"COUNTRY SUNSHINE"... "I was raised on country sunshine...           I'm happy with the simple things..."  (Dottie West)

Diane’s memory of clothes dried outside on a clothesline brought back a lot of memories for me.  When we were growing up on the dairy farm near Ty Ty in South Georgia, my Mom dried all of our clothes in “country sunshine”.   And the sheets seemed to smell sooo good!  In fact some of my earliest memories were of my Mom washing clothes on the back porch in a big washtub with one of those scrub-boards.  That had to be hard work!  My Mom never got enough credit for the hard work she did.  But we did finally get one of those electric washing machines with the “wringer” on top.  The clothes were washed in a big tub and then fed through the wringer to sqeeze most of the water out of them before they were hung out on the clothesline.  In fact, I remember as a curious little boy being fascinated with that wringer, and one day I finally stuck my hand in there and it rolled up my arm to my elbow.  My older sister Helen came to the rescue... no harm done, and lesson learned.

But we did have a few other electric appliances… the refrigerator, or the “icebox” as we called it.  And an electric stove in the kitchen, and a big freezer… and eventually, a black and white TV (with three channels).  Much of our food in warm weather came from our huge garden, and much of that was then “canned” and stored in the pantry or frozen in the freezer so we had lots of vegetables for the winter months too.  Since we were on a dairy farm, there was plenty of milk, and daddy even raised a few hives of honey bees, so for me, Ty Ty was the “land of milk and honey.”  But our heat was provided by two wood-burning stoves, one in the living room and one in the dining room.  No heat in the rest of the house, including the bedrooms… so the beds had to be piled high with quilts to keep us warm on cold winter nights.  The “covers” would be so heavy on the bed that we could hardly move underneath them… but we stayed toasty warm.  Eventually we did get some of those fancy "electric blankets."  Since there was both a shortage of bedrooms and a shortage of beds, my two older sisters had to share a bed, and Ron and I had to share a bed.  And when Ron and I were barely old enough to lift an ax, one of our jobs was to chop the wood for the wood-burning stoves.  It is a wonder that we survived our boyhood with all of our fingers and toes.   I remember that one of our schoolmates “double-dog-dared” his brother to chop off his finger with an ax… and he did!

When I was thirteen, we left Ty Ty and moved to Athens and we left the wood-burning stoves behind.  Gas heat seemed like a gift from God!   I guess today we are spoiled with all the modern conveniences… central heat and air, microwaves, cable TV, DVD players, computers,  cellphones,  GPS units, etc…  But those memories of simpler times… of clotheslines and wood burning stoves…  bring a smile to my face and a song to my heart.     

Don, I too was a South Georgia transplant, though I left at an earlier age and lived "in the city", so I missed many of your blessings.  I was born in the Little & Griffin Hospital in Valdosta and don't try finding it.  They tore it down after I was born.  Sort of "breaking the mold" I guess.  We lived in a "shotgun" or "mill house", four blocks off the main road (Patterson) in Valdosta.  The train switch yards were two blocks in the other direction so I think I came from the right side of the tracks, but was never quite sure.  We too had one of those fancy washing machines.  Though I don't rightly remember if it arrived on the scene before or after my grand entrance.  It sat in a place on honor on the back porch.  I too was warned about the dangers of that wringer and obeyed without question.  However, an experience of having my arm caught in the wringer might have saved me a finger tip in later years.  We had clothes lines that stretched across the backyard (remember, we were "in the city").  They proved to be an excellent clothes dryer but more importantly, the perfect place to play chase or hid & seek, between the laundry hanging there on.  It was always so much fun to run between and under the fresh smelling laundry - until I was admonished for pulling something off the line.  

Those lines also served as a site of execution for some poor chicken who was called upon to give his life for our appetite.  I can see that headless chicken right now, hanging by his feet from that clothes line, flapping away.  One day the string securing his feet to the clothes line broke and that now headless chicken fell to the ground and immediately started running!!  He ended up under the house - for those of you who don't know, most of the houses in south Georgia were built on pillars with no skirting to the ground - this also proved to be a great place to play.  I digress - from that experience, I learned the true meaning of the saying, "like a chicken with its head cut off".

Living "in the city", we had gas service and this provided us with the luxury of a gas heater in the living room and one in the hall outside the INDOOR bathroom.  And of course, a gas stove in the kitchen.  As was the custom back then, my Grandfather lived with us in this three bedroom house.  All of the bedrooms were lined up down one side of the house and the living room, dining room and kitchen were in line down the other and provided the thoroughfare from the front door to the back door.  Both of these doors were perfectly aligned.  Presumably, if you came in the front door and some undesirable was making a hasty exit out the back door, you could hit him with your shotgun with no concern of damaging the house.  Thus the term "a shotgun house". 

There is something about South Georgia dirt!  It is rich and BLACK!  Unlike North Georgia clay, it can be washed off.  My mother went to work for a short while at the sewing plant and a black lady (I hope that is PC this week) from two blocks away was hired to look after me all day and my brother after he arrived home from school.  Her name was Inez and I still remember her rocking me to sleep (for my afternoon nap) on the front porch.  And there she sat, rocking me until I awoke.  One day her kids came to our house - can't remember why - but we started playing chase - under the house.  We crawled and crawled back and forth from front to back and side to side.  When my moma got home, she said she couldn't pick out which child was hers.  I hope she picked the right one.

Well that's probably enough jogging down memory lane for now.  But I'll be back with more ... Later.

