Most Days Lead to Granny

Most days take me back to Granny. There in the warm coziness of her four-room house or outside in her tiny yard, I would follow her like a shadow on a sunny day, mimicking her every action. Granny would be crocheting a new afghan and I would sit patiently with my crochet hook like a surgeon wanting to start a delicate operation as I watched her knobby, arthritic hands manipulate the yarn with the speed of a typist. Granny would complete a row and then show me another stitch before moving on to start another row. I never did learn to crochet as well as Granny, but then again, I’ve never been able to do any of the miracles as well as she.

Baking cookies was always a thrill and Granny never seemed to mind the mess, and believe me, there was always a mess. Mixing the thick sugar cookie batter and then rolling it out on a slab of marble. When the dough was rolled to the right thickness, Granny would hand me a juice jar to use as a cookie cutter. Dipping the open end of the jar into a bowl of snow-white sugar, I would cut out one cookie after another. I was married with a child of my own before I realized you could buy preformed cookie cutters in all shapes and sizes.

While the cookies were baking in the old gas oven, Granny would mix up the frosting, several different colors – red, yellow, green and blue. The green was always my favorite and by the time we had finished frosting each cookie, I would end up with green lips from tasting so much frosting. Back then no one worried about how bad all the sugar was on a growing child and grandmothers were always trying to feed their grandchildren. Later, when my Mom would pick me up, Granny would send us home with a fresh tin of cookies and fresh memories I would look back fondly on in my later years.

Graveyards and cemeteries have always been some of my favorite places to visit, and when I was a child, I loved walking through row after row of old tombstones and statues looking for great grandfather so-and-so or great grandmother so-and-so or aunt and uncle so-and-so. This may be a morbid activity for a young child, but my Granny loved visiting these places and paying her respect for ancestors who have gone before us. Mom would usually take us – Granny, my brother and sister, and me – on Sunday afternoon drives. We would end up in the cemeteries of Deep Creek or Antioch or Bruner’s Chapel and my siblings and I would have free rein to run and play while Mom and Granny would clear weeds away from tombstones.

Although I have a fairly extensive family history I have been working on for many years, I can’t remember exactly who is buried in what graveyard, but I can find each family tombstone from all the cemeteries we used to visit. I remember walking down a deep hillside at Deep Creek, I remember walking up a small rise at Bruner’s Chapel, and I remember someone is buried near the old outhouse at Antioch. My childhood memories can carry me to these places like someone walking in a dream.

Another autumn adventure occurring on these Sunday afternoon drives was gathering bittersweet vine for fall decorations. Traveling the old back roads to the out of the way cemeteries, we would find bittersweet growing wild on fencerows near the road. Now a day, I would never dream of pulling over to the side of the road and gathering wild vines, but in the late 60s and early 70s this is exactly what we did. We would go home with the car trunk full of bittersweet vines full of bright orange berries. Granny would make wreaths or table decorations to help brighten the house for fall.

Gathering hickory nuts is another autumn adventure I loved to help with. Granny had friends who owned a farm near Perryville and one field of the farm had five or six hickory nut trees. We would fill several large sacks full of nuts, knowing Granny would use them in her wonderful jam and orange slice cakes, or in fudge or fruit salad. Once we had the nuts back home, we would sit in Granny’s side yard and remove the hulls from each nut. Although not as messy as working with black walnuts, the green hulls would still stain our hands. Mom and Granny would then crack the shell of each nut and carefully work out the sweet meat inside. It would take hours just getting a small bowl of nuts, but we knew the reward was worth it.

Although my Granny loved to sew and make crafts, I think her first love was working with plants in her small yard. Elephant ears were one of her favorite plants and she would grow the same bulb over and over again every year. During the summer, the huge green Elephant ears would grow happily in old buckets on the back porch. When the air started to chill in the fall, Granny would drag the buckets to the crawl space below the house. After wrapping the entire bucket in layers of old newspaper, the elephant ears would over winter in the dark dampness of this small cramped space, getting just enough warmth from the furnace pilot light to keep from freezing and damaging the root bulbs. Every few years, Granny would repot the elephant ears, harvesting baby bulbs to turn into new plants.

