When Life Was Simple - Memorial Day

As I was cleaning and cutting fruit (watermelon, cantaloupe and red grapes) for snacking over the weekend, I realized I am missing bing cherries. It's Memorial Day Weekend and growing up, we always had a family picnic on Memorial Day. Memorial weekend was for going to the cemeteries on Saturday, church on Sunday and the picnic on Monday. Grandma Hattie always had a large bowl of fresh cherries to snack on and spit the pits in the yard. Memorial weekend memories of all day picnics when I was very little with the Shanley families (my Grandma Hattie's siblings and all of their kids) in a public park and then, as we got older, part of the Shanley family gathered together at Grandma Hattie's house - the Kavanagh's (Grandma's youngest sister and her family) and all of the Kiser's, including Great Gram and the in law Grandma's (my mom's mom and my aunt's mom). Grandma and Grandpa had a tiny house and a huge double lot for a yard with a huge Weeping Willow tree in the back yard and the breezeway between the house and garage. The breezeway was just an open area that the roof was over and connected the house to the garage and a lovely breeze was always blowing through. My Dad and Uncle Don made a very long picnic table to fit perfectly under the breezeway for the whole family to sit together to eat. During the summer months, we always ate outside in the breezeway. Hmm, bugs didn't seem to bother us back then. Go figure.

It was a day of whiffle ball, croquet, annie-annie-I-over, lawn jarts (the ones that had the rounded metal tips - before they were banned for being so dangerous. We never got hurt by them. Although my cousin, Tim, did have one chase him down the yard when he stepped in front of thrower. We laughed hysterically as he ran as fast as he could and the jart just kept following him. I'm serious, it did! You could ask Tim and he'll tell you that the jart turned when he turned and was after him. He was so mad at us for laughing and rolling on the grass holding our stomachs for laughing so hard, that he refused to finish the game with us). All of the cousins, sat on quilts, not blankets, but quilts made by Great Gram (the lawn chairs were for the ladies). When we weren't playing games, we were all under the Willow tree in the shade reading, napping, talking, playing cards either on the quilt or at the picnic table in the breezeway, or climbing the tree. Grandpa's transistor radio would be on with the ball game being broadcast while Grandpa napped in his hammock. There were no cell phones, nothing electronic. No one worked on that weekend. Nothing was open except a gas station or maybe the corner store. Grandma and Grandpa's house didn't even have air conditioning! A floor fan was on in the house. The television (with only 4 local stations) was possibly on in the living room for the Dad's who went in to the living room to nap away from the noise of the kids. 😉

It was a day of family and a whole lot of food all day. And the food was on paper plates! We loved paper plates, we didn't have to wash them! Yep, no dishwasher back then. Well, there were a bunch of dishwashers - all of us girls. We ate: eggs, bacon, hash browns, donuts, toast and jelly - breakfast (all cooked on portable camping stoves or electric frying pans and we had to improvise with putting the toaster in the bathroom to make toast, as the electric frying pan plugged in an extension cord in the breezeway along with the toaster, kept popping fuses whenever we pushed down the handle on the toaster) and, yes, we made toast in the one bathroom, in that tiny house, so we wouldn't blow fuses and we thought nothing of it. I'm not sure who thought of it, but it was my sister Laurie's and our cousin Judy's job to make the toast. I think I was outside helping fry the bacon and getting hit with the grease splatters. I hopped around a lot to avoid that hot grease. I think I remember Great Gram telling me to stop hopping. If someone needed the bathroom, Laurie and Judy packed up everything and stepped out into the living room to wait for the room to open back up. I laugh now at how gross that sounds, but it didn't bother any of us. Years later, Laurie and I were lauging at the memory and wondered why they didn't just go into one of the bedrooms to make the toast. Either, the fuse would still have popped with the bedroom outlets or, you just didn't go into a bedroom except for sleeping. You just couldn't make toast in a bedroom, the bathroom yes, but not the bedroom. Okay, I am really laughing here - hope you are too. Laurie and Judy did what they had to do so we could have toast to dunk in those fried runny eggs (you never had eggs without toast) and the house was really very tiny. Then, it was hamburgers on the grill, potato salad, potato chips, baked beans, watermelon for our lunch. And, hotdogs and the leftovers from lunch for supper. Watermelon, cherries, cookies, Doo-dads (which were in a box and the best snack ever. I think Nabiso made them. They were peanuts, corn chex squares, rye chex squares, cheese tidbit sticks, maybe small pretzels - I can't remember all that was in the snack mix, but it was the best), and potato chips to snack on in between meals and to drink (besides water from the garden hose) Hamms beer for Grandpa and the men, Pepsi (Coca Cola was only for Grandpa to drink after his nap - we were never allowed to drink coke and, oh, how us kids yearned to have one of those little bottles of coke. When we grew into adulthood - we all drink coke now). And I remember when Shasta pop arrived - in a can! And that was a treat - it came in tons of different flavors! Us kids were so excited! There was coffee, iced tea, hot tea for Uncle Mike and Grandma's orange-ade (lemonade and orange juice - the most refreshing drink ever. Sadly, the orange-ade wasn't so popular when Shasta pop arrived on the scene). And, after supper, we toasted marshmallows over the hot coals on the grill, using willow sticks that were whittled to a sharp point at the end by Grandpa or one of our Dads with their pocket knives.

If only life could be that simple again. 💗 It wasn't really that long ago that life was this simple. Well, it wasn't that long ago for me. The 60's to the mid 70's really wasn't that long ago. Was it?

Now, sadly, people have to work on the holiday weekend. Families don't get along and when families do get together, cell phones are in everyone's faces. It's so sad that this world is no longer simple.

No one will know what it is to make toast in the bathroom anymore. Or eat at the picnic table in the breezeway, or lay on a homemade quilt in the shade of a weeping willow tree, or listen to the ball game on a transistor radio, have a watermelon seed or cherry pit spitting contest. Or whittle a stick off a tree to roast marshmallows. And, does anyone else remember playing annie, annie I over?

I prayed.

I saw something today that broke my heart. I was looking for a parking spot, while Mark went back in to work to get some stuff we needed. He's faster, so he shops. I simply hate shopping. So, I found a spot and had my book. As I pulled into the parking spot, I noticed the car in front of me was over loaded with someone's life - meaning, clothes, mail, etc. There was just enough room for the person to sit in the drivers seat to drive. I thought of taking a photo to show how sad our world has become, but then decided not to broadcast what could have been someone's misfortunes. As I was sitting and reading my book, another car pulled next to the one in front of me. The lady got out and was smirking and taking a photo of the inside of the car. It made me sad and mad that she was doing this, even though I thought of taking a photo myself, but the look on her face made me really mad. She got out of her big and new car, only to smirk and take a photo of someone's private living space - their car - and probably post it on a social network page for all to see and laugh at because it was in the parking lot of Walmart. I prayed. I went back to my book and looked up when I noticed someone heading towards the car in front of me. It was an elderly lady and it was her car. She put her few bags in the back of the car. She looked at me and I smiled, but there was no smile back. I looked down and wanted to cry at her sadness. What was her story? What was her name? It looked as if all of her belongings were in that car. Was she moving? Did she live out of her car? I prayed. It hit me, as I was praying, that this could be me. It could be anyone of us. I thanked my son, Mark, for choosing to live here and take over the house, for not abandoning me when others did. Again, I prayed.