Gary… thanks for joining me on Memory Lane.  And by the way… “city folks” might read your story about the “headless chicken” running under the house and say, “the truth ain’t in ya”…  but I can verify it.  We had a big chicken coop behind our house, so there was never a shortage of eggs.  And my Mama could really cook some good fried chicken.  I can remember seeing her many, many times catch one of those chickens and take the ax and chop off its head, or sometimes just “wring its neck”.  When she used the ax, blood splattered everywhere and that chicken would run and flop around the yard for a long time before finally giving up the ghost.  Then Mama would dip that chicken in a pan of hot boilling water which made it easier to pluck off the feathers.  Then out came the innards and she’d cut her up, ready for frying.  YUMMO!   

I love the "memory lane".  I do feel blessed that I have so many good memories of my "growing-up" years.  Thankful that I had a  loving family that we visited regularly.  In reading your posts Don and Gary, I am amazed that we all have different backgrounds, but so many similarities...

We did not have indoor plumbing until I was 4 or 5.  I well remember the chickens having their necks wrung, then hung from the clothes line;  the wringer washing machine (yes, I had my hand "wrung" until it was put in reverse and rolled it back out); getting a black and white t.v. when I was 5 or 6 and watching one of the 3 channels with the aid of the rabbit ears; the snow "pattern" when the shows went off the air at night; listening to the a.m. radio;  working in the garden and putting up vegetables;  sleeping under quilts piled high:  never had air-conditioning, but slept so good with the attic fan pulling in the cool night air...

I still have a clothes line, and like to hang my sheets out to dry in the warmer weather.  They smell so fresh and good those first few nights.

Okay, as promised (threatened), I'm back with more memories.  Connie's post triggered a lot of memories.  The old B&W TV.  Before it arrived on the scene, we gathered around the radio and listened to The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, Red Skelton, The Shadow, etc., and the now PC incorrect Amos & Andy.  You had to use your imagination to visualize what was going on.  I guess that's why, as I look back on some of the radio programs that tried to migrate to TV, I was a little disappointed.  They just didn't quite measure up to my imagination. 

Our neighbors got a TV before us and we were frequently invited over to watch some special program.  Of course we had to dress appropriately.  One night I went in my pajamas because it would be late when the show finished.  The next day, the daughters of our hosts came over in their pajamas.  I guess sort of a "your showed me yours, now I have to show you mine" gesture.  Being quite young at the time, I didn't have quite the appreciation that I would later seeing Pam and Sheila in their PJ's.  One show that really captured my heart and soul was The Mickey Mouse Club.  I was IN LOVE with Annette - as were a few hundred thousand other guys, I have since learned.  I was at my neighbor's house watching that show the day they came in to tell me my mother had died.  Forgive me.  Sometimes memory lane has some deep pot holes.

Even though we lived "in the city", the street in front of our house was not paved.  I remember the "traveling merchants" pullling up in front of our house.  One old fellow drove a mule drawn wagon and it would be loaded to the hilt with vegetables and sometimes a chicken or two.  Later I remember the Fuller Brush guy and a big brown Jessie Jewel truck coming buy periodically.  Seems there was always someone trying to sell something door to door.  I had an uncle (by marriage) that did quite well selling Electrolux vacuum cleaners.  His father had been a circuit ridding minister to the Indian tribes out west and my uncle was born on a reservation in Montana.  In his later years my uncle suffered from stomach ulcers and had to have surgery.  He swore that if God would let him live through the surgery, he would become a minister himself.  He survived the surgery and true to his word, he became a Methodist Minister and was serving at St. Mary's Methodist Church in Columbus at the time of his death.

I mentioned living two blocks from the train yards and would frequently walk down to watch them switching cars.  I always had a fearful fascination with trains.  They were huge to me at the time and the escaping steam was scary.   We could frequently hear the sounds of the trains from our house - and smell the paper mill - which was much further away.  Pulp wood is KING in South Georgia and you were never far from it.  Nothing smells quite as sweet as a fresh sawdust pile - and nothing burns quite as long, either.  We had two saw mills within three blocks of our house and one night one of them caught fire.  Of course we had to walk over to get a better look.  That thing burned for days as I recall.

Enough for today.  I'll have to retrun and bore you with more ..... Later.

Gary and Connie… I think it was about 1957 when we got our first TV and it really changed our lives.  I loved Red Skelton, Lassie, Zorro, Fury, Circus Boy, Tarzan, The Three Stooges, Superman and most of the westerns… Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Wagon Train, and Roy Rogers of course.  The fact that everything was black and white didn’t really bother me then.  But I remember when they first began promoting color programming… “tune in Sunday night at nine and see our show on NBC in living color!”  Well, I could hardly wait until Sunday night to see that show in full color and did not understand when the time came and it was still in black and white.  I was a really bright kid.  But TV was pretty new and sometimes there would just be a glitch in the broadcast, and when they would say “please stand by,” Ron and I would pop up off the floor and I would stand on one side of the TV and Ron on the other.  It always worked… eventually.  J  For some reason there were a lot of Baltimore Colt football games broadcast  on weekends in South Georgia and I got hooked on Johnny Unitas and the Colts and Pro Football.   I remember my Mom walking through the room one afternoon when I was watching a Colts game.  She knew I loved them but not being a football fan herself, she knew just enough to ask me “How are those Baltimore Horses doing today?”   She was a sweet Mama.  Gary, I’m sorry that you lost your Mom at such a young age.

