Mazes-N-Memories

Sunday, November 29, 2015

My current desktop is just some leaves in the process of changing from green to red. It’s funny but this photo was on my desktop for six days before I saw the bug sitting on the leaf.

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My cute little redheaded brother continues to be in our thoughts and prayers for the loss of his wife Cindra. How hard it must be to be alone after twenty-four years of marriage.

Richard has asked me to extend his deepest thanks to all of you for all your prayers and cards, notes of encouragement and phone calls. He really appreciates it.

<<<<<>>>>>

I wrote about making my own homemade yogurt a few weeks back, do you remember?

Well, I have an update for you, if you can stand it.

I have learned something that many of you already know. Actually I knew it too but I can be selective in what I believe.

“What are you going on about now Peg?” I hear you ask.

Not everything you read on the internet is true. Not only that, I think sometimes people go out of their way to post stupid things like, “Cat shit will remove scratches from your furniture,” just to see how many people will try it. But that was just a little digress.

Even helpful and credible websites can get it wrong sometimes.

The first time I made yogurt I did everything right, quite accidentally as it turns out because then I had to suffer through several rounds of failures as I tried to figure out what I had done wrong.

During the course of investigating, many website said the kind of milk you use doesn’t matter, so I believed it.

Great! Because the first time I made homemade yogurt I had used Fairlife Milk which was hard to come by in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. It would mean a seventy-two mile round trip to Sayre, our closest Wal*Mart store that carries Fairlife, to get more. Since the websites said I could use any kind of milk I went four miles into town and got a gallon of regular old cow juice. That was when I encountered lots of whey, which I didn’t have the first time, but keep in mind I still thought I was doing something wrong.

The lady that hosts the website Salad In A Jar dot com said she liked her yogurt thicker so she would heat her milk to one hundred eighty degrees then let it cool to one-twenty, make her yogurt and strain it.

Sounds like a lot of work doesn’t it.

Salad In A Jar was using a half gallon of milk to make her yogurt and by the time she strained it she would end up with half that.

Fairlife is more expensive than regular milk and comes in fifty-two fluid ounce bottles (not quite a half gallon) but I end up with that much yogurt! I don’t have to heat it before hand and it doesn’t separate so I don’t have to strain it afterward and I don’t have all that doggone whey to figure out what to do with!

Mike wouldn’t eat my yogurt with me for a while, then he would eat it with a little honey in it and now, for reasons he has never disclosed to me, he has decided to eat plain yogurt with me and we have a half cup of yogurt everyday.

Bottom line, moral of the story, it does matter what kind of milk you use.

<<<<<>>>>>

I have slipped.

One thing has led to another and gradually, before I knew what was happening, I was falling out of my healthy eating and exercise habits.

I ate healthy because I was healthy. I hardly ever ate anything that was bad for me because I was always conscious that I would have to work it off. It was easier to not eat it.

My six day a week interval running habit dwindled to a couple of times a week then slipped into once a week and then disappeared.

I’ll start again after this trip, I thought in May, but it didn’t happen.

I’ll start again after this building project, I thought in July and that didn’t happen either.

I’ll start again when we get to our Mountain Home, I thought in September. It didn’t happen.


I’ll start again when we get back to Missouri.
Guess what?

We are back in Missouri and that didn’t happen either. Now I’m thinking I’ll start interval running again in the spring and that will make it a whole year that I haven’t run.

Sigh.

So hard to take off, so easy to put on.

In the meantime I’m thinking about starting my Curves diet again. I kept all of my guides on my old computer so I went into the storage area of the garage and dug out my old laptop, hooked it up and printed my diet guides.

Poking around on my old laptop I found my 3003 Crystal Mazes game. I opened it and played a few rounds. I love this game! I gave Kat the disc with this game on it so she could download it and play on her computer but she could never get the program to run.

“Mom, I think the disc is corrupted,” she told me. “Do you want me to send it back to you?” she asked.

“No. If it’s bad, I don’t want it back. Just throw it away,” I told her.

