Good morning Y'all!!! Ever feel like you are on a rollercoaster? Well, that's exactly what I feel like with this weather. In a 24 hour period we dropped 60 degrees!!! Yes, that's true. We go from almost 80 degrees down to below 20 degrees. That's C-R-A-Z-Y!!!!!!!! But, I am grateful we haven't had all the snow and ice that others are having, I really I am. I believe we will go right from winter on into summer without hesitation for spring. We'll see. I actually started this blog post in early February, so if it sounds like it's pieced together, it is, kinda. I think I enjoy picking up where I leave off from time to time. We'll see.
My husband and I spent the day in Ky on Friday and it was good day and beautiful day. (I think it was the 15th, or there abouts) It was cold, but the sun was shining out and it looked so pretty. I am grateful for every ray of sunshine we can get. Had a great visit with my Mom and that's always good. Was hoping to be able to go up on Sunday and go to church with her, but forecast is 60 to 100% rain and I am not keen on driving in the rain any more. So, by the time this post is shared, I probably will not have gone to Ky to go to church with Mom, but will make plans for the first Sunday it's not raining cats and dogs. I actually started this post around the middle of February. So, we have had some pretty serious flooding in my area and road closures because of mudslides. It will take a lot time to clean it up. Now, we are in for some frozen mix. Winter is finally upon us. hahaha Lots of prayers for all of those affected by the flooding.
You know, the state of the country is really heartbreaking and it makes me long for days gone by!!! I have been thinking a lot about the days of "yore", if you will, and wondering about what makes those days so appealing and why one would love to go and spend a day or two or a year or two back in those times. The best I can do is try to share with you, in words pictures, what makes me long for those days.
I think one of things that was nice, was that no one had a cell phone hanging from their face.
hahaha Oh, don't get me wrong, I love my electronic and technological devices, I do. I really do. But I also loved the times back then, when if you wanted to find out how someone was doing, you got in a vehicle and went to see them personally. A visit took effort, not afterthought.
When I was growing up, I did not grow up on a farm. Meaning that my parents did not own a farm, but, my grandparents owned the farm that our small piece of property came from. Our property was on one side of the highway and my grandparents farm was on the other side of the highway. So, in that respect, I did grow up on a farm. Looking back on it now, every day on the farm was an adventure. And it was fun as a kid. I now know just how hard both sets of my grandparents worked, all their lives to sustain their families early on in their lives and then to sustain the farm in later years. But for a kid, there was a certain level of fun.
For instance, it was fun to go with Mamaw to gather eggs. She never took a basket, because she always had an apron on. Her apron was her egg basket and she never broke an egg!!! She had lots of chickens, so there was lots of eggs to collect at least twice a day. As I ponder on that, I miss it. There was also time to milk the cow each day. As a child, my Mamaw was the best milker I ever seen, I just knew she was a professional cow milker. hahaha I never could get a drop of milk from the cow!!! But she could get a gallon of milk in no time flat!! Papaw was just as good at milking as Mamaw was.
After the milking, Mamaw would always take her cheesecloth and strain the milk. That happened without fail, every time. She would strain out any stray hair that may fallen from the cow into the milk bucket. If I remember correctly, they may have milked that cow twice a day. It gave lots of milk with lots of cream. Then Mamaw would take some of the milk and make butter. Her butter was the best butter I ever had in my life. Take a fresh baked biscuit of my Mom's and put some of Mamaw's fresh homemade butter on it and it was simply delectable. I always loved to help Mamaw churn the milk. She had the big old crock churn with the lid and the wooden dasher in it and once she got the churning process started, I would help and I enjoyed that a whole lot. After the butter was removed from the milk, the remaining was buttermilk. She didn't take every speck of butter off the milk, so it would be good and buttery and it was really good. An after supper delicacy was buttermilk and cornbread. It doesn't get much better than that. Oh, and cornbread was delicious slathered with some of the home made butter at suppertime.