Granny also enjoyed growing sage in the tiny flower garden between her home and her next-door neighbor’s house. She kept the flowers plucked off each sage plant in order for the leaves to grow big and fat. During the late summer and early fall, Granny would start harvesting the sage leaves, lining them on paper plates and allowing them to dry on the back porch if it was a sunny day, or placing them on top of the refrigerator where it was warm. Granny would then use the sage for making her wonderful dressing on Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mother still grows and dries sage in the same manner as Granny and her dressing is always the highlight of the holiday season.

Sewing, gardening, baking and crafting, in my opinion, there was nothing my Granny couldn’t do – except maybe drive a car. Granny never learned to drive and never had any desire to learn to drive, depending on my Mom and aunt to take her the places she needed to go. It is because of Granny I love to work in my gardens, although my plants never seem to grow as good as Granny’s did. It is because of Granny I love to sew and craft, but my fingers will never be as nimble as Granny’s were. It is because of Granny I love to bake – although I hate cleaning up the mess – but my desserts will never stand up to the delectable sweets she would create.

Granny has been gone for 24 years, but I still think of her often. Although all my memories of her are happy memories, it saddens me to know my children and my husband never got to know her. In recent years the motto, “What would Jesus do?” has become very popular, but whenever I’m in doubt about something, I catch myself asking, “What would Granny do?”

School Days, School Daze

School days, school days
Dear old golden rule days
Readin' and ritin' and rithmatic
Taught to the tune of a hickory stick ...

Are there people you try to remember more clearly, phantoms you'd like to reach back into the past and take a firm hold of? What do you remember of your early school years? High school years? College years? These are questions my best friend and I were reminiscing about a few weeks ago and I couldn’t believe it has really been 29 years since I graduated from high school? Where have the years gone? In recalling these memories, I was amazed at the details I remembered from certain years, while other memories I only had a vague recollection.

My first foray into the world of education was kindergarten at Lad & Lassie. I don’t remember much from this time in my life, but there are a few things I can remember with clarity. I remember the cold feel of the leather car seat on the backs of my bare legs as Daddy would drive me to school. I normally wore a skirt or dress with knee socks and this left the backs of my legs exposed to the elements when I would sit down. I remember the "play" we put on - everyone dressing and acting out a part in a circus. My best friend at the time Jennifer "General Foods" and I were the double-headed fat lady - both of us inside the same dress with our heads and one arm a piece in each sleeve. For the life I me, I don’t remember why I called her General Foods, unless it was because Jennifer and General sounded alike.

First grade was at Rose Hill Elementary in 1968 - the last year the school was open. At six years old I had this huge puppy crush on Duane, who was an older man, a mature seven years old. I got in trouble one day because I wrote him a note and then pushed it through a crack in the wall between my classroom and his. I was humiliated when his teacher brought the note to my teacher and then proceeded to read it out loud to the classroom! I also remember having a field day or party day, and my Mom got to come and bring my little brother, Brent. I got so upset when Brent tripped and rolled down a hill on the side of the school yard. I was so afraid he was hurt, but he managed to end up with only a few scratches.

When the Mercer County Elementary School first opened, I was in the first second grade class. I don’t remember much from second grade, but third grade was a different story. I took my best friend's, Ella Jean, turtle out of his bowl on pet day and put him on the table. Then, during the morning Pledge of Allegiance, the turtle walked off the table and fell to the floor - Ella Jean was furious and the Miss McGinnis made me stand in the corner. I also thought it was okay to sharpen my yellow crayon in the pencil sharpener on the wall; this earned me my one and only spanking at school. Actually, I didn’t get a true spanking – the teacher took me into the supply closet and told me to never sharpen my crayons in the pencil sharpener again. She took the paddle and smacked her hand with it twice to make noise and then told me not to tell anyone. After that, Miss McGinnis was my hero!

Seventh grade at Mercer County Junior High – we all thought we were so big back then. No longer with the younger kids at the elementary school, we were one step closer to being with the cool kids in high school. This was the year I let several people touch my legs because everyone thought I was wearing pantyhose with my shorts. Fact was I used to tan brown as a berry from days spent in the sun and my legs were just naturally dark. This was also the year I started to seriously keep a journal, something I’ve continued to do for the next 35 years.

All four years at Mercer County High School, I dated the same boy and I was head over heels to the point that I began ignoring all my old friends and did everything I could to please my first love. The one person I managed not to alienate was my best guy-friend, Damon – he managed to stand by me no matter what and for that I’ll always be grateful. My only regret from my high school years was not listening to my family and friends when they told me I should not have settled for the first guy who caught my eyes. Oh well, hindsight is 20-20.

