Hats

I was watching the "Bishop's Wife" the other day and she fell in love with a hat. I was wondering that you do not see many hats anymore. Maybe because they look funny when you wear slacks. I use to have a green one with a feather on that I wore to funerals and teas. They still have funerals but not teas. I do not think they even have hat stores anymore so maybe you have to buy them at costume stores. Maybe it is because everyone male and female wear slacks. Little girls still wear dresses but then I think we use to have "Easter Bonnets". I canot write a very long blog today because how can you write about something obsolete. People wear hats now and they are generally knitted. I used to knit headscarves for my daughters. I knitted their names into the hat. That was dumb because people would call them by their name and they would think they knew them.

Obituaries

When my husband died he had a very long obituary as he had done many, many things in his life. Now I am older and have gone to the hospital a few times I wondered what anyone would find to write about me except to mention my wonderful children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. I have a good friend of my younger years that when she died I loved one of the sentences in hers was "in lieu of flowers,please send premium quality chocolates." Maybe I still have time to do something memorable besides run into buildings so people send premium chocolates while I am still here and I will eat them.

Name tags

I love name tags as I like to know who I am talking too. My husband Ray always carried one in his pocket he put on as he thought people were happier when they knew who you were. I notice I have two. I was talking to my minister yesterday and we were talking about people wearing them at church because we have them there in alphabetical order and people don't seem to be bothered not wearing them. Now the minister remembers their names but some of us with bad memories do not. I have care givers who take care of me now and I wish they wore their names. I know their faces but get the names mixed up. My minister had an idea of how to make people wear them at church. When they left church after wearing their names they would drop the name tags in a basket and then once a month we would have someone draw a name and the name that was drawn would get $10. If you went to church every Sunday in a month you would have more chances. It means that someone would have to spend time copying the names off and then put the name back on the rack for the next week but if your name was in the basket you might have four chances if you went to church every Sunday. Then you would have some person draw the name out the next month and it would be a fun game. The first Sunday of the new month you would announce the winner. It is probable too much trouble but sounds fun. I do wish people liked to wear name tags.

Entertainment

After I started dating my then to be husband I had a new world open up. In Topeka there was not much entertainment except bowling or going to the movie so Ray had a good friend and with his date we would go to Kansas City. Gas rationing was on and Ray did not have a car anyway so my mother would take the four of us to the Santa Fe depot and we would take the train to Kansas City, the big town east of us. We would arrive in the Union Station, take a cab downtown or ride the streetcar to one of the big hotels generally the Muehlbach for dinner. I know the first time I was nervous as I was out of my element and ordered chicken. When it came it was a whole chicken and when I cut it it sailed into Ray's lap. Later we would go to the Music Hall and see a play that had many Hollywood stars as well as Broadway. We like to go to the Folly Theater because you could buy chocolate, which was hard to find during the war. After the play was over we would go back to Union Station and take a Union Pacific train home. My mother would come at 2:00 in the morning and pick us up. I think she was glad when we found Topeka entertainment where we could take the bus or trolley.

Art around the house

I love being home and admiring the things I have on my walls at home. Besides pictures of my children I have the many things that my grandchildren have made me and my children. My daughter Sally has embroidered many things like clowns and sayings like our family tree and I have cute little ones done by grandchildren. I have a great picture of a rainbow done by my granddaughter Morgan when she learned to color. I have glass ones done by my granddaughter Stacy. A plate painted by my granddaughter Hayden. Some Christmas small decorations by Debbie and Erin when they were very young. I have a large woven one on my dining room wall that we got in Africa and it has stains of jello on it when grandchildren sat in their high chairs and shot jello at it. In the front hall is a large framed cow hide from the grandmother of one of our exchange students from Argentina. A picture by my niece who is quite an artist. Two pictures painted by my sister Helen, of views from the first apartment house in Topeka which we shared. One a great view of the Topeka Capitol Building and the other of her son and my first son and first daughter playing in front of the house. One picture was done by a friend who traded me Christmas socks for it. Three birds woven on a string from the exchange students aunt. Then I get kind of confused by the other pictures but love them. I never was good at art so did things like bead bookmarks and wove table mats. In one room we have clown circus posters and all the rooms have bookcases with many books. I have many bookcases made by my father along with a magazine rack he made me. In my kitchen I have spice racks my dad made along with I think was once a mail separator. I am not sure. I know my son-in-law Howard is also good with his hands as he has made a ramp in my garage for my wheelchair, and redone one of my bathrooms. I guess that is one of the reasons I am very happy here with my dog, Buster. I do crossword puzzles, read and watch TV. Who could ask for anything more? I forgot one great thing my granddaughter Hayden did - a wonderful picture frame of my 13 grandchildren . Now I have on my coffee table my two great grandsons pictures.

Contests

I love to enter contests in the mail and have even won a couple but I never did the lottery because my husband was a lottery commissioner and you cannot enter if you are one of his family which applied to our children, their spouses and grandchildren and I suppose our parents who were not interested anyway. The one contest I won as a child was a pair of roller skates which were very odd as they would not go forwards very well and went sideways when I tried to skate. The next time I won was a basket of groceries from a Milgram's store, My husband and I use to like to buy our groceries once a month and would go over to Missouri and buy them on sale and we won, Later we joined Guaranteed Foods and only shopped every four months. We did buy bread at the surplus store and I think they were still delivering milk those days. I still do not understand why the skates were uncooperative.

In-laws

I figure I am probably not the world's greatest mother-in-law but I would like you to know of some of my relatives' in-laws. When my sister Ethel had her first child in California my mother went out to be with her and my sister's in-laws went also as their son was an only child. After the birth of her oldest child, Leon, my dad and sister Helen went out to admire this wonder. When we got there we never saw her in-laws as they climbed out a bedroom window and went back to Dover, Kansas. Now my brother had a great mother-in-law and I always enjoyed her. I married an only child as his sister had died before he was born. It use to be the style that you had the first shoes the child wore that were not bootees bronzed. I have six pairs of bronze shoes and only five children as my mother in law had our son Steve second pair bronzed also. I have tried to give them to my children but they do not seem to want them so they sit on a high shelf gathering dust where I still admire them each day. Maybe the copper is worth a lot now so they can have them melted down and get rich. However it was my sister Ethel's in-laws who got me my first teaching job teaching at Pleasant Valley, a country school between Topeka and Dover, Kansas where I had 14 students who survived a year with me.