Time Travel Tuesdays~Easter in Camelot

I am a bit late in posting this but only by a few days and it is Tuesday after all!

We are traveling back in time today to Easter Sunday of 1963. As usual, the weather was glorious in Mesa. No need for sweaters or umbrellas here! I am five and-a half years old  and had been an aunt to this weeping little girl for a year! This is my niece Jalyn Black, my sister Sharon's first child. I was in love with this little girl and her red hair! She was my first baby; my little sister Gena was born nearly 8 months later. Jalyn made me an "aunt" which none of my friends would believe when I told them. I loved watching her learn to sit up, wave, and crawl. Crawling was a whole new adventure because she did crazy baby things like eating Gravy Train dog food from the bowl set out for Tammy, our Boston terrier. She once pulled a watermelon rind right out of the garbage can and we found her gnawing on it happily! There were other not so funny things we caught her eating...but I digress!

Look at how we are dressed in blue. My mother and big sister planned our outfits to be matching. Gena was just a little six month old at the time but her dress matched too. Our dresses are homemade (as they all were back then). Aren't they cute? I don't know why she had reason to cry!

 This was Jacqueline Kennedy's heyday. The height of being a lady! I had white gloves to wear with this ensemble but I hate to tell you that they were hiding in that darling hand bag! I hated wearing them, which drove my sainted mother crazy! When I did have them on I did awful things to them like eating jam or drawing pictures in the dust on the end tables! I wish you could see the bib collar on the dress up close. It had three blue buttons down the front. So cute! I loved the hat and purse. I am certain they were purchased at J. C. Penney's on main St. in Mesa. Love my little Mary Jane shoes too! This was a special outfit because I wore it for a mother/daughter fashion show that the church Relief Society put on that spring. I remember walking out on that stage holding my Mom's hand and just knowing I was so adorable! (I had my little white gloves on too!)

Look at those vibrant roses! My Dad loved to grow roses and these were his favorite, Chrysler Imperials. I have a bush of them growing in frot of my house now in memory of him. I loved our shady front yard where we had many birthday parties and pretend adventures. That is North Recker Road in the background. It was gravel then. Now it is five lanes wide. Apache Wells golf course was built a few years later across the street. You can just barley see the orchard in the distant right side of the photo. That was my favorite place to play! It either smelled like orange blossoms and lemons, or was fragrant with plums and apricots growing. There were grapes, blackberries and pecans too! Why am I not living there now?! Sadly, the very spot I am standing is now the driveway to a Camelot Country Club. Unreal. Why does progress ruin things?

Oh geez!  I just had a cheesey thought.

"Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment 

that was known as Camelot".

That's what the Kennedys thought of their time in the White House. It's how I feel about my childhood. Now it's covered over by asphalt and concrete and called Camelot!

The World's Best Ice Cream is in Santaquin?

Two Saturdays ago Brittany arranged a family field trip. She mentioned that she had always wanted to go to this particular place because she had driven by it may times and was intrigued by the sign that says "World's Best Ice Cream". Where is this place? Somewhere in the big city? Not at all! It's the big red barn on the west side of I-15 near Santaquin, Utah. I have also passed this place many times as I have gone to pick Rachel up or drop her off at Snow College. It's a pretty red barn and it's sign makes a mighty big promise. So...we piled into my mini-van and took the 40 minute drive south.

It was a fun drive with only Dee and Rachel missing because of work. They missed out on Nick singing to us and playing the ABC game with Diana. They are really competitive!

 Since I insisted on a group shot, this is what I got. Kids are smartys even when they are grown!

 If you go into the giant refrigerated room to pick out yummy produce, you have better be fast.

It's SO COLD!!

Everywhere you turn there are yummy treats and fun things to buy.

Outside, there is a nice greenhouse...

...full of beautiful flowers and veggies to plant.

This is the view south. There is not much out there!

 I loved their old-timey orchard.

I wanted to go wandering.

I found myself explaining how this old tiller worked. Please know that I was born w-a-a-y after it was used! I'm just a farm girl, I guess!

My father would have scratched his head at this use of garden tools but I thought it was really clever...and cute!

So...how was the ice cream, you ask?

YUMMY!!!

The portions were huge and the price was pretty reasonable. This family has quite a business from weary travelers stopping in. You know, folks on their way north from Las Vegas or St. George? I wonder how many silly people actually come 40 minutes just for an ice cream cone? 

Well, I know of six.

Time Travel Tuesdays~

Once upon a time there was a "Little House on the Dairy".

When I was a little girl we lived on the Ellsworth Dairy at 2305 North Recker Road in Mesa, AZ. It was a small frame house painted white with green shutters. Inside you would find a happy family (most days!) and a brand new crop of babies including my little sis Georgena and grandchildren!