Going to college as a single mother of two children under the age of six was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but it is also the thing I am most proud of. After my divorce I attend the Midway College nursing program. My children started school at the same time – Amber was in kindergarten and Marie was in Head Start. Those three years were so hard, not only because of raising my children, studying for classes and attending clinical rotations, but because I also had to hold down a job. This was 25 years ago and when I look back I don't know how I survived with my sanity intact, or how my children turned into wonderful young women. The majority of the credit goes to my boyfriend, Keith, now my loving husband of almost 20 years. He is the one who kept me going, helping me with homework and entertaining the girls while I studied for tests or wrote term papers.

These are just a few of the memories my muse brought up when my friend and I were talking about our school years. The problem is I am nowhere near the tip of the iceberg on this subject. Just looking at school pictures can bring back an avalanche of memories. Capturing these memories on paper may take me the rest of my life, but I think I’m up for the challenge.

Lights, Camera, Action

On February 17, 2009, all over-the-air analog television transmission signals on channels in the United States will come to an end – or at least that is the current plan approved by the Government, via the Congress and the FCC. Since we have had to deal with this message “crawling” across the bottom of our televisions for months, I thought this would be a good time to talk about the progression of television in my life.

The first program I have any memory of watching was “The Monkees” - the misadventures of a struggling rock band. This show first aired in September of 1966, so I was only four years old. I can still remember begging my mom to let me stay up past my bedtime so I could watch. At the time “The Monkees” premiered, they were a fictional rock band, but Davy, Micky, Peter and Michael soon became overnight sensations.

I don’t remember if mom actually let me stay up late on the night in question – 8:00 pm was past my bedtime – but I do remember religiously watching “The Monkees” on Saturday afternoon television. According to Wikipedia, “The Monkees” began airing on Saturdays in September 1969 – by this time I was seven years old.
I have no recollection whether I first watched “The Monkees” on a black and white television, or if we had switched to color. Colorized television was wide-spread by the time I was born in 1962, but not many families could afford them. It wasn’t until 1972 that color television sets outsold black and white sets in the United States.

“Dark Shadows” is the first show I remember watching in color, although it started out as a black and white show. I know I wasn’t old enough to have watched “Dark Shadows” from the beginning – it started airing in 1966 – but I do remember at some point coming home from school in just enough time to see most of the daily episodes. This series ended in 1971 – I would have been nine years old.

“Dark Shadows” was one of the lucky television shows to make it into syndication in 1975. I think it was these repeated viewings that endeared me to “Dark Shadows” – I liked it during its original run, but I grew to love it through syndication. Now, thanks to digital technology, I can enjoy “Dark Shadows” on DVD any time I want.

By the time I became obsessed with my next television show – “Land of the Lost” – I know we had a color television. “Land of the Lost” premiered in 1974 and it was a weekly Saturday morning children’s show by Sid and Marty Krofft. To say I loved this campy show is an understatement. This show had everything a 12 year old could want – dinosaurs, danger and adventure.

It was because of “Land of the Lost” I had my first introduction into audio recording. I would audio tape this show every Saturday morning on my little yellow cassette recorder and then listen to it with my headphones every night. Today there are audio books to listen to, but for me it was always “Land of the Lost.” I still have to be listening to an audio book or have the television on very low to go to sleep – my youngest daughter is the same way.

By the time I was 13, I thought I was in love – with “Starsky and Hutch.” Actually, it was Starsky I loved the most. I never missed an episode of this show, but I had to keep it turned down very low because it came on past my bedtime. My bedroom was in the basement, so as long as I keep the volume down, I could get away with watching. Of course, this is another show I would audiotape and listen to at night.

In addition to “Starsky and Hutch”, 1975 also brought “Crockett’s Victory Garden” on PBS. James Underwood Crockett was my gardening idol and it is because of him I became so fascinated with plants and gardening. Every week I would tune in to see what was growing, dreaming of the days I would have my own garden. The show’s name changed to “The Victory Garden” after Crockett died in 1979.

With the mainstream use of VCRs, television viewing would never be the same. I can still remember the first video stores opening in Harrodsburg. Movies lining every shelf – all you had to do was take them home and pop them in the VCR, if you were lucky enough to own one. The video stores also had VCRs to rent and I can remember lugging home one of those huge machines and becoming frustrated when I couldn’t get it hooked up right. I didn’t own my first VCR until I started nursing school – way back in 1987.