I sure would like to have this game again, I thought. I got on Amazon.com and found the game. Six ninety-nine. I didn’t buy it. The next day, on a whim, I searched for the root of the game on my old computer, stuck a thumb drive in the USB port and transferred the game. Would it work? I didn’t know. Transferring information onto a thumb drive is easy, but with games it can be a little dicey. This game was part of a much larger game package and if I don’t get all the files, it might not work. But what did I have to lose by trying? Nothing. It didn’t take it but a few seconds to transfer so I wasn’t holding out any hope that this was going to work.

Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed when that’s what you get.

I took the thumb drive out of my old computer, plugged it into my current computer, opened it, found the game and downloaded it. I saved it to my desktop so I could find it and when I opened it, it worked! Yay! I played a couple of rounds and closed the game.

Hmmm.

There was a new file on my desktop. It looks like a piece of paper with a cog in front of it.

What’s that for? I wondered. What if I delete it? I picked it up and dropped it into the trash bin. I figured if the game didn’t work after I deleted it then I would go into the trash bin and restore the file or just reload the game again.

I clicked on the game icon and it opened --

-- it opened okay but it opened at the very beginning. It would normally remember the puzzles I’ve solved and open on the next one. It wouldn’t be near as much fun to play if I had to search for the next puzzle every time I opened it. But I had a suspicion that the file I deleted was the one that remembered what puzzle I was on. I solved the first two puzzles again and clicked on the Select Puzzle tab. Sure enough the puzzles I completed were checked off. I closed the game and there was that file again!

I deleted the file a second time.

Guess what happened when I opened the game this time!

Yeah. It started me at the beginning again. (Stop laughing.) I opened the Select Puzzle tab and there were no green checkmarks on the two games I had completed before closing it last time. So I played the first two games again, checked for the check marks (yep, they were marked off) and I closed the game. For the third time this file shows up on my desktop. I left it alone, reopened the game and this time it opened to the puzzle I had stopped on.

Okay, now I was sure. I wasn’t being slow, I was just being thorough. I hadn’t looked to see if the games were checked off the first time I played it and now I knew they were. I would just have to leave the file on my desktop because I don’t know how to hide it.

I love this game! The puzzles are so clever!

When I played this game a year and a half ago I was stuck on one puzzle for two months! (I think I even wrote about it at the time.) But I stayed with it and wouldn’t move on to the next puzzle until I figured it out. Boy, was I ever proud of myself when I found the answer.

There are only two rules in this game, which makes it easy to learn. Rule number one is you can only push the crystals. Rule number two is you can only push one crystal at a time.

You know something?

It occurred to me, as I wrote this story that the reason the extension file was saved to my desktop was because that’s where I’d saved the program. If I save it in my Programs file, the extension file would be saved there too, right?

Wait a minute, I’ll be right back…

Yep! It worked! And now my desktop looks like this again. Yay! The only file on my desktop is my trashcan. Patti, my beautiful older sister, showed me how to pin all of my programs to the task bar and trash the desktop icons so they don’t interfere with the photo.

So I got my game from my old computer and I got my Curves diet and the old computer went back into storage.

I dieted for four days before I fell off the wagon, so to speak, and I still lost a pound and a half.

I haven’t failed. I’m not quitting. I will set my sights on a new day and start again.

<<<<<>>>>>

Something that has been on my list for a while that I wanted to talk about is essential oils.

Essential oils are a big thing right now and have their bases in natural medicine. Things our ancestors used to know and things that actually work.

My beautiful niece Bambi suggested peppermint oil to repel ticks and chiggers, critters I suffer with while shooting wildlife photos. “And who doesn’t love smelling like a candy cane?” she said.

Essential oils are not new. They have been around for a very long time.

Probably fourteen years ago I splurged in a little endeavor called Peggy’s Kitchen. I only ran it for about nine or ten months and even though it paid it’s own bills, it was a lot of time and work for little gratification. So I closed it. But it was during this time that I wrote about a burn I suffered.

My cousin Lorraine, daughter of my beloved Aunt Marie and seen here with her older sister Rosemary (Boy! You sure can tell these two beauties are related, can’t you?). Rosemary is on the left, Lorraine on the right as you look at the photo…

But anyway, my cousin Lorraine took the time and expense to send me a bottle of essential lavender oil. “This is really good for burns,” she wrote me.