“PLAYGROUND IN MY MIND”… “Oh the wonders that I find… In the playground in my mind… In a world that used to be… Close your eyes and follow me…”   (Clint Holmes, 1973)

When we were little kids, and answered to “Ronnie & Donnie”… our play time was always outside… (No computer games).  We loved to be in the yard, or in the fields or the nearby woods.  We would play outside until it got too dark to see.  And we had to be creative since we had only a few “store-bought” toys… those usually came at Christmas or birthdays.  We were introduced to baseball and football on our black & white TV and we played baseball a lot.   Many little boys, including me, wanted to be Mickey Mantle.  Since we didn’t have a real baseball for many years, we made our own, and it started with a little rubber “jackstones” ball.  We would take “dairy string”, the white string used to bind up burlap cow feed bags, and wrap it around that little rubber ball real tight… and kept on wrapping string until it got the size of a baseball or softball.  It made a great ball!  We didn’t have a real baseball bat either for a long time, so we used a broom handle or any other kind of stick we could find.  When the front yard got too small to play in, we jumped over the fence and used the cow pasture.   Plenty of room to play there, but you had to be careful not to miss second base and slide into a “cow patty” by mistake.

Another TV hero, Roy Rogers inspired many hours of playing “Cowboys and Indians”, and again we had to be creative.  Since we had no real horses, a stick would again serve the purpose… usually cut from the nearby woods and trimmed of its skin or bark to have a “golden” color (just like Roy’s palomino, Trigger).  Dairy string was again used for the “reins” of the horse with shorter pieces of string cut and strung closely together along the top of the stick (the horse’s neck) as its “mane”.  What a beautiful horse!… at least in our minds.  We would straddle that stick and “zap”, we were back in the Wild West.  The tough part was deciding who got to be Roy Rogers and who got to be the Indian.

We spent many hours playing marbles too, with other kids down the road.  And one little fella named Glenn was especially good.  We usually drew a big circle in the dirt with each player putting some of his marbles in the center of the circle and the game began.  From outside the circle, each player took a turn with his “shooter” to try and knock as many marbles (cats-eyes and pee-wees, etc) out of the circle as he could.  We usually played “for keeps” and I remember losing most of my best marbles to little Glenn.

And little boys love to fight so we would often play “war.”  And since there was no such thing as paintball then, we used what nature had to offer, clods of dirt, and even better… sandspurs.  South of the “gnat line”, sandspurs are plentiful.  For you who may not be familiar with them, they are a wild plant that grows in sandy soil… with a long stem and a little bundle of small prickly burs on the end.  They are a real nuisance and they stick to everything… especially socks.  And they do hurt like thorns if they stick in your skin… which made them great for sandspur wars.  You just pulled them out of the ground by the stem and threw them at the “enemy.”  Sort of like playing darts with weeds… and human targets.  Ouch!

Now sometimes we did play UNDER the house (like Gary and his friends), since there was plenty of open crawl space under there.  Great playground for rainy days!  The South Georgia dirt was perfect for creating imaginary cities for our small toy trucks and cars, or other imaginary places of adventure… like mountains or tunnels for toy soldiers and plastic cowboys.  But, being little boys, I remember one day that Ron and I did get into BIG trouble… for playing with matches under the house.  It is a miracle that we didn’t burn the house down.  But Mama caught us, and the real fire came later that day when Daddy got home from work and used his belt to set our butts on fire.  No harm done and another lesson learned.                  

Yes Don, playing was certainly different in our childhood.  "Living in the city" limited our playgrounds.  However, we were fortunate enough to have a plot of bare ground between our house and the neighbor on one side.  What it really was was the remains of what was to be a street that for whatever reason didn't get completed.  It served as "no man's land" over which many a projectile was hurdled. 

In our front yard was a Camphor Tree.  For any who are unfamiliar with this piece of vegetation, it is more like a big bush but served as a great jungle from which Tarzan could pounce upon some "unsuspecting" soul as they passed through his territory.  It was also the reason for my MOST MEMORABLE spanking.  You see this tree also served as a tower from which one (me) could rescue the damsel in distress (Sheila, the girl next door and source of my affections).  She would climb into the tree (the old underware joke would seem appropriate here but I wasn't that quick) and plead for her knight in shining armor (that would be me) to rescue her.  I began hacking away at the tiny limbs as each one became a galant warrior and an obstruction to the rescue of my fair lady.  By the time the battle was over, much of the foliage had succumbed to my superior sword fighting skills.  Needless to say, when my father arrived home, he was not happy at the shorn appearance of that tree.  After my physical punishment was administered, I was ordered to collect all of the fallen warriors and provide them with a hero's burial on farthest edge of our backyard.  That tree did recover though I'm not sure I ever did.  Needless to say, I never had such a battle again though that tree continued to serve as the foundation for our greatest fantasies.

Postscript:  I enjoyed seeing Sheila on every return trip to Valdosta until they moved to another part of town and we lost contact.  Years later I learned that Sheila, then a young woman was bitten by a snake while working in her garden and died.  I often wondered if she ever thought about that Camphor tree and that (skinny little, bare footed) knight in shining armor that came to her rescue.

 I don't know how I missed this forum topic, but I did. It's been fun sharing your memories, and so many of yours are similar to mine.