No longer content to wait once a year to see “The Wizard of Oz,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” or “Star Wars,” you can now watch these beloved classics whenever you want. My children don’t remember much about Saturday morning cartoons, because they have always been able to watch cartoons at the flick of a switch. Videocassette recorders/players are slowly being replaced by DVD recorders/players. By 2003, DVDs were out-numbering VHS tapes in total rentals and sales.
Three years ago, I was introduced to the DVR and my television viewing will never be the same. Not only can I record programs for future viewing, but I don’t have to waste tapes or discs for recording, unless it is something I want to keep. The DVR allows me to record all my favorite shows and then watch them whenever I feel like it. Not only does it record, but it allows me to pause live television and rewind to catch something I missed.

Black and white versus color, analog versus digital, VHS versus DVD – as long as technology continues advancing, there will always be changes in viewing entertainment from your home. What will the future hold for my grandchildren? We’re already seeing movies on computers and cell phones. I don’t know how my grandchildren will view television, but I know one thing. There will be lots of stories from grandma about the good old days.

Blizzard of 1978

We've all heard stories of blizzards and snowstorms from our parents and grandparents, tales of epic snows and the struggles each one brought.

"I used to walk through snow 3 feet deep just to get to school."

"I remember the snow was up to the window eaves."

"We were snowed in for over a month."

Of course, I have a few stories of my own, like the snowstorm of 2001 when we were supposed to only get a "dusting" and we ended up with 2 feet of snow. This was the winter my middle daughter, Marie, made an igloo by digging out a 3 foot snow drift. This was not a legendary storm, but it is one all three of my children remember. And although I've lived through a few snowstorms and ice storms in my 46 years, nothing compares to my grandparent's epic storms of legend.

Not unless you count the blizzard of 1978. I was 15 years old at the time of this storm, but I'll never forget that winter. Although I kept a journal at the time, many of my facts may not be accurate because at the time, I was more concerned with writing about my boyfriend than the weather conditions. However, I was able to record some of my feelings and the increasing boredom, and my memories have grown each time I tell the story to my girls.

In my telling of the story, we were out of school from Christmas break until Valentine's Day, but I don't think this is exactly right. According to newspaper articles, the big blizzard didn't hit until January 25th, so my slice of reality doesn't hold up to historical facts. We probably had a few “snow days” between Christmas and the big blizzard, but I'm also sure we went to school a few days.

I remember the weathermen had predicted the approaching storm several days before it hit. My parents, like everyone else, had stocked up on food and supplies anticipating a few days of cabin fever. As I researched the blizzard of 1978, I found a report from the National Weather Service, who categorized the storm “as a rare severe blizzard – the most severe grade of storm.” I do have my own records showing at the height of the storm, winds were gusting up to 100 miles per hour. There were also a couple of days when the wind chill was more than 30 degrees below zero. I don't know what the official snow totals were for Harrodsburg, but in our backyard we had 26 inches.

I remember the water lines froze and we didn't have water for days on end. This happened all over town, not just in the subdivision of Riverview where I lived. I remember Daddy hauling water from my grandparents farm in Bohon so we would have water to drink and cook with, as well as to flush the toilets. We also went to the laundromat in Danville to wash clothes because the ones in Harrodsburg didn't have water.

It's funny, I can remember the water lines being frozen, but I don't remember if the electricity was on or off. Our home had a gas furnace, so I guess that would have kept us warm. And I remember we had telephone service because I kept the phone lines hot talking to my boyfriend.

The first few days after the storm were fun because we could go sledding, make snow angels and have snowball fights. My younger brother and his friends made an igloo in the backyard and it was fun watching the building process. After the igloo was finished, they spent hours having the grandest snowball fights!

Although I was a tomboy growing up, I was a wimp about snow and cold weather. After the first few days, I was tired of the snow, so I spent most of my days indoors reading. At the time I owned the first 16 “Trixie Belden Mystery” books and I re-read the entire series twice during this extended vacation. But no matter how much I loved Trixie Belden, I was getting tired of reading the same books over and over again. With school closed I was not able to check books out of the library and the bookmobile was not able to travel to our subdivision. I did have "A Wrinkle in Time" checked out from school, but even Charles Wallace and the Tesseract were not enough to hold my boredom at bay.

And bored became an understatement! After the first week, I would wake early every weekday, only to be disappointed when the radio announced school was closed again. I was actually envious of the Harrodsburg students because they went back to school sooner than we did.