For our time traveling today we go back to 1963. My sister Sharon had our family's first two grand-babies, Jalyn and Edwin. In this photo we see my sweet big brother Dean (former Mesa City auditor) holding baby Gena.That's a six-year-old me to the left, and Sharon holding Edwin after he got his first haircut.

What fun vintage things do you see?

I love the salt and pepper shakers on the back of the stove. They were little silver milk cans! Do you see the utensils hanging on the wall? I want you to know that when Mom finally sold her home in 2004 and divided up her things between us she still had most of these! I have the long, narrow spatula and I use it every time I frost a cake! That was an awesome gas stove. See the container for the matches high up on the wall where I couldn't reach? Also, look at that fridge! My parents bought it in the 50's. Notice the chrome wrap-around handle behind Sharon's head? I would love to have it now and paint it a cool turquoise color.

Gena, weren't we cuties?? Baby Edwin has gray hair and a mustache now and Dean is a Grandpa many times over! We miss our Sharon every day.

Mouse Encounters

My niece Annie had a mouse encounter yesterday. It so inspired her that she wrote a poem. Check it out!Why do those tiny beasts elicit such reactions from us humans? We are 1,000 times bigger! We could roar like the giants that we are and scare the little guys to Kingdom Come! (where did that phrase come from?). Why do tiny little scurrying creatures send adult humans into fits of screaming and leaps onto furniture?

I have a theory. I believe it is the startle factor. I think we feel in control of our surroundings most of the time. However, when a visitor enters our vision, one that we did not know was there, we are scared beyond reason. It happened yesterday when I chanced to enter my bedroom just as my husband was coming out of our bathroom. I realized he didn't know I was there.

Moment of decision.

Oh, why not?

"Rah!" I shouted. He startled and jumped like he had just seen the worlds' largest rodent...me!

Is that what those mousies do? Do they have the same twisted sense of humor? I say...YES!

Most of my Mouse Encounters happened on our dairy in Idaho. We lived in a 100 or so year old lava rock farm house. Not long after moving in we discovered we were not alone. Gena and I were both teens and stayed up much later than our dairy farmer father or our hard working farm wife mother. Late one night we sat on the couch with the T.V. glowing in the dark living room. The only light came from the kitchen. Suddenly I felt like I was not alone. Ever get that feeling? Like someone is watching you? I glanced to my left and saw, on the arm rest of the couch, a little brown mouse.

This was a delayed startle.

At first I was transfixed by how cute he was. As I caught my breath I noticed his dark brown B.B. sized eyes gazing curiously at me.

He didn't move.

I caught Gena's attention. We were frozen. Then we screamed and jumped and roused our parents. Of course it was Mom who came to see why her daughters were so upset. Mom always saved the day! Our visitor had disappeared by that time but he would reappear...or was it one of his 10 billion cousins?

One day Gena put her foot into one of her furry slippers and found she wasn't alone. Can you imagine?! Screaming and slipper throwing ensued!

She had many more encounters than I did. I lived at college most of the year. Perhaps this is why she is scared senseless to this day whenever she sees those brown mousie eyes. One day I received a phone call at about 2:30 in the afternoon. It was my 5' 11" blond, dynamic sister. She spoke in an urgent voice.

"Please talk to me."

"Why?," I asked.

"I just saw a mouse in my house. I am on my kitchen counter. I am NOT coming down until Michael and Chris get home from school and corner it!"

I tried to reason with her, reminding her of her size relative to the intruders' but to no avail. I talked to her and calmed her until her saviors came through the door!

My Sweetie met a mouse one night in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The kids had been eating popcorn and it was scattered on the floor. He was sitting on the floor, leaning back on his hands, watching the 10:00 news. Out of the shadows came a little brown phantom. Following the trail of popcorn bits it worked its' way across the floor until it came to the biggest bit of all...the end of Dee's finger!
He literally had tiny little bite marks! CUTE! After a frantic phone call to his mother...apparently I was no comfort...he was even more chagrined.

"Was it foaming at the mouth?" she asked while laughing uproariously!

A tetanus booster and a few Bandaids later he was just fine.

Shortly after the popcorn incident sweet revenge came. Dee brought home some Atomic Fireballs from swim practice. (if you have never had one...don't, unless you want the inside of you mouth to burn like it is on fire!) He left the candy on the counter. The next morning we found one of the fireballs had been tampered with. The cellophane wrapper had been chewed through and there were tiny teeth marks in the ball of flames. I thought Dee would die laughing.

"Can you just picture it?" He said through gasps and guffaws. "He probably thought he had found something delicious! I would love to have seen his face as the burn kicked in! Maybe he ran back to the family and told them to stay out of THAT house!"