Though I had three siblings, they were so much older than me that by the time I was 8 years old I was an only child for all practical purposes. My best and only playmate was my cousin Wayne Black, who lived just a few hundred yards down the road. He was a year younger, and we spent nearly every summer day together. We played marbles, monopoly, and poker. Yes, poker! No stakes involved. We'd ride bikes, play in the gully behind my house, and when May Pops would bloom we'd pluck off the flowers to form what we called "preacher in the pulpit" creations. We'd go to my grandmother's house which was just across the field, and play under the house in the soft, silty dirt. Under there dwelled what we called "doodle bugs". We'd stir around in the little inverted "houses" they made, and say "doodle bug, doodle bug, your house is on fire", and as we stirred the little beetle-like bugs would come out. The things we did to entertain ourselves. Wayne grew up to become a fine dentist, but died when he was 35 from colon cancer. It was so sad then, and still is.

Just a few memories. I'll be back with more.

Diane… Glad you joined us here on Memory Lane.  We rode our bikes a lot when we were kids too.  We would ride those country dirt roads for miles and miles and explore for hours and hours.  Mom and Dad didn’t seem to mind as long as we stayed out of trouble.  Of course Ron and I played together all the time, and when we got into trouble, we usually got into trouble together. 

Now that you mention it, I also remember “doodle bugs”.  It is amazing the things stored away in our brain cells that we have just plain forgotten.  I also remember “June bugs”.  We would catch them and take the thin strings from flour sacks and tie it to their little legs (don’t tell the SPCA) and let them fly around under our control… sort of like having a tiny living kite that zigged and zagged.  And speaking of kites… we made those too, with newspaper, paste made from flour and water, sticks that we cut from the woods, and strips of cloth that Mom did not use for her home-made quilts (for the kite tail).  It worked!   And back to bugs for a second… on summer nights, there were tons of fireflies which we called “lightning bugs”.  And I guess every kid caught them and put them in a jar… we did too. 

I notice today, living here in the city that we can’t really see the stars at night.  Too many city lights around and too much air pollution I guess.  But in the country in the 1950’s, the sky was so clear and crisp and we could see all the stars shining brightly.  And it made me feel so small.  I remember when we were kids that sometimes at night Daddy would go and stretch out on the front porch and smoke a cigarette.  And we would go and stretch out on the porch with him… and no, we didn’t smoke.  But we would look up at the stars in the sky and try to find the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper and all the other constellations.  And sometimes during the day we looked up in the sky to find all kinds of giant animals and other imaginary things in the shapes of the clouds.  And I remember seeing a beautiful rainbow one day, and it looked like the end of it was on a hill in a pasture not too far away… so I took off across the fields to try to find the end of that rainbow because I heard there was a pot of gold there.  But the end of that rainbow just never got any closer.  When it comes to memories, I guess the sky’s the limit!

Diane did mention to me that I should check in and comment on the memory lane topics.   As I read down throgh each of your memories it reminded me that these are OUR  memories.   My list would read much like yours.  

The "I was raised on county sunshine" Coke commercial reminds me of the first few months after Diane and I left Georgia for training in USAF.  We looked so forward to heading back home for Christmas.  We drove from Wichata Falls TX to Norman OK to pick up Walt and then drove all night to get home.  I remember them playing "I love little baby ducks..." on the trip.  

I share Don's experiences in growing up on a dairy farm.   Although I might have traded the life back then for something simpler, I wouldn't now.  It make the work scheudle I've had since seem pretty easy.  You get vacations!  

Other walks down memory lane

•  Heading out to the pond to go fishing.
• Shooting my BB gun. 
• Having people come to the farm to get away from town  (they would fish or hunt and then make it back to the house just in time for dinner!)
• Getting swatted in the face with a nasty cow's tail when putting on milkers.
• Fogging the barn to kill what seemed like milllions of flies.  (but I never could get them all. 
• Brushing up against a wasp's nest
• Yellow Jackets 
• Driving the truck to put out hay for the cows.  We would cut donuts and spin around on rainy days. 
• Band trips with Mr. Frosch--we certainly don't compare to today's bands but we had a great time. 
• Taking Dan Gabriel home after football practice our senior year. 
• Doing math homework wth Judy in study hall in the home econ room
• Racing Gary and Charles McGarity on math problems in Mrs Moore's class
• Walking to the house from the barn at dusk in summer
• The smell of wild onions as they mowed the lawn at school. 
• Playing horseshoes in "the pines" at recess
• Riding the bus to school on really cold mornings and having someone thump your ear from behind
• The anticipation of going to the movies with Diane--and the fact that we didn't think it strange that we ALWAYS walked in during the middle of the movie and then waited to see the first part.   I can only assume the movie plots were much simpler then.   Why not wait and see it from the beginning?  It was the 50 mile drive to Athens.  My house-to-Diane's 'then from Diane's to Athens.  I couldn't  get off early enough to get the early movie and the late movie made us get home too late. 
• Watson's Mill before it was a state park. 
• Having the road paved in front of our house when I was 10 years old.
• Working in the garden in the summer. 
• Not getting to  see all your friends during summer vacation. 
• Coming back to school in the 7th grade and discovering that the girl's had a head start on maturing!
• Breaking my hand, when swapping licks with Dennis Helmreich and hitting the wall behind him when he moved rather than get hit. 
• Having Diane sign the cast
• Eating bugles at Connie's house

The trouble with this exercise is that the liist can go on and on.   Diane and I often sit and remember our experiences growing up in Oglethorpe County. 

My apoligies for not being more active.  I'll try to be better. 

Happy Birthday to all those who have hit 60 already!  The rest of us aren't far behind. 

Great to hear from you Dick!  I remember being amazed that y'all had a telephone in your barn.         Don, I also remember the Junebugs tied with a string and flying around in a  circle.     