Needless to say, I was so excited to go back to school - to see my friends, to see my boyfriend, to get new books from the library, and ending the overpowering boredom of cabin fever. This will probably be the snowstorm story I tell my grandchildren, and I'm sure the tale will get exaggerated, just the way my grandsparents' and my parents' stories did. But one thing is for sure, I will always remember the beauty and power of the Blizzard of 1978.

Home for the Holidays

(Photo curtsey of Koerten Galery)





Home for the holidays … we hear this saying every year, what does it actually mean?

Home is the place where your loved ones reside. I don’t think it is a place at all, but a feeling deep down in your heart. To me, home for the holidays is anywhere my family can join together, be it my home, my oldest two daughters’ home, or my parent’s or mother-in-law’s home.

Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, but the past three years have been a challenge; they do not held the same joy since my sister is gone. The last year I truly enjoyed Christmas was 2004 – the last Christmas we got to spend with my baby sister, Amy.

Christmas 2004 was a merry time, full of love and excitement. There were family reunions and guarded surprises, all leading up to Christmas Eve, when we all gathered in my parent’s home to celebrate the season.

My Mom still has the Christmas stockings that Brent, Amy and I had as children. They always hang on the brick hearth, along with additions for Amber, Marie, Ashley, Christine and Ethan – the five grandchildren. During the Christmas season of 2004, Mom made each of us a new Christmas stocking. Amy had found a picture of a stocking made from old quilts and she convinced Mom to make one for each of us. Amy had an old quilt and she drew the pattern and helped Mom cut out the pattern pieces.

Mom worked hard for several weeks to make sure all of us had stockings. When she had finished them, she presented us our stockings on Christmas Eve. This was the best gift I received that year. I loved the way the stockings looked and I was thrilled because it was something my Mom had made for us. She even embroidered our names and the year on the back of each stocking. For the past three years, I have used these stockings in place of our old ones. We don’t have a hearth, so we hang our stockings from stocking holders on the buffet in the living room.

One Christmas staple has had many incarnations over the years - the Christmas lights we put on our trees. When I was little, the only Christmas lights we had were the large, screw-in type in various multi-colors. Today Christmas lights are tiny and twinkling and they come in some really strange colors. Although we have many strands of these new fangled lights, we also have several strands of the older types, just because I love the way they look. Those large bulbs always take me back to the Christmases of my childhood.

Another lighting tradition our family has is the two strands of “bubble lights” that we lovingly display each year – my family didn’t have any of these lights for our tree, but my husband’s family did, so we merge the two traditions.

When my siblings and I were little, we used to drive our parents crazy because we were always changing the colors of the Christmas lights. The tree was always in a corner or in front of the picture window, and we each had our own side of the tree. Brent’s and mine were usually the left or right side and Amy’s was in the middle. I was always moving the green lights to my side of the tree (green was my favorite color). My brother would move the red bulbs and my sister’s spot was full of blue bulbs. None of us liked the yellow lights, so we tried to move them to the back of the tree or near the bottom.

There are two food items my Mom cooks every year and they are the two things we can’t do without when it comes to Christmas – her chocolate fantasy fudge and her homemade dressing. Although Christine and my hubby love peanut butter fudge the best, I have always been a chocoholic, so Mom’s fudge hits the spot. I’ve never been able to make fudge as good has hers. And when it comes to dressing for the turkey, nothing compares to Mom’s! She freezes left-over biscuits and cornbread all year and then mixes them with onions, turkey broth and sage to make the most heavenly dressing I’ve ever tasted. We wait all year for this one food, so she always makes a huge amount for everyone to have left-overs.

As far as Christmas trees are concerned, we’ve ran the gamete of styles and sizes. Although cedar trees are still my favorite because of their wonderful smell, our huge collection of Hallmark ornaments prohibits us from using them because the branches just aren’t strong enough. Since my hubby and I have been married, we’ve always had an artificial tree; sometimes we’ve had three or four at a time. Last year we added a new tree to our collection and it is the tree we are using this year.

I have fond memories of the old silver tinsel trees from my childhood – you remember the type, silver branches with a color wheel instead of lights. Well, for years we have hunted yard sales and flea markets, not to mention family attics, but we could never find one of those silver trees; they had all been thrown away or sold in yard sales. Last year, my hubby found a brand new silver tree, and although it is not exactly like the tinsel trees of my past, it is close enough that I love it. And this tree is flame-retardant, so we can put on as many lights as we want.

