GOD BLESS AMERICA

NOW
It's the 4th of July 2009, 233 years after the establishment of "One Nation Under God". The "under God" part came almost 200 years later but the idea is in the writings of the writers of the Declaration of Independence and other papers and statements of the time.

Today we wonder how much longer we will remain a nation under God and ultimately a nation at all.

But today I will enjoy the blessings of liberty promised to "ourselves and our posterity (that's you and me) given by God for as long as it lasts.

We have been so blessed in being able to have most of our children and grandchildren close and also enjoy the blessings of being able to be retired and foot loose.

Last week we saw Nichole and her "boys" and Nic and Christa. We checked on getting involved in some work at church (food pantry & remodeling youth room) and continued our walking regimen

This afternoon we are going to Doug's in-laws for burgers and to watch the fireworks displays.

God has continually blessed our lives in amazing ways and for no justifiable reason on our part. He does it in spite of us. It's a love without end amen!

THEN
(not our house, just a picture)

As stated before, our "new" farm house can only be described as "rustic". We often called it six rooms and a path (viz: Mother & the wasp). There were no "conveniences". No electricity, gas, no in-door plumbing, and no insulation other than the linoleum on the kitchen floor and water-stained wall paper on the walls and ceilings.

When my maternal grandmother "Mama Wright" came to visit us before I started to school, she would entice me to take a nap in the afternoon by laying on the bed with me on our backs and, like children on a summer hill, and look at the multi-shaped water-stains on the ceiling wallpaper and imagine them to be people, animals, cars, ships and other things.

If I tend to repeat myself, please forgive me. I tend to wander sometime and insert memories when they come and then repeat them when they come up chronologically.

As I remember, it was a cold, grey, November day when my family and my mother's parents (Gaga & Mama Wright) went to see the new farm for the first time. I can still see the house as we approached it from the highway to Dallas, turning off at Havell's store at Corinth then on to Shady Shores Road for less than a mile, turning left at the Shiloh Cemetery and winding around to Jackson's corner, left again up the sandy road on the northeast of our land, past a grove of Blackjack oaks and Boise-De-arc (horse apple)trees that lined both sides of the road and then ... the house.
The Boise-De-Arcs and Blackjacks formed a curtain that hid the house until the last minute when it popped into view. The house was a grey, story-and-a half with two nearly twenty foot tall juniper trees flanking the windows on the front upstairs and down. In the front yard was a Chinaberry tree. The house stood a good two feet off the ground and was supported by tree stumps and stacks of large sandstone rocks. This made it possible to crawl under the house from any point and also for the yard chickens to find relief from the midday sun in the shade and cool sand under the house.

My early recollecions of the arrangement of the rooms in the house are confused in that I can't remember where the kitchen was when we first moved in. I believe it was in the southeast corner of the house. My confusion is due to the fact that the kitchen location was changed two or three times before the ultimate loss of the house.

The summer after we moved to the farm, I turned four years old. I am pretty sure the kitchen was in the southeast corner at that time with a south door leading to the back yard. On my birthday I came down for breakfast (Jimmy and I slept upstairs in the south bedroom and Sherrill had the north upstairs bedroom). Sherrill and Mother and Daddy sang "Happy Birthday" to me. Mother said they got me something for my birthday but I had to share the inside of it. About that time Jimmy came around outside to the kitchen door pulling a red wagon with a two-foot long watermelon in it. So I got the wagon and shared the watermelon with the family.




It wasn't just any old wagon. It was a bright red Radio Flyer with PNEUMATIC WHEELS! Most wagons and tricycles at that time had solid, hard rubber wheels. My wagon had wheels filled with air just like a car! It was one of my most treasured possessions in my childhood and one of my most treasured memories to this day.