Today I saw a little bit of "thrift" blooming.  That was always one of the first signs of spring.  Also was when daddy and mother would say "the white bass must be running", so we'd load up and go to some shoals on Clark Hill fishing.  I loved catching fish!  Now, cleaning them was not my favorite, but I don't remember being asked if I wanted to help.  It was just a part of it!        

My mother was from Kite, Ga., (about 110 miles south of here), so we spent lots of time there.  Used to stick a piece of metal in the ground  at a "rally hill" and move it back and forth, and it would cause long worms to come out.  We called it running rallys.  We used them for fishing.      (that really happened - I'm not kidding)

When I lived in Marietta, my brownie scout troop was on the Officer Don show one day.  Does anyone else remember that show?

Connie did you get to play "OOIE GOOIE"?  (I hope I spelled that right.)  Officer Don was a favorite - every afternoon.  I guess we just have all sorts of TV celebrities here on the board!!!

Don your recollection of the summer nights and lightn' bugs really brings back the memories.  "Living in the city" we got a street light at some point.  It was located on a power pole in our front yard and extended our playing well into the night.  A cedar tree, that seemed large at the time, was located between our house and the power pole.  Its positioning created shadows in which one could hide during a game of chase or hide and go seek.  That light illuminated the walkway from the front steps to the street.  This provided the perfect setting for a "late night" game of 1-2-3 Redlight or Mother May I.  My mother, father and grandfather would watch with great enjoyment from rocking chairs on the front porch.  The distance from the house to the street seemed sooooo far back then though the last time I looked it had shrunk to no more than 12 or 15 feet. 

Don, my father and grandfather too smoked.  My grandfather always rollled his own - Prince Albert, of course.  One day I decided I needed to smoke as well.  I don't remember how old I was but remember I left Valdosta at age 7 so it was prior to that.  My father always smoked Camels.  He agreed to let me give it a try so I sat down at the dinning room table and lit up.  After one or two he swored he was out of cigarettes and I should go to the neighbors house to bum another one.  I went to the neighbor across the street and asked if I could borrow a cigarette.  They were quite amused.  Later, I was also allowed to try a beer.  I was unimpressed with either experience and though I've tried pipes and cigars (to be cool) through the years, I never got hooked.  Now, any type of tobacco smoke triggers an asthma attack.  I revisited beer often during college and Charles McGarity and I would frequently have a pitcher or two at lunch.  Again, nothing I couldn't live without. 

That experience is much like many others I've had - Gotta try it - Gotta try it ... Is that all there is! *** Is that all there is? Is that all there is?  If that's all there is my friend then let's keep on dancing.  Le't break out the booze and have a ball.  If that's all, there is.  (Peggy Lee)

Later.

Dick… great to read through your list of memories.  The first two on your bullet list stirred a few more memories of my own. 

First… fishing.   On the farm in Ty Ty, there was a big pond about a hundred yards behind our house.  It was both scary and inviting.  We didn’t know how to swim, but we did a lot of fishing there.  It was stocked with catfish, trout and bream.  We caught a lot of catfish and my Mama knew how to fry them just right!  Catfish on the bone is still one of my favorite dishes.  My brother-in-law, who married my older sister Helen, loved to fish, and he took Ron and I along with him most of the time.  If there was a way to catch fish, he would do it… fishing poles, rods and reels, trot lines, nets, floating jugs with hooks, you name it.  I even remember catching a few turtles and Mama fixing Turtle Mull, and it was delicious!  And by the way, Connie… we used worms for our fish bait, and we used a variation of your method to find worms.  We would drive a wooden stob into the ground and rub the top of it back and forth with another flat stick, and the vibration would drive those worms out of the ground!  I never heard the term “rally” used to describe it but it is the same thing, and I know you were not kidding because it really does work!

And second… BB guns.  When Ron and I were about 12 years old we got BB guns (Daisy Air Rifles) for Christmas.  The movie “A Christmas Story” always reminds me of that.  My Mama was afraid we’d “put our eye out” too.  And I remember being out in the fields and woods and barns with that gun all the time.   I am ashamed to admit that I shot many, many little wild birds with that BB gun, just for the sport of it… sparrows, blackbirds, bluejays, cardinals, etc.  Years later I felt very guilty about that.  I am not by any means condemning hunting or hunters at all.  In fact, a few years later I owned a shotgun and hunted rabbits and quail and that sort of thing to eat, and that is totally different.   And I have no problem with deer hunters who eat their game.  Personally, I could not shoot a deer.  But just shooting those little wild birds for the fun of it as a kid bothered me for years, and I had to ask God to forgive me for that.  Today one of my favorite things to do is to feed all the wild birds in my backyard which I have made very bird friendly.  There is no way now that I could point a gun at a little bird and pull the trigger.  In fact, I do not own a gun of any kind at all.

Gary… my Grandpa smoked cigars, and my Dad cigarettes… and used Prince Albert in a can and rolled his own cigarettes too when we were small.  He eventually switched to Camels with no filters.  He had this terrible cough which discouraged me from smoking.  I thought he would die of lung cancer, but he developed emphysema instead and died of pancreatic cancer.  But it was Ron who got hooked on smoking and eventually died of lung cancer.  Now when we were down on the farm, I did try “rabbit tobacco” which grew wild in the fields.  It didn’t do much for me either.  When I was a young bachelor in Atlanta I tried a pipe too, to look cool, but I could never keep the pipe lit and I didn’t like the taste.  I just decided to look “uncool”.  And, like you Gary, beer didn’t do much for me either.  My Daddy liked a beer now and then and let us taste it.  Yuk!!  In my bachelor days I sometimes kept beer in the fridge for visitors like my brother Ron, but I could never develop a taste for it.  Growing up a "cowboy", I love a cold glass of milk better than any of that stuff!