Christmas trees, Christmas stockings, Christmas food – is this what it means to be home for the holidays? Although these are but some of the symbols of the season, symbols do not a family make. Being with family, sharing love and excitement – that’s what is means to be home for the holidays. Everything else is just icing on the cake!

Hurray For Books

I love books! I have loved them since I was a little girl. When I was growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of extra money, so I didn’t own very many books, but the books I did own were precious to me. I treated them with respect and I cared for them much better than I did my toys. The first book collection I owned was the Trixie Belden Mysteries and these books still hold a special place in my heart.

My Granny Devine always told me to never, ever dog-ear the pages of a book and this is something I adhere to strongly. When I became a mother, this was also a lesson I taught my three girls. To me, dog-earing a book is a sign of disrespect and should be frowned on in all settings and societies.

Now that I’m older, my home library has grown by leaps and bounds. I have bookshelf after bookshelf full of wonderful books. I keep bookmarks in every room of my house, plus I also use those dang inserts from magazines as bookmarks – they’re made of cardboard, so they work nicely.

I don’t write in the majority of my books, unless it is an inscription of who bought me the book or when I received it. I also have many autographed books that are special to my collection. I do have a tendency to write in “self-help” books or in text books that are my own – this helps me if I’m studying something new. Other than that, I never write in a book.

I try very hard to keep the book jackets with the books, but sometimes this is hard, especially if it is a book that I like to reread. In that case, I’ll laminate the jacket cover, much the way the public library does to protect its books. This keeps the cover nice and clean and I don’t have to worry about tearing the cover every time I reread a book.

When it comes to checking books out of the library, I try to follow the same rules as with my own books. I always use a bookmark and I never dog-ear the pages. It makes me so mad to check out a book and find half the pages have been dog-eared at one time or another. I would also never think of writing in a library book, or anyone else’s book.

My earliest memories of the Mercer County Public Library are that the entire building used to be housed in the Historical Society. It still amazes me when I visit the Historical Society, how tiny this building really is! My mom would always take me to the library, sometimes several times a week.

When I started elementary school, I fell I n love with the school library. So many books! By the time I was in the 4th grade, I was a library assistant for Miss Joy, the librarian. I really thought I was something special. I would get to preview new books before they were ever put into circulation.

By the time I reached high school, I was sill visiting the library often, but I was getting lots of flack from my peers for reading so much. Looking back now, I shouldn’t have let this bother me, but you know how peer pressure can be when you’re a teenager – you try to fit in instead of being your own person.

Now as an adult, I visit the public library two or three times a week. The public library got a brand new building – in its current location – while I was still in grade school – and it has gone through several renovations since them.

Some of the biggest changes in the public library have been the addition of computers. There are several computer stations and it keeps the librarians busy scheduling computer time. This is a wonderful service for people who don’t have computers at home. Another big change over the past few years has been in the card catalog. Gone are the days of flipping through the drawers and cards in the old card catalog – now all you need to do is input a few words into the computer and you quickly learn the location of the books you are looking for. You don’t even need to know the exact name of the book; you can search just the author’s name or even a specific keyword.

Currently, the Mercer Public Library is working on plans for another expansion. I’m so excited! It is really wonderful when a library outgrows its space and has to expand. This tells me there are many people in our community are calling the library home.

Books have always been my friends, so I think they deserve the same kindness and consideration that I would give to a living friend. Books are our legacy and they will endure long after I have left this world.

Costumes of Halloween Past

As I look back to the Halloween’s of my childhood, I realize that most of my memories are memories of my children’s Halloweens instead of my own. I have always loved Halloween, but in trying to remember these holiday memories, I have found that my love for all things spooky was an evolution.

Of course, Jack-O-Lanterns will always been one of my favorite parts of Halloween. Even though Jack-O-Lanterns originated through a pagen culture, these bright orange faces are deeply rooted in the Halloween season. I also enjoy corn shocks, gourds and Indian corn - nothing says autumn like these precise signs of the season.

As a child growing up in the 1960’s, I have fuzzy memories of carving pumpkins with my Dad. We did the traditional “triangle” features and we always wanted to carve the pumpkin well before Halloween, so that by the time we were ready to go trick-or-treating, the pumpkin was so badly shriveled that the lid had already fallen onto the candle inside. Again, my pumpkin carving has been a long evolution.