They also had a huge garden that my Mom helped them with each year and they shared the produce. So, a lot of the time, all of us was in the garden. If we was too young or too small to help in the garden, we was nearby in the fence row where the adults could keep an eye on the smaller ones. Back in the early days of my blog, I wrote about my youngest brother, (he was still 2 years older than me), and I getting into some poison sumac and the horrible time we had with that. So, go back to the early days of my blog and see if you can find that story if you are curious. But, that too, just goes along with the days of yesterday and some of things we survived. hahaha
When it come to farming, Papaw farmed the old fashioned way. He had two mules, Jim and Red. They were the largest mules I ever remember seeing in my life. He loved those mules. He was good to those mules and expected a lot from them and they never failed him. Every once in a while he would go into the kitchen to his brown sugar jar, setting in that old fashioned cabinet that so many farm houses had back then, and get a spoonful in each hand and walk out the screen door as it slammed behind him and the mules would hear the slam and look up. If they seen him walking to the fence, they would come to him and each one would get the special treat in his hands. After they had eaten the sugar lump, he would rub them on the face and head and pat them and slap them on the side of the big sleek shiny sides before they walked off.
The slamming of the screen door is one of the sounds that I really miss from those days. No matter when you heard that sound, you knew some activity was getting ready to take place. Or maybe a particular activity had just finished. Maybe the filling of coal buckets in the winter time. Or filling of the water buckets from the well. Or taking scraps out to the chickens. Or maybe Mamaw was hanging laundry on the clothesline. But the slamming of the door meant someone was stirring. And that is a sound forever etched in my mind . Back in the day, everywhere you went, that was the sound you heard and it was a homey, familiar sound.
Another sound I loved to hear was the sound of the mules with all their tack on and hitched up to the wagon, coming down off the hill. I would love to hear that sound one more time in my life, but that is impossible. All I can do is try to remember it in my mind. There was no other sound quite like it. It was a very distinct sound. When you heard it, there was no doubt as to what it was. Hearing the jangle of all the brass rings attached to all the leather that made up the harnesses and then attached to the wagon and the rumble of the wagon wheels on the gravel road, picture in your mind some scene from a western show or movie of some kind. Those are sounds and even the sights that may have been very similar. But, when we heard the wagon coming off the hill, we knew that Mamaw and Papaw were, more than likely, going down to Jesse's store to get a few necessities for themselves and to also pick up a wagon load of feed for the animals. If my brothers and I got to go with them, I always asked them to pick out pretty feed sacks because I wanted pretty clothes made from them. I didn't get a lot of their feed sacks, but I did get a few and Mom would make me shorts and tops from them most of the time.
Their house sat at the top of the hill. While it wasn't a huge house, it was a 2 story house. As a child going up the hill, it looked to be a really big house, kinda like an antebellum house, but it was FAR from that. The driveway came up the center of the front yard and made a circle and then back down the hill. Think of the eye of a needle, that's what their driveway was. With a large cedar pole, from a VERY large cedar tree making the lamp post in the center of the eye of the needle. If you was setting on the front porch, you had a bullseye view of the driveway. You could see a head bob up and down while walking in the distance long before they got to the house. If someone was in a vehicle, you could hear it long before the vehicle got in sight. Papaw made a "no agents allowed" sign many years before I came along and nailed it to a tree at the bottom of the hill close to the road. If he wasn't expecting anyone, or if it was a vehicle he didn't recognize, he would get up and get his shotgun and have it sitting pretty close by. At any rate, he had it and would have used it if necessary. Fortunately, he never did. hahaha
They never had a modern vehicle of any kind. No tractor. Everything that was done, was done the hard way early on, but when tractors started becoming popular, he would hire someone to come and break up a field or something. It would save many back breaking hours for him. But he never felt the need to get one for himself. He would have to have learned to drive a tractor but he already knew how to drive his prize team of mules.
Speaking of vehicles coming up the hill to their place, one of the things that we all waited for was the spring of the year when Mamaw would order her new chicks. Always 2 or 3 boxes of little chicks would be ordered and the mail carrier would deliver them. Mr. Gilliam would always take them up the hill to her and we, as kids, were so excited about it. We couldn't wait to get to see those new chicks. It was so fun!!! All those hopping little fur balls, they didn't have true feathers yet, just that baby pin feathers, more like fur than feathers, and they were the cutest things. I always loved that time of the year. We knew that later on in the year would be time to put the older chickens in the freezers. That was one heck of a time, doing all that. But it also meant that we all would eat well, because we had them in freezers.