Connie… I remember “Officer Don” too.  But my favorite was “Captain Kangaroo” with Mr. Green Jeans.  And I liked “Howdy Doody” too.

And one more observation that Gary brought to mind… when we were little, everything looked so big!  Right after we were married, I took Liz with me to visit Ty Ty.  It was as though everything had shrunk!  What seemed like a mile then was just a few yards.  It is amazing!

I need to stop before I go on all day.  Every time someone posts here on Memory Lane, it triggers more memories for me too.  And most of them were great memories!  Thanks, everyone.   I’ll be back! 

Okay, time for MY fish story.  My father didn't get a car until just before my mother died and then it was purchased for him by some good samaritans.  This meant that most sojourns were on foot, via taxi or with a friend in their vehicle.  One day a friend invited my father and I to go fishin'.  I know you have all seen the brackish waters of south Georgia.  They are more freightening up close.  I was positioned in a safe place and provided a little cane pole while the adults got down to some real fishin'.  I proceeded to catch some minnow size fish and collect them in my pocket.   I was very proud of my pocket full of fishes at the end of the day.  After a while of "hooking" those little buggers, I somehow managed to get my line out a little further from shore.  Suddenly my float disappeared!!!  I gave that pole a mighty YANK and a fish came flying out of that water, over my head.  My line proceeded to become entangled in a tree behind and above me and there that fish hung!!!   He was a floppin' and I was YELLIN'.  My father came running - and laughing!!  It was the biggest fish I had ever seen - outside of the fish market.  It was also the largest fish caught that day!

Later that same day, the friend walked up to the edge of a pond, threw out his line and squatted down to await the much anticipated fish strike.  SUDDENLY - I love that word - he jumped up and I saw something long and dark, dart out from between his feet and hit the water.  He jumped back and said something I'd never heard before.  When asked what happened, he said when he squatted down, he felt something hitting his boot and he jumped up.  He had stepped on a snake and it started striking at his boot when he squatted down.  A lucky man indeed.  If he had gotten bitten in the closest body part not covered by boots ....  well as the joke goes, "the doctor says you gonna die!"

This was my first and most memorable fishing trip.  Later. 

 Since I am snowed in, I thought I'd sign in and share some winter memories from childhood. You were talking about wood burning stoves recently. We had them also, until we moved to our "new" home when I was 8 years old. I have two vivid memories of them. The first was when I held all my crayons on the side of the stove, and watched the pretty, bright rivers of color stream down. I had to have been really little, and I don't know if I was punished or not. Probably not. The next memory is of riding my little tricycle around the same stove, falling, and having the back of my hand pressed against the hot side. I still can feel the burn. My mama, bless her heart, made a poultice of baking soda and molasses and applied it, which made it burn even worse. How I screamed. I think that was considered good first aid then, but now we know it should have been iced. The scar is still slightly visible.

I know y'all all remember making snow ice cream.

Don, those heavy covers you mentioned? Me, too! I loved snuggling down underneath them. Mama always put flannel sheets on my bed too, and I couldn't wait. These days I like my bedroom chilly when I sleep, or else I wake up throwing covers off. My body's thermostat has gone haywire!

My daddy was vigilant about "draining the pipes" when a hard freeze was expected. Maybe y'all still do it. We never had frozen pipes.

Th-th-th-at's all for now, as Porky the Pig would say. 

Fred Morrison, the creator of the Frisbee (Pluto Platter) passed away this week.  I have often played with a Frisbee but that's not what sparks a memory.  I'm sure you all remember who Pluto is/was.  Early Mickey Mouse cartoons often featured this playful little dog in some form of  mischief.  I got a stuffed Pluto as my security blanket - way back then.  Everyone knows Pluto was a boy but my Pluto had a zipper installed in his back and tucked inside was four puppies.  I never questioned it.  I  loved my Pluto and he/she kept me safe at night.  Adulthood  sure does complicate things. 

“SCHOOL DAYS”… school days… Dear old golden rule days…  Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic… (Doesn’t the teacher just make you sick)

No offense to any of my teachers…  I loved school and loved most of my teachers .  Actually, the last line of that song about the “teacher” was not in the original 1907 song with that line written “taught to the tune of a hick’ry stick.”  I guess kids came up with the “teacher” line as the years passed. 

When Ron and I started first grade in the fall of 1956, we went from being “Ronnie & Donnie” to being “Ronald & Donald.”  The school day started with the Pledge of Allegiance and a Prayer.  Times have really changed.  The only time we got new clothes was just before school started.  And being twins, Mama dressed us alike.  We both had to wear suspenders to hold up our pants.  I think we wore either sneakers or Buster Brown shoes or Red Goose shoes (remember the golden egg bank?).  And in the winter, we always had to wear flannel shirts and a cap… the kind with the fuzzy earmuffs that turned down to cover our ears.   As the school year wore on, so did the knees of our pants... but we did not get new pants.  Mama was great at fixin’ those holes with a denim patch!  We always had a handkerchief in our pocket, because Mama would use the corner of that handkerchief to securely tie our lunch money, or a nickel for ice cream.  In those days, a coke was 6 cents, and a big Baby Ruth candy bar was a dime.  I think a postage stamp was 3 cents and a gallon of gas was about a quarter!

