Memories and Ramblings

I came home from work Thanksgiving eve to find the turkey breast done in the slow cooker thanks to my daughter, my nephew and youngest stepson were also here. We aren't talking teenagers here, stepson was the youngest and he is 25. We had a really good talk about family etc., my stepson echoed most of our thoughts in that his childhood wasn't idyllic when he was living it, his stepmother was known for sneak attacks for one thing, catching him doing something wrong and punishing immediately, imagine the horror!! LOL But after being around others who came from TRULY dysfunctional homes or abusive situations we all realized how very lucky our lives had been. We all sat around recalling memories and analyzing the latest member of the family we thought needed analyzing.

This isn't a sales pitch but it involves a website for ads something like craigslist. It's the brainchild of my cousin with embellishments by me. MOADS4U came about because we were tired of being pushed around by Ebay and wanted something for locals and beyond. Right now it's a little rough but it does work. Collectively we have 20 years of computer and web experience. My cousin is the web person, I'm more of an OS hobby person, I think networking is fun? We've been on ebay for 6 years, been power sellers, I want my feedback on my tombstone, that's how good it is.

What does this have to do with family (I can sense the stifled yawns right now)? My cousin and I have been friends for all of our lives, best friends. We never had to think about it, we always had a best friend. She had a sister who was quite a bit younger and we both had older brothers but we were always best friends. We aren't even first cousins, her mother and my father were first half cousins (and were always there for each other, all of the old diaries from the 30s and 40s have the two families getting together around the wood stove playing board games and then playing in the snow or that's how it seems). On the site MOADS4U the top pictures are her grandpa, a old bus or car, a bank building which was the office where we both worked for awhile (it was the office for my husbands trucking company then), her mother as a girl (my surrogate mother when I needed one), and a creek which was known as Uncle Sam's (not the guy on the poster, Uncle Sam White who used to own it). The creek was a magical place with a rope to swing off of, a log to sit in the water on or dive off of till the next flood washed it away, a gravel bar for fires and wiener roasts. Back in the 70s before pollution or keeping babies away from life was thought of I took my oldest daughter swimming there when she was only 5 months old, she LOVED it and was surrounded by all the town kids who had come down to the swimming hole to cool off. The water ran through miles of woods and fields, it wasn't chlorinated but if it had rained that summer it was fairly clean. We've taken her children there, they think it's great but REALLY like the pool. LOL

We started the website together after doing websites for many people around the country. We share that and a view (my cousin lives next door, down the road if you will) dogs (my dog races their car when they come home and their dog is always here when I come home) and sometimes vehicles. Our lives have paralleled with first marriages that were "forever" to guys who were friends and had some drug problems shall we say. We both grew tired of the lying and just general craziness being married to those two brought. We both ended up getting divorced although hers was more drawn out and mine was faster, she had 3 kids, I had two, we acquired 2 and 5 stepchildren with our second marriages. We were remarried within 2 weeks of each other to a cop and a truck driver although they are so much more than that. Her cop is a gunsmith @ heart and my truck driver is a farmer @ heart (BTW they aren't perfect but we don't wonder what they are up to most of the time). Our children whether natural or step have done us proud which is probably a mid western term but that's how it is.

All of this talk of family the other night (we stayed up till 2 am, STUPID when we had to get up @ 7 am and start cooking and go to the train station) reminded me of our childhoods and while not totally idyllic by today's standards they were almost so. We rode horses and rode horses, sometimes with saddles, more often not, one Indian Pony we could ride without a bridle and jump on him from behind. We broke a pony for the neighbor and it ended up rolling over on me, luckily it didn't weigh hardly anything. We took my pony in an old abandoned log cabin and then discovered there was a cellar that wasn't too sturdy under the pony, all was well and good but that was probably the stupidest thing we did. We swam with the horses and on occasion my pony would chase us, she wasn't known for her pleasant temperament (biting, chasing, and rearing were more here style than nuzzling) (we probably should have been killed @ some point from being thrown off a horse but we figured out how to roll in a ball and relax and could be tossed with the best).

We climbed every roof on the farm except where our parents could see us climbed to the peak, slid down, and then jumped off, luckily it was only like 10 ft to soft grass but it still wasn't smart (all the falling or being bucked off of horses came in handy probably). We explored another abandoned house in the woods (was actually my great aunts but I didn't know it @ the time), my cousin had a broken arm and we took the nails out of the window panes and put the panes of glass in when we climbed out then they promptly fell out and broke. The house was full of awakening black snakes and others in the spring which gave us both a horrible lifelong fear of snakes, the walls had been insulated with mud and straw and I guess it was a good place for them to hibernate. We ran to a door which turned out to be a cellar with steps going to nowhere but a pool of water and bones from animals that had fell in the cellar window and not been able to get out. SPOOKY!! LOL especially for 11 or 12 years old! Where were our parents? Our mothers were doing something in the house with their bouffant hairdos and flowery dresses or Capri's, as long as we didn't have to go to the doctor when we got back and our clothes weren't in tatters we were OK as long as we were GONE and we would just show up for meals. Our fathers were in my dads mechanics shop in overalls (our dads were both big men, not tall but both dark and burly, spoiled us but we did what they said when they said it) working on something or another or exchanging stories with Sunday loafers around a wood stove with bottles of pop in glass bottles, sometimes we played in the shop, whirled each other around with an automotive belt while the other one was on a mechanics stool with wheels and then LET GO! We grew up with tales of how the moon would spill it's magic out if a quarter moon was tipped or how the Spaniards had abandoned some treasure long long ago. The first one nobody really believed the second one no one ever found the treasure and I think it's long gone if it ever was there, a form of that story exists almost everywhere. We had annual beginning of summer and end of summer cookouts @ the creek with swimming parties where our parents actually would get wet and quit fussing about all the work they had to do. When my husband and I were cleaning out 50 year old hay etc. out of the barn last winter we found the trivet device my dad had made for those cookouts (actually he made it for cooking while hunting I think but my mom put a stop to the 26 foxhounds he had @ one time). Our cookouts were kool-aid, fried potatoes always and hamburgers or fried eggs and they always tasted GREAT. We went exploring @ my cousins farm also to old abandoned mines filled with water that we threw rocks in and speculated on their depth and whether their were bodies in there, exotic names like the Ouchita, signs of mans work in the woods abandoned and grown over. We got older and rode in her brothers old cars and wondered which of his friends might be boyfriend material. Then marriages and children came, working and hoping and surviving, now we are both grandmothers.

I'm hopefully able to look back with fondness and ahead with zest although the zest is hard to conjure up some mornings,we are not OLD yet though. My cousin would abhor the thought as she is only a year younger, OK a year and 43 days, but we do have a treasure trove of memories and history. Actually our parents were both older than normal for the 50s and 60s so we are of an age when we remember our parents best. I don't think we are totally unique in our relationship but life has given us each someone to lean on and remember with (what brought this on was trying to remember if we cleaned Aunt Betty's house for her one day and WHY we cleaned Aunt Betty's house, which used to be Uncle Oscars and had a huge screened in porch, was once a log cabin and was by a creek, I thought I can ask Peggi if she remembers!). I look on our website as a modern day quilt made by two cousins, friends, sisters, however you want to qualify our relationship. A few stitches here, a blog there, a scrap of fabric here, a new ad there..... and life goes on.