At one time, Papaw had a small tobacco patch. I don't remember a lot about the growing process, but I do remember all of us being up there, out by the pond and using the mules to haul water from the pond to the tobacco patch on a small flat bed runner wagon that he had built just for that purpose. when they was in the process of setting the tobacco plants. I also remember tobacco stripping time, everyone smelled of tobacco. It wasn't an unpleasant smell, just something we didn't smell all the time. I guess that may be where my brothers cut their teeth on learning to be good farm hands and learning how to do things as instructed by an adult. Because all 5 of them grew to be the best farm hands that any of the local farmers had ever hired and great men in general.
I remember a lot of time being spent sitting on the front porch with Mamaw and Papaw after the chores were done. I loved the times of sitting on the porch. It was a time for the young people got to listen and learn from the older people who had lived good hard lives and soak up a little wisdom. Sometimes there would be a lot of talking and other times there wasn't, but at the end of the day they knew they had fulfilled the mission for the day and felt very accomplished for doing it.
In the early summer, the mornings were filled with lots of dew that had collected overnight and everything would be wet. That was the best mornings to go blackberry picking. Because we layered up with clothes to keep chiggers off us, and that made us hot. Most of the time we looked rather funny, more like we were dressed for the dead of winter, with our socks pulled up over our pants legs. Probably coal oil rubbed around our ankles and wrists to keep chiggers off our skin. We not only looked funny, but we smelled a little funny too. hahaha So when everything was full of dew, our clothes soaked up the dew and cooled us off. If you didn't dress for success when picking blackberries, you would pay dearly!! Maybe at least one chigger per blackberry. Sometimes 2 chiggers per blackberry!!! hahaha That's a little bit of an exaggeration, but chiggers was a big deal and you wanted to avoid them at all costs!!!
I grew up in a day and time where, if you ate meat, more than likely "you" killed it beforehand. My grandparents would butcher a hog. That's where a LOT of their meat for the year would come from. My mother and older brothers would help them with the butchering process. They rendered their own lard and it was good. The rendering process left what was called "cracklings". It was the thick hide of the hog with fat on it and when they rendered the fat out, and it was thick, tough and chewy. A favorite to make with cracklings was crackling cornbread. Oh boy, was that ever good!!!! Not only would we kill a hog, but my brothers also deer hunted. So we would have deer meat. Rabbit, squirrel, quail, fish, turtle as well as beef was among some of the foods that we was raised on and we knew how to dress the meat in order to put it in the freezer and eat throughout the year. Those are lessons that never ever hurt a child to learn and know!!! You are more appreciative of the food you have if you have time invested in it. Every child knew where their food came from, because more than likely they seen it butchered and cut up. By the time a boy was six or seven years old, he was going out in the woods with the older ones. He was learning how to hunt meat. When the young girls were of the same age, they were in the kitchen helping their Mom and seeing how she prepared the food that had just been butchered. There was absolutely NOTHING wrong with that way of life!!!! That's what everyone did. If you ate meat, you killed it!!! When you come from a large family, it took a lot of meat. Heck, it took a lot of everything!! hahaha Just sayin'. Now days, all that the kids and most adults know, is that their food comes from the grocery store.
As a matter fact, I heard an "ignorant woman" (best words I can use without saying bad words) trying to make a point against hunting and wanting to take guns from the law abiding citizens say that there is no reason for anyone to have guns or to ever have to kill an animal for food when all you have to do is go to the grocery store and get meat!!! She was honest and truly trying to make a point that meat that comes from the store wasn't killed!!! Yes, that truly is the point she was trying to make!!!! I would loved to have told her to go ask a grandparent where their meat came from and ask her parents about the meat that they ate. Some people are beyond help and beyond understanding reasonable thought. Some people are dumber than a rock and they can't help it or they chose not to help it. I don't know.