I remember that we used “Blue Horse” paper in grade school.  Each pack of paper had a Blue Horse trademark on it worth a certain amount of points… 1 point, 5 points, 10 points, etc. depending on the number of sheets of paper in the pack.  Kids collected these Blue Horses to send in for prizes, like a beanie cap.  But I think it took about a zillion Blue Horses to win a bicycle.  We carried our paper and pencils and books and Crayola Crayons in a “book satchel.”  Diane… I think I remember melting a few of those crayons on our wood stove too.  And I loved to draw and color with those crayons and play with modeling clay in school. 

Gary… you mentioned Frisbees.  I remember a few other toys too… Hula Hoops, Yo-Yos, Slinkys, Lincoln Logs, Silly Putty, Pick Up Sticks, Old Maid Cards and Chinese Checkers.  And I remember one Christmas that I got one of those Electric Football Games that had a little motor underneath that made the field vibrate so that the little plastic football players moved around on the field.  And I collected Baseball and Football Cards which I traded with friends at school.  I still have those cards.  I remember there were some of those cards on the backs of Post Cereal boxes, and I would ask Mama to get the cereal with the best cards on the back.  I ate some awful cereals back then just to get Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays.  I do remember one Christmas when we were 12 or 13 that Ron and I got a Silvertone Guitar together.  Neither of us ever learned to play it, and I still have that guitar.  It’s a good one… maybe a collector’s item now.   By the way, Gary… my favorite Disney character… Donald Duck.  Could you guess?  But my favorite TV cartoons were the Road Runner and Woody Woodpecker.

I mentioned that I liked my teachers.  One of my favorites when I was in the seventh grade was Mrs. Katherine Stripling Trammell, who loved Literature, Poetry, Shakespeare, English and Vocabulary…  and she had us reading books and making book reports all the time.  “Stripling” was her maiden name, and before she was married all her students affectionately called her “Miss Strip” and the name just stuck… even after she was married… and she didn’t seem to mind.  I loved her.

Oh boy!!!… I hear the bell ringing.  School’s out! 

Don, I just read your last post and it also brought back so many memories.  I remember the shoes and the games and saving the blue horse trademarks.  Also saved somthing from bubblegum to send in.

It may have been mentioned earlier, but I remember my mother saving S&H green stamps that she got at the grocery store.  We would fill books and books of them, then go to the S&H Stamp store to "trade them in" on an appliance or something for the house.

I always liked American Bandstand, and would watch Dick Clark and dance in front of that old black and white t.v. --  Do you remember doing "The Stroll"?  I still love that song and dance.

Do you remember when we were in school, and lined up to get the polio vaccine on a cube of sugar?

My snowcream milkshake on Saturday took me back to being a kid and my parents making them whenever it snowed.   Then there was a period that we were warned not too because of "fall-out".   Sometime later they started making them again.   I'm glad.

I do remember those S&H green stamps, Connie.  My Mom saved them too.

And we saved wrappers from Sugar Daddy candy bars.  I remember we sent them in for a GIANT Sugar Daddy, about a foot long!  I had my fill of Sugar Daddys. 

When Kennedy was President, the Space Program was very popular and I remember saving the little plastic “space coins” with pop in pictures that were free in bags of potato chips.  I also mailed in for a flat plastic molded “space capsule” shaped board that you could pop in the coins for display.

I do remember American Bandstand too.  Dick Clark never grew old… until he had that stroke a few years ago.  I saw him on his New Year’s Eve show this year and he really didn’t need to be on TV.  Time to do something else, Dick.

I remember those polio sugar cubes too.

It never snowed in Ty Ty (too far south) so, no snow ice cream until we moved to Athens.  But I do remember a huge South Georgia hailstorm one year… and the ground was completely covered about an inch deep with hailstones larger than marbles.  It beat down the crops, and the landscape looked white as snow.

More later.

"GRANDMA'S FEATHER BED"                                                                  It was nine feet high and six feet wide, soft as a downy chick
It was made from the feathers of forty 'leven geese, took a whole bolt of cloth for the tick
It'd hold eight kids 'n' four hound dogs and a piggy we stole from    the shed
Didn't get much sleep but we had a lot of fun on Grandma's    feather bed                                                                    (John Denver, 1974)

Some of my favorite childhood memories are of time spent with my grandparents.  When we lived in Ty Ty, our one week vacation each year was a 200-mile trip north to Oglethorpe County to visit my Dad’s parents near Stephens and my Mom’s mother in the Wolfskin District (my maternal grandfather died in 1945 before I was born).  Every summer we packed up the family car for the very exciting, and what seemed like endless journey on two-lane Georgia roads in the days before interstate highways.  We never made the trip without a flat tire or two (Daddy used recaps), and we never stopped for meals in restaurants.  We would pull over for roadside picnics somewhere along the way, and Mama would make Spam sandwiches or tomato sandwiches or banana sandwiches, or we’d peel open a can of sardines to eat with “soda crackers” and drink her homemade sweet iced tea... and maybe have a moonpie for dessert.  Ron and I both asked more than once, “Are we there yet?”  But it was well worth the trip!... I loved seeing my grandparents every summer. 

