Old Timey

My sister Shelby and I met in Wake Forest on Friday...First, she had three heaping grocery bags of freshly cut okra to give me...three heaping grocery bags!! My friend Nellie was tickled to death to get two of the bags. 

Secondly, Cousin Patty had sent more boxes of stuff for Shelby to go through, keep what she wanted, then deliver the rest to lucky me. :)

Think I've mentioned before that Cousin Patty and her husband Mike sold their beautiful home on the lake and have down-sized since moving into a smaller place. That's why Patty gave me the beautiful old pie safe and the old cupboard.

This time items were smaller, but special...

This is not just an old worn out apron with a hole in the center; probably from drying her hands, this apron was worn by our Aunt Berlie. 

Some of my first blogging posts were written about Aunt Berlie. I adored her.  I looked forward to the weekends that mama could drive me to her house to spend a couple of nights. (This was in the early 1950's)

Aunt Berlie would say to me, "Melby, I bought us a new puzzle to put together". Oh, we would get to working on a puzzle and stay up way too late. Why, I remember it being 11:00 one Saturday night when Aunt Berlie looked up at the clock. We had to hurry and get to bed. We were going to Sunday School the next morning. 

Mama had packed my Sunday dress, my Gigi Perreau hat with the ribbon in the back, my black patent leather shoes, and little white gloves even. I can just see Aunt Berlie smiling as we walked in the the church door. She was glad to show me off, and I loved every minute of it. Of course, Aunt Berlie didn't drive, so she called on a neighbor to take us to the church.

Back to the apron. Patty had attached this note...

which I plan to keep on the apron. I want to make a pattern from this old apron and make some like it. The old aprons looked comfortable, didn't they?

This old oblong tablecloth didn't fit our new round table, so I cut it down and made a square cloth, with enough left over for a dish towel. And just look at this old tablecloth...

it doesn't fit our table either but I would never cut it.

and this picture is perfect for the small space over the ironing board in the teeny tiny sewing room...

this too from Patty......

There used to be kittens around the old barn and outhouses at Aunt Berlie's. She would say, "you can have them all if you can catch them, but be careful, they will scratch you".

Back when I was collecting old granite ware...never mind the dust on the pantry shelves...

I could not resist bringing home old 'slop jars' (top shelf far left), also a reminder of nights with Aunt Berlie. 

Aunt Berlie lived alone in a big house. There was an outside toilet, but we dared not go out after dark. A slop jar was kept just under the bed, in case we had to go during the night. 

Why, folks had been known to disappear going to the toilet late at night. There was an old tale back then in that part of the country of a woman who's husband went to the outhouse during the night and never returned. Scary stuff. 

No doubt, my love of old fashioned things came from Aunt Berlie. Things like a little fenced-in garden with a gate that hooked. Aunt Berlie had one. I remember going inside with her, to pick a few green beans, and closing the gate behind me. 

Aunt Berlie reminds me of the English Fairy Tale, "The Teeny Tiny Woman".

I've surely talked your ears off, but posting this has made me want to get back in the sewing room. It's been  months now since I finished the new sewing table skirt and chair seat cover...have I even shown you?

Green is not a favorite color of mine but there was enough pink in this that I kinda like it.

Thank you friends, well if you're still around. :) Hope I haven't frightened you away.

Love,
Henny

Happy Mother's Day

One of the things that always reminds me of mama...

She adored dainty little pitchers and violets. She loved picking violets. We used to go see Aunt Berlie in early spring when the grass was green and the yard was covered in violets. 

Mama would say, "let's ride up and see Berlie. I bet the violets and wild lilies are in bloom". Aunt Berlie was a dainty little lady too. I loved walking with them and picking flowers. Both of them carried a tissue, and laughed continuously !

And once again, I can't let Mother's Day pass without posting my favorite old photo...

of my sweet mother, holding me with my sister Shelby standing beside her.

 

 I miss her and think about her every day, and it doesn't get any easier. In fact, the more time passes, the more I long to see her and hear her voice again. 

Mama was gentle and kind, and very patient.

Oh my...

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

Poppy said this morning, you are not my Mother, but I'll take you to Cracker Barrel for breakfast for Mother's Day. I accepted. We were about ready to go when my daughter Andee called. Check your email before you leave...so, I did and there was a gift certificate for Cracker Barrel. How was that for perfect timing!

I had pecan pancakes with bacon and lots of maple syrup, then came home feeling too full! It was fun!

Love,

Henny

Happy Mother's Day too, to my sweet Daughters Lynn and Andee!

News on the well house and such

Good gosh! Would you look at the leaves, and look at this ugly mess! It's no wonder I was depressed the whole month of February! This is definitely a "before" picture. 