That is some of the ignorance that makes me long for the days when the average person could think for themselves and didn't need biased news media or biased politicians or biased people pushing their own agendas telling them how to think. People used to have common sense. People used to know how to feed their families. People used to know how to love their neighbors. People used to have respect for what the bible says about sin. People used to have respect for this country. People in the past have sacrificed for their country. People used to have respect for a man or woman in uniform or for those that had worn the uniform of any branch of the United States Military. People used to have respect for human life. Real women would have attacked anyone wanting to kill a baby in the birth canal!!!! The females that we have seen, as of late, wearing white are not even qualified to be called females in my humble opinion. I have called them witches in social media and I stand behind that well enough to keep calling them witches. As a matter of fact, "evil witches" is what I have called them and I still do!!! There is absolutely nothing about their gender that defines me in any way, shape, form or fashion. There is truly something WRONG with these animals!!! They have sold themselves out to the devil and we are seeing what that looks like.
We also see men wanting to be women and women wanting to be men. And they are taking the steps necessary to change their gender. Whatever those steps are. I never thought I would ever live to see such evil days. I am serious about that. I remember when sin was treated as such, but now, we promote sin, we encourage sin, and we salute sin. Two men living as husband and husband is not a marriage, it's sin. Two women living together as wife and wife is not a marriage, it's sin. You know what, this is what God declared many years ago when He spoke the universe into being and set out to design what the family should look like. So, this is not what I think, it's what God thinks. I don't want anyone to give 2 hoots about what I think, because what I think matters to noone!!! But I do want you to care what the God of all creation thinks and He has said that there are some things that He has declared as sin. I can not and will not speak otherwise. If I spoke against God, it would be down right sin and I will not purposefully sin against God. Yes, I sin every day, I repent and seek forgiveness every day. I do not want to mislead anyone with what I say, that's why I make sure to try and not tell you what I think, but share with you what God has said.
So, when I think of the present day in which I live, I truly long for days when kids could just be kids, men were men and women were women and proud to be exactly as God made them. The days when people was respectful to each other. The days when children were treated as such. When children was respectful to the adults around them. When children was actually disciplined. When parents parented and the government expected parents to parent. When drunks were called drunks and drug addicts were called drug addicts, not victims of society. When people actually worked for what they had. When handouts wasn't a way of life. When "being entitled" meant that you had WORKED HARD for what you got, meaning that working hard is what entitled you to the paycheck or social security or medicare that you was to get. That is what entitlement IS!!!!!!
Entitlement is NOT a free handout!!!! But, if you come across the border illegally, then you can get whatever the United States Government has in the way of handouts, free, just for coming across the border!!!!! There is something wrong with that!!!! When honest, hard-working men and women have worked hard their whole lives and paid their fair share of taxes into the this system and they are denied disability, when in fact they are disabled, that my friends, is a diabolical disgrace!!!! Lord, I long for the days when people had enough active brain cells to tell right from wrong.
Freedom is NOT free!!! The sad state of the matter is that there are not enough people willing to fight for their freedom. As a matter of fact, these people are working hard at handing their freedom over to someone else, anyone else, on a silver platter, free of charge, and not even trying to retain even a little bit of freedom. I never ever thought I would live long enough to witness as much stupidity in high levels of authority as we have today. I never ever thought I would live to see the people turn our land over to the muslims so easily!!! I never thought I would live long enough to see govt officials cower down to CHILDREN!!!!!! What in heck is wrong with people!!!!!
Lord, I long for the days of common sense!!! I long for the days in which people thought for themselves. I long for the days in which you didn't have to worry about offending people so easily. I long for the days that people recognized sin as sin, instead of an alternative lifestyle. I long for front porch chats. I long for visiting friends in person. I long for children chasing fireflies instead of being chastised for catching them. I long for the days that you would see kids out picking blackberries. I long for the days of collecting eggs in aprons. I long for the day in which you didn't wonder if you was looking at a man or a woman. I long for the days of seeing generations working side by side in the garden. I long for the days when you would see teenage boys out working for the farmers. That's where a lot of boys grew to be trustworthy men!!!! I long to see men being men and women being women and seeing both men and women accepting their responsibility as parents. I long for common sense to make a return.
Well, this is just some of things that I long for. I realize that common sense will not be coming back around any time soon and if it does try to make a comeback, I'm sure that it will be taken out swiftly. I don't know if there is anything left worth fighting for. I don't know if there is anyone left that would be willing to fight if we do deem something worth fighting for. I just know for sure that we have handed everything that our forefathers have fought and died for over to a generation of ingrates and an influx of illegal aliens. By the time these animals are done, there will be nothing left worth reminiscing about.
