Us at the falls

Fall

Today we decided to see fall foliage, It was amazing, I at one point said, "New England has nothing on us" I had heard it was amazing this year, due to our gentle fall. You know cool evenings, pleasant days, and not much wind to blow all the leaves off the trees.
Your Dad and I took a day trip to the mountains, We went to Burney Falls and stayed a couple of hours. It was amazing, just what I needed to drop the blood pressure.
I packed some lean deli turkey, bread, animal crackers, apples, grapes and water.
As we made out way down to the water, at Lake Britton, The sky was a beautiful blue. We walked on the docks and sat down for a while and watched the still water. The water was so still it looked like glass. We heard a Lake Loon, We could see the diamateous earth on the banks, It was a stark white against the green and gold of the surrounding trees. We were alone in a quiet place. Only one family showed up with two small children, That brought back memories of our trip down when you all were young. Do you recall catching Crawdads in the edge of the water. If I recall they were red, and Charles and Ken were torturing Sheri with them.
We decided that was a great place to have out picnic.
We walked back to the car, stopping along the way to enjoy the beauty surrounding us.
I took out blanket out of the car, Dad took the cooler and we walked back to the docks, We were now totally alone. I spread the blanket on the end of the dock, and made our sandwiches, I then opened the water and we just relaxed.
As we were sitting quietly, I suddenly raised up, "Did you hear it"? "Hear what?" he asked, "The leaves falling, I can hear them as thy make their way down through the trees". I heard them from several directions, once to the north, then the east, I could turn my head and watch them fall as the skittering and tinkling noise drew my attention.
Now I hear a pop of water, A baby duck has popped his head out of the water. We watched him and he dove down again, He stayed down for a long time, we finally gave up and just lay back on the blanket, Then Pop, he is up with a small minnow in his mouth.
Now the once calm lake is forming caps, I watch as it picks up. First it is rough, like ripples on a stream, then as the wind picks up more it forms the inevitable caps. The weather is still warm, beautiful and no one wants to leave the little space we have carved out on the boat docks. Peace and Quiet, Not a sound, other then the sleet sound of leaves falling and the occasional rush of water now hitting the dock, The rush is caused from the wind, The Lake loon, sounding lonesome and predicting bad weather.
You can look around the mountain and see the preparation for winter. Leaves falling, the highway is strewn with pine straw from the evergreen, At times you can't see the edge of the roadway, it has narrowed so much from the falling debris.
Beautiful and Treacherous together.
As we Made out way back to the falls, we decided it was not a good idea for me to make the trek down, So we only walked the 150 feet to the look out. The falls can still take your breath away. They never lose their beauty. I cant imagine how they must look with snow covering the hillsides around them, possibly icicles hanging beneath where the water is just flowing slowly.
God created such an amazing earth, Get out and see it, There is beauty in every grain of sand. It was formed by the hand of God.
Your Dad went to Turner falls out of Tulsa, as a young Man, You can probably see the rock he used to dive from. He would love for you all to have time to go see it.
Hope everyone had as good a day.
Love you all;

Spare Time

Seems I have a lot of that these days, Huh Wonder Why?
Anyway I was re-reading "Looking Back to See". I saw some parts that my Mom had told me about, and this time they registered.
The Browns were a farming family, first, before the logging industry took so many of them. Farming was hard and paid little. If you did not have the money to put in the crops, you did not have a crop and your family had less to eat in the winter. This was mostly in the depression.
My Dad and uncles, Uncle Harvey, Uncle Floyd, and maybe a couple of others would trap in the winter for food and pelts to sell. They trapped Mink, Fox, opossum, Anything that will sell, in fact I have a photo of Uncle Harvey with a board about 6 foot tall and 4 wide holding Mink, for sale. I believe he got about 1200 dollars for that group. 1200 was a fortune in those days. It fed a lot of people and it bought seed for crop.
Familys mostly stayed together, When my Great-Grandpa Tuberville died, My Grandma rotated between homes of her children and as I got older I realized she also visited one Granddughter she was proud of, My MOM. Great Grandma was a wonderful lady, she often told stories of how she fought off indians in the mid to late 1800s. She was a tough but kind woman, and funny, she was so funny. You never knew what was going to come out of her mouth.
When my grandpa Brown died, Grandma Brown moved in with children too. Now she was not one you wanted around a lot, Grandma T on the other hand could stay forever. David became especially fond of her, she always teased him and called him Bill Bailey. She told him often, you remind me of Bill Bailey. So he in turn called her Grandma Bailey. They had a thing going, mutual love and admiration.
When the Browns worked they worked hard,My mom was an equally hard worker, she wanted better for her children than she had. They worked all day in the fields, picking cotton, or tobacco, or whatever, Then the women would take care of the homes. Feed the family, and keep having babies.
The Brown boys, My dad and uncles, played in a Brown Band. They played for Barn Dances, or whatever, Country folk. Something to keep a family going in rough times. They got paid a few nickles, but My Mom did not like my Dad at these functions, she refused to go out when she became pregnant with her first, or go out to dances. My Dad decided go one night, over her objections, When he left she bolted the door, Well Daddy came home a few hours later and she would not let him in, Guess you can imagine the rest, He broke down the door, To my knowledge he quit the band. But he loved music anyway. Mama later regreated her decision to make him stop but in those days she felt everyone would look at her "sticking out" her words not mine.
It was shortly after that Uncle Floyd hurt his hand pretty badly and could not play the guitar anymore. So the band had to stop anyway.
Roy gained Daddys talent for the guitar and several of us gained the love of singing and music. Music, I can not imagine a day without it.
We spent a lot of evenings around a radio listening to the Grand Ole Opry, It was funny, to think back now, My grandpa had an old Radio like ours, He had poor reception and it was battery operated. He would sit with his ear right up to the unit, listening intently while Grandma was telling us kids to "Keep it down, Your Grandpa can't hear with all that racket". I never understood how he could hear it anyway it had so much static. I am not sure how he got batteries to operate it, but he was a wheeler dealer. He could get anything just by bartering.
So such was the life of the Browns or part of it, You all need to read the book, It is insightful.

