New Year's Eve

When I was dating Ray I was essential since I do not like to drink. I was the designated driver every year. A boring job. After we moved to Kansas City and had children we did not want small children staying up until 12 so we had New Year's eve the next noon at 12. We had poppers and confetti and a great dinner of ham, etc.
When they were older we let them stay up and Ray had a great time. He always saved some fireworks and at midnight set it off. Fireworks is better than a gun. At least you know where it will go off and who knows where a bullet will land. On New Year's noon we still had the poppers and confetti so we celebrated twice. With the weather so lousy this year I'm not sure when we will celebrate so it may go into the next year a few days. New Year's generally had the added job of putting all the Christmas stuff away including the snowmen from the front yard and the lights off the house. This year they may stay for Valentine's Day. We just won't turn them on. Snowmen look normal in your front lawn in January even if they are wooden. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

White Christmas

I know you are supposed to love a white Christmas but I think that is for ski lodges and such for I do not remembering thinking of it as anything but a bother. This year has been bad since due to the weather we can't get together as a family. I love the Christmas dinner. The only time I can remember not caring for the meat was when my mother decided to cook a goose. It was really greasy. This year I was going to see some family I had not seen for awhile. \Maybe I would have liked it better if I had lived with a hill. Now 13th has kind of a hill but is not great for sledding. My own children did not have a great place to sled so were generally just pulled around on a sled. I remember one Christmas that Ray had a bright idea about a train track. Our house was small and he thought if he made a train board and put it on the wall of our son's room he could pull it up when not in use. Ray was not good with building things but tried. That year he built it in the basement. It was big. When my in-laws arrived for Christmas he had help. He tried putting it on the wall but that was a disaster and he ended moving it to the basement and putting it on saw horses. Later the board became the food boxes for our many camping trips. They were sturdy. The train went under the tree that year.

We have a great deal of snow this year and the streets are covered. The street in front of our house is generally cleared but you have trouble getting to it. The reason that Flint Street is clear is our neighbor's son is the Shawnee City Engineer and he cleans a path from his house--west of Quivira -- to his parents house. They are going there for Christmas dinner this year and I'm sure it will be cleared in time. However most of the streets leading to Flint are not so clear. I think the name of the song should be "The nightmare of snow on Christmas Day". That is my opinion for the day.

Christmas candy

When I was growing up people made candy a lot at Christmas. My mother loved to make divinity which was hard to do. Fudge was not much easier but she enjoyed doing it. I loved eating the failures with a spoon out of a pan. When I got married Ray loved to make Christmas candy. I got pretty good with fudge and with a good mixer I was able to make divinity. I don't know if people still make it but it added a lot to the Christmas spirit. I loved spooning the failures out of the pan.

Christmas socks

I spent a great deal of time waiting for Ray when he covered new stories in our early marriage and I decided it would be nice to have something to do so I learned to knit from a .25 cent book from the dime store. I made baby booties and stuff and entered them at the Topeka Fair. My sister Ethel read an article in the Woman's Home Companion and told me to switch to Christmas socks. I have done over a thousand now and have a nice long list of people who were kind enough to let me knit them. I've never been a great knitter and have made some of them wrong. During the time I have knitted I've met some great people. I knitted one for a family that the baby died but they wanted a sock to remember it by. I knitted two for a grandmother who was dying and wanted to leave them to her two grandchildren so they would remember her. I made one for someone who was shot but recovered and one murdered who did not recover. I have had families break up and return socks of the member who was not around anymore.

I took a long time to knit them. I think the fastest I did was when my first granddaughter was born in Washington, DC and I made her sock on the 3 hour flight to Washington. It is probably a shorter flight now so even if I was good I would not get it done. I had to re-knit one family who stored the socks with candy still in them and a pack rat ate the candy and the socks. I have knitted four for family dogs. Some names are a little long so I have had to go down the side of the sock with the name instead of across. I have had them on the cover of a magazine.

I'm still knitting but I do not knit as well as my daughter, Susan, and at the moment am stuck on knitting the heel. One child lost her sock. She was a neighorhood child and her mother said she could not ask me but one morning I found her 8 year old self outside my door and she said, "My mother says I can't ask you but I want a sock". I knitted her another. It is a fun hobby and I've met a lot of people because of it. I used to knit them on planes but I don't think they allow needles on the plane anymore. The only country I have run into that does not knit is Africa. They crochet.

Bread and milk home delivery

When I was growing up in Topeka we had our milk delivered. It was delivered by a man driving a wagon. We had a carrier and it held, I think, 6 quart bottles. They were funny shaped bottles and had a small rounded top. They gave you a spoon and the top had cream. When we moved to Kansas City they still delivered milk and we had it for awhile. We also had bread delivery three times a week by Manor Bread. I liked that as our closest grocery store was a mile away and we only had one car. I liked the delivery men but the Manor Bread stropped after the delivery man fell in love with one of the customers and murdered her husband.

We have only had two murders in my neighborhood. The Manor Bread man and a nephew who was tired of waiting for his aunt to die so he could inherit her money so he sped things up a little. Both easily solved. Of course we also had the Fuller Brush Man and the man who sold flavorings and extracts like vanilla. I'm not sure of his company's name.

The joy of oatmeal

I grew up eating oatmeal and loved it. I have not changed. Ray and I traveled around the world and we always tried to stay at Statler Hilton Hotels as they always served oatmeal. Mr. Statler liked oatmeal also and insisted they serve it at his hotels. We stayed in a Statler Hilton hotel in Wichita and they did not have it. I wrote a letter to the company and the next time we stayed there they had it. I remember in Peru at the Statler they wanted to pour hot milk on mine in the kitchen and I told them I wanted to put my own milk on and we had a great discussion, which was not easy as my Spanish was not good nor was their English. Every morning I still have oatmeal. I make it in my micro wave now and not in a double boiler like when I was growing up. Ray went in for various cereal so I did not corrupt him.

Chilhood Christmases

When I was growing up we were in a depression like now so you mostly got gifts that were essential. My mother stored the gifts in the attic which the entrance was a ladder on the wall in her bedroom. We never tried to find out. Around the tree we each had a chair. Mine was the chair to my desk. Things were generally wapped in brown sacks. We did not get fancy wrapping paper until my brother Allan's girl friend came into our life. The sacks generally had our name written on them. I checked to see if mine was as big as Helen's. They generally were. I had been riding my sister Ethel's bike and when I was 12 I got a new one. I think I had a note to go look somewhere. My father was very talented and he used to see thing and then duplicate them. I don't think he ever had a patent. He put motors on everything in the house and could build anything. I know when I went to school at that time you had sewing in the 5th grade and cooking in the sixth. Boys had manual training for both fifth and sixth grade. I was the only one in the class who had to learn how to pedal the sewing machine. The teacher thought I was stupid. We made aprons in the fifth grade to wear in the sixth grade for cooking. My dad continued to make things and my daughters Sally and Sue share a sled and a Santa that when they were little he made for them. They pass it back and forth. He would come to visit me and look around to see what I needed so I have many bookcases he made, a magazine rack and the original picnic table for the kids. Things were always made out of boxes he got parts and batteries in at his garage and he had a tendency to use yellow paint. He made toy boxes for Susan and Steve. Steve's was a train and Susan's a wagon. I have great spice racks. He made the original marble game that the kids wore out and the principal at Hocker Grove where the three oldest kids went to junior high made us a new one. It has never worked as well as the one my father made. I thought my childhood Christmases were great. We also always got a book. What more can you need for Christmas--new underwear, a book, new socks and candy.