If this sounds depressing, let me say that "it is depressing". The days in which I live are depressing and the days in which you live are no less depressing. Prayer is our only recourse. Not only for ourselves, but for this country, for the leaders of this country and for anyone who actually cares about this country anymore. We have more politicians in office that are working hard from the inside to destroy this country than there are those who are trying to save this country. Lord help those who are trying to save this country. From my pitiful point of view, it's time to clean house!!!! Insanity has been described as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. We are living in insane times with insane people making decisions beneficial to themselves, instead of benefiting the people who put them in office. Voting themselves big raises and bettering their insurance programs all the while the working poor get poorer and their insurance is laughable. If I let myself go, I could really tell y'all how I feel about what's happening, but I try to refrain from foul words and potty mouth. But needless to say, I am ticked off about what's happening in our country.
That's why I long for some of the days back when I was kid and I knew that adults had everything under control. I could go to bed each night and know that whatever happened, Momma and Daddy was gonna take care of us. Now, we have parents murdering babies in the birth canal. Abortion has become this countries great holocaust and it only gets worse. Because no one cares about the babies. Animals have a higher regard than an actual human baby!!! Abortion has become the modern day sacrifice to the devil. Abortion has become the coverup for sin!! Yes, I said it, I said "sin". Abortion has become the coverup for fornication, the coverup for cheating on one's spouse, abortion has become the coverup for a lot of bad behavior and apparently, people want to continue to kill the children that had nothing to do with it in the first place. The best I can say, "hell keeps getting hotter every day"!!
The thing of it is this, not a single sin that I have mentioned is unforgivable. Not a one. But repentance is a word that people are bound and determined NOT to have anything to do with. I don't even know if the word repentance is a viable word these days because we never hear it used. The act of repentance is all it takes for the shed blood of Jesus to cover those sins. But that IS what it takes. Nothing else will suffice!!! Repentance, is that even a word that is used in church today? Repentance is an ugly word in most people's mind. But that's the only way to get out of this mess, is repentance. Those of us who are Christians need to repent for our complacency and then we need to pray for others to repent. If ever there was a time that people need to repent, it is now. I pray that people will come to the Lord and that other people will come "back" to Lord. This country needs some serious healing, and it will only come from repentance and turning to Jesus Christ.
Lord, I pray that You show me the error of my ways. I pray that You will show us all the error of our ways before it's too late. I pray that You will give common sense and wisdom and knowledge to those actively seeking it. I pray that You will bless those who are at the forefront of the battle, fighting for this country. I pray that You will stop those who are dead set on destroying this country. Focus our hearts and minds on You and what You desire for us. Forgive us for not seeking You when we know that You are our only salvation. Help us to arise from the sleep and daze that we are in and see clearly what You have for us. Show us directly, with no doubt, the things that are sin and the things that displease You. Forgive us for not trusting You. Thank You for what You are going to do, in the name of Jesus! Amen
So, as I re-read this, I realize that I "keep" going back to a time that made sense. I keep going back to a time when people cared about others. I keep longing for the days when, even if you didn't go to church, you had respect for those who did. You know, we have never had a time in this country when someone wasn't in need of some of the basics of life. But it used to be that if you knew someone was in need, you helped them while allowing them to maintain a little bit of their dignity. Those days are gone. But, I can't help it, I keep longing for those days. Since we live in a time where some people are profiting from evil, it's gonna be hard to change the outcome. We have tolerated way too much for the sake of not offending someone!!!! Well, I'm offended at that and it's time to repent and have some courageous faith that God can change the winds that are sweeping across this country. We either fight for good or we fight for evil, either way we are in a battle. Our battle starts in our circle of influence, right where we live. I/You/we do have influence and I/you/we need to remember that. If we have Christ as our shield, we can stand up and make a difference. It's up to us to repent and ask Christ to go before us.
So........we reminisce, we repent and we keep moving forward, in the name of Jesus Christ. Repent and serve the Lord right where you are, make a difference for Christ. hugs, patty
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