Wash Day

When My mom did Laundry it was a MAJOR chore. She would catch water in two #3 Washtubs. She would start a fire for the washpot. (Washpot being a huge, cast iron black tub looking thing with handles on the side.) After the fire was hot, someone would help her put the pot on the fire, with huge pieces of dowling. The hot water was used to heat the wringer washer water. The remainder was used to boil my Dads and brothers jeans. They were usually really dirty. Greasy is more like it.
The wringer washer had a huge tub like the tubs you see in your washer. It would agitate the clothes, then Mama would put them through the wringer and squeeze the water out. The wringer could be dangerous, if you got your hand too close with it running. I, at one time, got my arm in it, It pulls you through. Thank goodness Mama was watching, It kind of mashed my arm but nothing serious. Just a very scared kid.
Mama would rinse the clothes in the tubs and run them through the wringer again, then she hung them on the clothes line. It was a full days work, after all she was doing laundry for 8 children. I cant recall anyone helping her with the laundry but they must have. I know I did help some but I was pretty little. The clothes line was too tall for me to reach it, so I know I didn't hang out clothes. We had 4 or more lines strung at least 50 feet each, Then Mama would hang the heavy items, on fences if the lines were full.
IN Arkansas the weather is not conducive to drying clothes on the line, but we had no options. More than once I recall her running to bring clothes in before a rain hit. Laundry was done rain or shine, freezing or warm. It had to be done, as Mama would not hear of us having dirty clothes on for school or church. I am sure she must have hung clothes on the back porch when the weather was bad. Our back porch was screened in, and enclosed half way up.
After laundry the tubs were used for bath tubs. The second rinse water was usually pretty clear so if we needed a bath we took one in that water. Mid day or whatever.
Or hair was usually washed with rain water. We put those tubs under the corner eaves of the house to catch the water. That saved a lot of drawing water from the well. That too was an experience I did not enjoy. I hated to look into the well, It was deep and scary. You could hear the bucket hit the water and we could tell how low the water table was by how much rope was used. It was not good when we used all the rope. That meant poor quality water.
Do you know what a wiggle tail is? Well, it is a real something. I guess you would call it a worm. I know over the years you have heard me say, you are such a wiggle tail, LOL and I wasn't calling you a worm, just wiggled a lot.
When the water table was low, we would get wiggle tails in the water. They are little worms that live in water, and wiggle a lot, tiny and black.
We had to use the water but it was boiled and strained before food or drink use.
Sounds sick huh/ But that was life and you accepted it and never thought more of it.
So today as I was putting my laundry in a nice washer and dryer, Having good water at my disposal, and running water too, I had to thank God for his blessings, And recall a woman that was so thankful for her first automatic washer. She used to stand and watch the dial move from wash to spin to rinse.
The floor in her house was not really level and the washer wanted to bounce around. We often had to sit on the washer to hold it down and it was fun. Mama used to say to us, "Go sit on that washer it is wanting to dance all over the kitchen".
The only time it wasn't fun was when a boy was visiting and you had to sit there and visit, with your voice breaking from the jostle of the spin cycle.