When Marie and Amber were about four and five years old, I became fascinated with carving more elaborate pumpkins. I collected carving tools and pumpkin “patterns” and I pushed myself into making one spectacular creation after another. As Marie and Amber grew older, they were interested in pumpkin carving as well, so it became a family activity. By the time Christine was born, our entire family had entered numerous pumpkin carving contests and we had all taken home many first prizes.

By the time Amber and, two years later Marie, graduated from high school, Christine was entering her teenage years and she wasn’t as interested in carving Halloween pumpkins. Because of her lack of enthusiasm, my enthusiasm had declined and it has shown in the number of annual pumpkins I carved. Last year, 2007, was the first year since I can remember that I didn’t carve a Jack-O-Lantern.

The Halloween costumes my children wore also showed the same type of evolution as my pumpkin carving traditions have shown. When Amber was born, something inside of me made an unconscious decision to make all her Halloween costumes. Since she was only six weeks old for her first Halloween, there was no need for a costume, but the next year, I dressed her up as Raggedy Ann. I had found an old dress as a yard sale that I knew would make the perfect costume. Amber was 13 months old and her hair was shoulder length, so I braided it with yarn ribbons and added rosy lipstick to her little cheeks. This was just the beginning of a Halloween costume obsession that lasted for almost twenty years.

Marie was seven months old for her first Halloween, so I turned her into a pumpkin with a padded orange poncho and an orange bonnet complete with pumpkin stem and two leaves. Even though this costume took me no time to complete, Marie looked adorable. But her costume was not my pride and joy. No, my masterpiece for 1984 was Amber’s Rainbow Brite costume.

Amber loved watching Rainbow Brite and she had many of the dolls, which she played with every day. She had just celebrated her second birthday the month before, and her cake had been decorated with Rainbow Brite. When I found a pattern for the replica costume, I knew I would be turning Amber into Rainbow Brite. I worked two months on this costume, sewing and stuffing each colorful layer by hand. Amber was in heaven; she wore the costume in the house for a week before Halloween, and only a chocolate milk spill got it off of her after Halloween. This costume was hand washed and worn so many times that I’m surprised it didn’t fall apart. I still have this costume packed lovingly away in the closet. Amber has been turned into a pink unicorn - complete with a silver horn - two different versions of Dracula, a mad nurse, and a witch, just to name a few.

When Marie was going through the terrible twos, I turned her into a miniature devil. Of course, she was also a fairy princess one year, a vampire the next and who could forget the green dinosaur? Marie was such a tiny child, that she wore her dinosaur costume three years in a row. The green dinosaur was a another difficult costume because it involved numerous padded layer be sewn to the body. The first year Marie wore the costume as it was originally designed, complete with mittens for her hands and booties for her feet. She loved this costume so much, that the next year she wanted to wear it again. So, I painted brightly colored polka-dots on each of the dinosaur's spines. The mittens still fit, but the booties were too much trouble to walk in. By the third year, I was surprised the costume still fit. It was a little too short in the legs, but we remedied that by having Marie wear a pair of green sweat pants under the costume. In the dark, no one ever noticed the difference. We also added silver and gold paint and sparkles to the polka-dots we added last year.

For Christine’s first Halloween, she was only three months old, but I wanted to take her with us trick-or-treating on Main Street. Because I had such luck turning Marie into a pumpkin eight years before, it was easy to whip up an outfit. But Christine’s outfit was only the icing on the cake. This particular year, Keith dressed up like a pumpkin farmer and carried Christine as his pumpkin. They won third place in the costume contest. Christine has also been turned into the Lion King, a zombie, a devil, a pirate and a mad scientist.

In 1994 I turned all three of my girls into M & M’s – red, green, and yellow. They looked like we had just poured out a bag of the candies. This was the one and only year that my girls had matching costumes. After that, Amber and Marie started drifting away from trick-or-treating.

I have kept a list of all the girls’ Halloween costumes in each of their baby books. As I was recently reviewing each year’s entries, I was astonished at the number of costumes I have made over the years. I've become lax with my scrapbooking over the past few years, so Halloween picture seem to be scattered here and there. I'm currently working on holiday scrapbooks, so I eventually hope to have all the Halloween picture in one spot. It will be nice to have all the memories of Halloween past at my fingertips in one easy spot.

© Bobbi Rightmyer 2008