You may remember back in February when the pump in our well stopped working and we were without water. We called the pump and well digging folks out and had a new pump installed. You may recall too that the well cover fell apart as it was being taken off, and how happy that made me. I don't like those little wishing wells. 

This was a couple of years ago before the old well house fell apart.

When Poppy said a friend at work was going to build us another well cover,  I jumped right in and said it had better be "big"! Something that looks real. I wanted a well cover like Aunt Berlie used to have. Now Aunt Berlie's well cover was big enough that she and I could carry our straight chairs out and sit and crack walnuts...under the cover of the well.

Poppy's friend delivered this late yesterday. It took four men to get it off the trailer.

I did say "big"!  We can't sit under this one but maybe it looks more real. It needs leveling a bit and painting. I'm thinking a dark walnut color, the same color I plan to paint Poppy's shop. 

The shop was supposed to be barn red but it turned out orangy looking. Now that we're living in a red house, I'm thinking the shop needs to be another color...maybe dark walnut.

Okay, I'm off to make bowls if ice cream. I can't seem to get off this roll I'm on...let see who can get the fattest!!! Have you tried Turkey Hill's Box of Chocolates? Honestly, well it's indescribably delicious. :) You need to buy a carton!

Hope to be back soon. 

Love,
Henny

A bunch of empty buckets

Poppy is at work this Saturday morning. The rain is falling again, and here I sit with my bowl of oatmeal at the computer with absolutely nothing interesting to talk about. How do you like your oatmeal? Mine? Hot, with brown sugar, walnuts, and a little milk. 

All the feed buckets are empty this morning so a trip to town is first on my list of things to do. It's rare that we run out of everything at once!  Have you seen the row of feed buckets in my tiny little pantry...

And opposite the wall with the buckets are shelves with granite ware and the old pots I love...

It's kinda fun to get a peek into someone's junk room/pantry/laundry room.  I remember my Aunt Berlie's pantry. It was a step down from the kitchen floor and the old wooden door leading into the pantry stayed closed. It was cold in the pantry. Nails in the back of the pantry door held aprons, a broom and a sack that held paper bags. Aunt Berlie called paper bags, "paper pokes".  I loved spending nights with her...staying up late, sometimes til 11:00 p.m. working on a puzzle.

Okay, I am headed to town now. Gosh, getting home and unloading 50 lbs. each of corn, scratch, laying mash, goat feed, and 20lbs. of bird seed, and a few groceries sounds like fun. Maybe I won't even buy feed. Maybe I'll just keep driving and not come home. We'll see. Just kidding. :)

Dumperoo was sure resting good here...

Thank you for listening again.

Love,
Henny

Buttons and Oil Lamps

I've finished one more altered skirt. This one is my favorite. Now if only I can muster up the nerve to wear it. Lynn says, "mom, wear what you love"! I love the pink linen with the cut work bottom...

The sewing room makes me happy. Old things make me happy.  Once at a yard sale I found a very old cigar box filled with sewing notions.  Who could resist buying something like that for a dollar or two?

Quart jars of old buttons make me happy. Do you reckon there could be any buttons here worth anything? Poppy might could quit work and I could buy a donkey... :)

There are some really old buttons here. Take a closer look...

I would never be lucky enough to happen upon something worth a lot of money. 

Looking at these buttons sometimes I see one that brings back memories...like remembering seeing the same button on one of Aunt Berlie's simple cotton dresses. She used to order her dresses from the Sears Roebuck catalog. Once when I was spending a few days with her, she ordered a dress for me too. A simple little cotton dress.

Maybe it's the old glass buttons that are worth something and some of these look like glass...

Oh well, enough about becoming rich off old buttons.

Oil lamps make me happy. Once upon a time, back before we invested in a generator, Poppy and I used all these oil lamps. During every storm seems like we lost our electricity. It was fun lighting the oil lamps. I will never understand though how people read or for that matter did anything by the light of an oil lamp. Mama used to say that her daddy read the Bible every night. I'm sure it was by the light of an oil lamp and maybe the flickering light from the fire in the fireplace. That reminds me...Mama had two brothers, Henry and Charlie. Mama said her daddy would get a fire going in the fireplace and Charlie would start messing with the fire. Grandpa would say, Charlie if you'll leave the fire alone it will burn! That was many years ago. Mama was born in 1917 and she was just a girl back when Charlie would play with the fire.

Some of the oil lamps scattered throughout our little house...

The lady in the picture is Lynn, my daughter. This is a copy of a painting done by Jeffrey Mims, an artist in Southern Pines...

Whew! Sometimes I get carried away. Thank you for visiting!

Love,
Henny Penny

Slop Jar / Slop Bucket

I would never use the words "slop jar" in front of...well anyone, except family. I always figured the word "slop jar" originated in mama's family way back, as that is what everybody called these things. Only recently did I learn that a chamber pot and a slop jar is the same and it is okay to say "slop jar". 