My maternal Grandmother Veale was very old, even when we were small (she died in 1961 at 88 years old), but I have a lot of fond memories visiting my paternal Grandma and Granddaddy Chandler who had a small Oglethorpe County farm on a dirt road near Barrow’s Mill.  Granddaddy was a very tall, big man who wore overalls and smoked cigars, and Grandma was a very short, tiny woman who wore an apron and dipped snuff!  I loved Grandma, but no kissin’ on the mouth… that snuff was nasty!  They had no indoor plumbing either and that outhouse was nasty too!... watch out for spiders and snakes!  And no indoor water...  in their backyard near a huge cottonwood tree was a well with a bucket on a long rope.  I remember many times letting that bucket down in the well to draw up a bucket full of water which was always nice and cold.  And my grandparents used that well water for everything… drinking, cooking, bathing and washing clothes in a big black wash pot.  The main room of their house was a combination kitchen and dining room where Grandma spent most of her time cooking on the old wood stove.  In front of the fireplace (their only heat) there was a long table with one chair on each end, one for Grandma and one for Grandpa, and long benches down each side for everyone else (they had ten children and oodles of grandchildren).  And Grandma was a great cook!  Their yard was full of rose beds, thrift, four o’clocks, sage bushes, peppers and spices, scuppernong vines, fig trees, chinaberry trees and black walnuts.  Almost everything they needed they had on the farm… corn and cotton in the fields, garden vegetables, pigs, cows, chickens, guineas and a mule… a big barn with a corn crib, a chicken house, and a shed for a lye barrel and soap.  I remember that one summer when we visited, their cow gave birth to twin calves, which is pretty rare, and they got out the old Kodak Brownie to take pictures (see attached) of Ron and me with the calves (twins & twins).  Granddaddy drove an old pickup truck with a wooden body on it, and later on, an old Studebaker. 

Now I don’t really remember playing on Grandma’s feather bed because their bedroom was off limits and we played outside, but I do remember having a good time every time we visited my grandparents.  I loved them and miss them, and I look forward to a glorious reunion with them some sweet day on that big farm in the sky.  

After my mother died and we came to north Georgia to live with our aunt and uncle, my horizon was expanded beyond belief.  We lived in the country and kept some cows from time to time.  Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter were spent walking over the pastures or in the woods as my uncle "surveyed the kingdom".  This replaced walking down to the train yards to watch the trains.  Every fall we went to Gatlinburg, TN where we would play in the stream that still flows through town.  The town was much smaller back then.  One evening we ate at the restaurant that had a swinging bridge next to it and we watched people crossing and having fun as we ate.  I had a grilled pork chop, french fries and apple sauce.  Still one of my favorite meals.  Every summer we went to Daytona Beach for several days.  I still remember the first time I saw the ocean.  It was late afternoon and the sky was dark from a passing summer thunder storm.  The ocean and sky seemed to never end as one bled into the other.  Back then you could ride on the beach and I remember one summer someone driving too close to the surf and stopping briefly to observe the incoming tide.  He got stuck pretty quickly and everyone on the beach came running to help lift the sinking car out of the sand.  On the way south we would stop at the first place in Florida that was serving "fresh" orange juice.  We would often stop at "Stuckey's" where my uncle would buy a pecan roll.  Boy were they good.  I still remember the first time I saw Tullulah Gorge.  It was foggy when we arrived and you couldn't see down into or across the gorge.  As the fog began to lift and more and more came into view, I was convinced it was a big painting or mural.  I just couldn't grasp what I was seeing.  Funny how some things are forever etched into our memories while other just slip away. 

One very cool winter afternoon I was at my cousin's house when he notice something up in the top of the big cedar in their back yard.  I was about 8 or 10 at the time.  It was getting late and overcast, so it was hard to tell what it was but we finally decided it had to be an opossum.  He went inside and retrieved the shotgun and prepared to acquire dinner for that evening.  He took aim at the dark figure moving slowly among the branches and shot.  The repeat echoed across the dark winters eve as we watched that opossom fall, hitting every limb and finally landing on the ground at the base of that big old cedar tree - at which point we realized that it wasn't an opossom at all, but was the neighbor's cat.  We quickly grabbed a shovel and proceeded to bury that cat out behind the chicken house. He made me swear I wouldn't tell anyone what happened and I have kept that promise until this day and felt since the neighbor has long since joined that cat, why waste a good story.  Now that's funny!!!

I do enjoy the memory lane stories!!!!!  and again I must say, I have experienced many of the same things.  Thanks for helping me remember.  Gary, don't think I've buried a cat shot by mistake tho :) :)

I was recently thinking how my Grandmother Morgan used to dry fruit.  She would cut apples or peaches into slices and put them on a piece of tin.  Then the tin would be covered with net and put up on the roof for the sun to dry it.  Sure made for some delicious fried pies!!!

Don your post including our toys of the past failed to mention one that nearly killed me.  We were returning from one of our annual sojourns to Gatlinburg in our three seater station wagon.  My older brother and I had positioned ourselves in the back seat where we could raise a little mahem.  You see, unbeknownst to the other occupants, we had purchased a Whoopie Cushion while in Gatlinburg.  We first lightly inflated it to the minimal point of believability.  Needless to say we couldn't restrain ourselves and kept increasing the inflation in order to lengthen the "sounds" emitted.  We were laughing so hard I was gasping for breath - and then it happened!!!  I carelessly over inflated our marvelous little toy and then proceeded to sit upon it a little harder than it was designed to endure.  BANG!!! It sounded like a gun going off as it exploded beneath me and the soft cushion my bottom was expecting disappeared.  You have never hear such a roar of laughter in your life as I learned that an exploding Whoopie Cushion is much funnier than its intended use.  I laughed so hard I though I would pass out.  We never had an opportunity to repeat that performance but its memory still brings tears to my eyes as I laugh about that very special day and our glorious Whoopie Cushion.