years after I first read them ... and still enjoyed.
I can't help but wonder how many of the children who receive gifts that their parents have battled for through "Black Friday" to secure will remember those gifts with appreciation ... and still be enjoying the results of those gifts ... 50 years from now?
An employee killed in a "customer stampede" in a major store? A shooting in a Toys-R-Us store? This is progress?
I remember the "day after Thanksgiving" not as "Black Friday" when you went shopping, braving hordes of people all scrambling after the same item on the sales tables but as a day when you stayed home. There was still plenty of turkey and ham left over, plenty of dressing, cranberries, fruit salad and still a choice of pumpkin pie, mince pie or chocolate cake as well as a cookie jar full of ginger cookies I'd helped my Grandmother make and frost.
Because there weren't meals to cook, you got to skimp on some of the usual household chores and talk about getting the Christmas packages wrapped and sent out. Since nearly all of the gifts were handmade, they were mostly finished ... things from handquilted pillow tops to fruitcakes that had been sitting on the shelves in the pantry since fall. There would still be fudge and divinity and cookies to make for some gifts and the few "store bought" gifts were already ordered through the Sears, Roebuck or Montgomery Ward christmas catalogs.
There were very few store-bought gifts that I can recall from my childhood. Most of those, in fact, were books. With a former schoolteacher as a mother I was a reader at an early age and she encouraged books as gifts, I'm sure. The Will James books were favorites for many years and in fact I still have some of them on my bookshelves now and the Black Stallion books were probably the reason I have always been enamoured of Arabian horses and horseracing.
I can't help but think how long I've enjoyed some of these gifts ... I may not still have the actual book I received as a child, but some of those books are still on my personal bookshelves now some 50 years after I first read them ... and still enjoyed.
I can't help but wonder how many of the children who receive gifts that their parents have battled for through "Black Friday" to secure will remember those gifts with appreciation ... and still be enjoying the results of those gifts ... 50 years from now?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
First time for everything
My first blog and my first post, with the feeling that this is one of those very slow learning curves I am beginning to really hate as a senior citizen. My first Internet experience came only 10 years ago, when I moved from very rural Montana to rural Kentucky. At the end of the first year, I had a professional farm website up for the horses, though it was designed and managed for me, as it still is.
I am not computer literate.I'm not even sure I want to be computer literate, though I have had to learn the basics, at least, to market the horses and ponies I have bred for the past 20 years. I am at least comfortable with email and in fact I now stay in touch with most of my acquaintences and friends with email rather than telephone ... but then I was never a telephone person either.
Being brought up on a remote Montana ranch where "modern conveniences" referred to having a pump on the back porch for running water and REA arrives only when you are in the 4th grade, you feel as if you are a generation behind most people.
The two years before my relocation to Kentucky, I again lived on a remote Montana ranch. In this case modern conveniences meant there was electricity. Period. Running water was a spring about 30 feet from the cabin. No indoor plumbing. Phone service was a cell phone in the pickup that operated at the top of the hill, a quarter mile drive.
I now have electricity, indoor plumbing, telephone service, television, Internet and computer but have to confess I found it easier in many ways going back to what I'd grown up with than in adjusting to "rural living" that seems to involve most of the elements of urban life.
I am not computer literate.I'm not even sure I want to be computer literate, though I have had to learn the basics, at least, to market the horses and ponies I have bred for the past 20 years. I am at least comfortable with email and in fact I now stay in touch with most of my acquaintences and friends with email rather than telephone ... but then I was never a telephone person either.
Being brought up on a remote Montana ranch where "modern conveniences" referred to having a pump on the back porch for running water and REA arrives only when you are in the 4th grade, you feel as if you are a generation behind most people.
The two years before my relocation to Kentucky, I again lived on a remote Montana ranch. In this case modern conveniences meant there was electricity. Period. Running water was a spring about 30 feet from the cabin. No indoor plumbing. Phone service was a cell phone in the pickup that operated at the top of the hill, a quarter mile drive.
I now have electricity, indoor plumbing, telephone service, television, Internet and computer but have to confess I found it easier in many ways going back to what I'd grown up with than in adjusting to "rural living" that seems to involve most of the elements of urban life.
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