Revenge is sweet!

Memory Mondays ~ All About a White Horse and a Hero!

You would think that having grown up on a farm I would be good at riding a horse...you would think! Today's tale is why I am not an equestrienne and why I had a serious case of hero worship for a long time!

They called her Old Cream. She was a gentle old mare with a large white mole on her lower jaw.

Or was it a wart?

I don't know...I was only about 8 years old and I believed what my cousins told me and I had heard both theories about the large round growth on the horse's jaw. I felt sorry for her because everyone called her "old" and some called her "ugly" because of the wart/mole, whatever it was. I thought she was a pretty horse, all creamy white with kind eyes. She was a good one to let the kids ride on her without putting up a fuss. So it was that one day when some Ellsworth cousins came for a visit to the farm that Cream was taken from her corral and bridled up for their entertainment.

I had been given rides before, usually on my cousin Marta's little brown horse "Fancy". I had never been allowed to ride alone because #1) I was very small and #2) the horses belonged to Uncle Joe's family. I couldn't just go help myself. Whenever the horses were brought out for giving rides I could go ask for a ride and Marta was always very good about humoring her younger cousin. On this particular day the visiting cousins were all older boys so my big brother Dean, along with a couple of Uncle Joe's sons were the ones giving the rides. No nice female cousin to pity me. I was told I had to wait until our company had had all the rides they wanted, then I could have a turn.

Finally after what seemed like forever my brother Dean lead Cream over to where I was waiting on top of our yellow dog house, under a mulberry tree. He was giving an older cousin his last ride. It's probably a good thing I cannot remember who this older cousin was...I am still mad at him today! Let's just call him "Clyde". Dean helped me up onto Cream as Clyde begged to be allowed to lead the horse for me. I protested saying that I wanted nobody but my brother to do the deed. Dean told me it would be alright, Clyde was as old as he was and would be careful with me. And so, away I went on top of a huge white horse with a city boy cousin leading the way.

I gave a backward glance at my big brother." How could he do this to me?" I thought.

Most of the older boys had gone north on the farm to Uncle Joe's back yard which was full of fun equipment to play on, so that was where we were headed. We were about 2/3 of the way there when good old Clyde got distracted. Not being a farm boy himself, he did not comprehend my lack of experience and handed me the reigns as he wanted to go see what was going on at the horse corrals. Just like any good cowboy he'd seen on T.V. he slapped Cream's rump just to keep her going.

Well...GO she did!

Cream began to trot with me jiggling and bouncing around on her blanketed back. I began to scream at Clyde that I didn't know what I was doing and he had better come back right now. He just laughed at me and ran off! As my yelling and crying got louder, Cream trotted faster. Those of you who are "horse savvy" may be laughing at me too, but I thought I was going to die, that this was the end. That trot felt like the fastest gallop I had ever seen on any Sunday night episode of Bonanza. Up ahead I could see my brother Richard jumping on the trampoline. As the runaway horse and I got closer and my yelling became frantic all of the boys started to laugh at me, but not Richard! I saw a serious look on his face as he jumped off of the trampoline and ran to my aide. I was immediately calmer as I saw him coming...MY HERO! He grabbed the reigns which I had dropped, put his hand on Old Cream's neck to slow her down. When she came to a stop he put his hands on my waist and lifted me down. I cried and held onto him tightly. "You saved my life!" I wailed. After I had calmed down a bit he asked me what had happened.

"HE LEFT ME ALONE ON THE HORSE!!" I screamed and pointed to Clyde. The city cousin was still laughing at me along with several other boys. I was also being scolded by some for yelling and screaming while on a horse's back.

"You NEVER do that!" they told me sternly. Well. Had any of them ever taken the time to teach me how to ride or what to do?

NO...thank you very much!

Richard told me I was going to be alright and said I should turn around and go home to rest. I was obedient. While I was walking home I thought to myself in my most dramatic Scarlett O'Hara way, "I will never, NEVER ride a horse again!" I would have thrown in "With God as my witness!" if I had seen Gone With the Wind at that point in my life!

And so, I have not.

Ever ridden a horse again.

Ever!

I had also recently seen some silly T.V. show where someone's life was saved and they swore to faithfully serve their hero forever.

So did I...

promise to be Richard's slave...

FOREVER!

That vow lasted one evening. I took off his shoes for him and brought him drinks. I fawned over him and clung to him like a koala. I nearly drove him crazy with my desire to serve. After he assured me my debt was paid I was released from my vow. No more slaving for me, but plenty of adoration that lasts to this day.

Oh. I also forgave Dean for leaving me in Clyde's incapable hands.

Eventually.