These two "slop jars" belong to me and sit up on the dusty top shelf in my pantry/laundry room...

Aunt Berlie is in my heart and quite often on my mind. We surely had fun together back when I was a little girl. I must have started spending nights with her back in the late 1940's. There was no bathroom in her house, so that's how I came to know about the "slop jar".

There was a little outhouse that sat next to another old brown out-building in Aunt Berlie's side yard that looked a little, just a little, like this. Her outhouse was on the opposite side of the building and there was a huge fig tree growing between the two buildings...

           Picture from Wikipedia

Now there wasn't as much meanness going on back then as there is now, but once it got dark outside, me and Aunt Berlie stayed inside. Aunt Berlie usually bought a new puzzle when she knew I was coming to visit, so we would have something fun to do at night. We usually made one last trip to the outhouse before dark. If one of us woke up during the night and had to go...Aunt Berlie would turn on the overhead light. That light bulb was in the center of a high ceiling, and I mean high! I remember there being a long string that went from the light bulb to the bed post. Anyway, we would then pull the "slop jar" out from under the bed. Every morning the jar was emptied, cleaned and put back under the bed.

There is also a "slop bucket"which was kept near the kitchen to dump scraps in for the hogs...

Aunt Berlie didn't have hogs, but Mary and Clyde who lived just a little piece down the dirt road did. I used to spend time with them too, well, with their twin daughters, Ruby and Rachael, my cousins. I've heard Mary say many times, "Ruby, you or Rachael one carry that "slop bucket" out and feed the hogs." Ruby or Rachael would pick up the bucket, without one complaint, and we would walk down to the hog pen and pour the slop into a long wooden trough. It was fun to see and mostly fun to hear the hogs eating that slop. It was fun being with Ruby and Rachael. They were identical twins and always had pretty blond hair.

Well, I promised to show you the latest apron made from that new pattern...

The new pattern made all the difference in getting me back in the sewing room. Change is good! 

Thank you for visiting.

Love,
Henny Penny

The old cedar chest

As I wiped the dust off this old cedar chest this morning, I thought about my Mother. When mama got her first job in Asheboro, NC and moved away from home, this cedar chest was her first major purchase. I believe she told me once that she made monthly payments of $4.00 until it was hers.

Mama was born in 1917, so it was probably 1935 or so when she left home??  She was telling me once about the hard times back then and how lucky she was to get that first job in a hosiery mill.  Mama said she waited in a long line of hopeful people who were turned down for jobs. Then for some unknown reason the man doing the interviewing took a liking to her. He was very pleasant, smiled, asked her a few questions, and offered her a job.

This was a very young mama standing beside one of daddy's brother... 

And this is a very young daddy, looking proud of his boat. I wonder if daddy build this boat. It looks homemade...

So, going back to mama, her first job, and the cedar chest.  Mama said she found a room in a boarding house. Funny how it was so important back then to own a cedar chest. Young, single women spent their spare time sewing, embroidering, and quilting, making things for their hope chest. This tradition of filling a hope chest ended around the 1950's.

It was while living in the boarding house that my Mother met my Daddy. He worked in the same town, in a mill too. Mama said she and a friend used to sit on the grassy lawn of the boarding house. They would have iced tea and ginger snaps. This tall, most handsome young man (who would be my daddy) walked past the boarding house on his way home. That's how it all began.   

Even today, I cannot resist buying old embroidered dresser scarfs and pillow cases. These are a few of the pieces stored in mama's old chest...

The lace was actually crocheted onto these dresser scarfs, not sewn on. I remember that my Aunt Vastie, when I was just a girl, kept an embroidered dresser scarf on a table in the sitting room and all the important mail was stuck under the scarf. It used to bother me...I didn't like the way it looked. 

Mama always enjoyed embroidering.  I remember back when she was still living alone, I had gone down for the weekend. She said. let's ride to Vass, (a little town near by), I've found a dime store where they sell the prettiest pieces to embroider....dresser scarfs, aprons, bibs, and pillow cases.  We both bought some things. Mama finished her pillow cases in no time and look how beautifully her's turned out...

I started working on the pillow cases I bought, with little birds, but never finished. That's when mama took over for me...

I now cherish these pillowcases. The years go by so fast! For me, I would go back to the early 1950's in a heartbeat!! :)

Another little funny...At my Aunt Berlie's there was a stand of pine trees. The story goes, one day Aunt Berlie's daughter asked how many of those pine trees would it take to make her a cedar chest. Aunt Berlie said, well you could cut them all down but you still couldn't make a "cedar" chest! :)

Thank you if you have managed to stay this long.  I can tell you the house work is not getting done with me sitting here enjoying myself. 

Love,
Henny Penny