I am not sure that I ever properly thanked her for the kind and thoughtful gift. I am so blessed to have such an amazing family! But I always remember what she did for me and lavender is really good for burns! It actually helps fight infections, lessens blistering and scarring, promotes healing and helps to relax you. Now that's what I call magic in a bottle!

Lorraine, if I never thanked you for the lavender oil would you please accept this heartfelt and long overdue thank you?

Another beautiful lady in my life is our Pennsylvania neighbor Stephanie. Steph has been dabbling in the essential oils and when she found out that Mike is having trouble with his knee she made him some pain cream.

“Just try it,” she implored. “If you don’t like it or it doesn’t work, you don’t have to use it.”

Mike was a skeptic but gave it a try and was astounded when it did help. “How can this work?” Mike questioned. “What’s in it? Why does it work? I just don’t understand it!”

The effects of the essential oils are not long lasting and you do have to reapply, especially if it is a deep pain, but there are no nasty side effects, no getting hooked on it, and it does work! Mike was so amazed that he spread the word to anyone and everyone who would listen. He even gave some of his now precious pain cream to our other neighbor Rosie who has a hard time crocheting because of an arthritic thumb.

“I can crochet four rows before I have to put more on,” Rosie told us after having used the pain cream.

And Mike purchased three quarts to bring to Missouri with us - one for our youngest son Kevin.

Our last Saturday morning breakfast with the Robinson’s was a bit of an eye opener for me.

“I have to tell you something about your letters,” Steph started. “You did something a couple of times and it made me very angry.”

My heart sank the whole way down into the pit of my stomach and I’m sure it showed on my face but I put on my big girl pants, straightened up in my seat, braced myself for the stinging barbs of criticism and bravely asked, “What is it? I’ll fix it if I can.” I’d print a retraction, I thought. Not the first time, probably won’t be the last either.

“And I say this with love,” Steph starts.

Now you know it’s going to be really bad, don’t you. All bad news begins one of two ways. “I say this with love,” or “We have to talk.” Neither one is EVER a good thing.

I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. “Okay?”

“Two or three of your last letters ended very abruptly,” she said.

And I laughed. I should have known she was setting me up. But if she ever did have to give me bad news that is how she would do it, with kindness and love.

“If that is the only problem you have with my letters then I count myself pretty lucky!”

Steph laughed. “There was no hash tag, no ‘This is the end,’ no ‘Let’s call this one done,’ no, ‘Go shit in your hat,’ - nothing! Right in the middle of a story -BOOM!- end of subject.”

Steph picked up her new fangled cell phone, the kind everyone but me has these days and the device she uses to read her emails on, and starts swiping at the screen.

“I’m looking and looking on my phone to see... Hmmm maybe there was another email.” She rolls her eyes. “There was no other email! That was the end of the story and I don’t like it!” She puts her phone down and looks at me. “What’s up with that?”

And I laugh at her expressiveness.

“Didn’t you think it was long enough?” I asked.

“But it didn’t...it didn’t have a conclusion! It can’t be long enough if it doesn’t have a conclusion!”

“I probably got to the bottom of a page and said, ‘That’s it, I’m done.’” I paused and thought of the country euphemism that Stpeh used. “Go shit in your hat Stephanie,” I added.

We laughed.

All joking aside and in all seriousness Stephanie said to me, “So that’s really all it was. And from now on I would like for you to please finish your letters with an ending so I know this is the end of the story and I don’t go back to my email looking for a page two or a part two!”

I think I can oblige her in that request. But as my readers you have to do your part too. If I bring up a point and don’t get back to it, you have to let me know. Think of writing as a beast. It takes form and grows and if I’m not careful parts of it get away from me, parts I meant to tie up.

Plow Day was a story I ended with, “ What a great day it was, getting to meet new people, see new things, and travel new roads.” Originally I had another line on there. I had something like, “And with that we will call this one done.” But in subsequent rewrites I decided it was redundant so I took it off. Maybe I should have left it on?

Now since you brought up Plow Day!

I got a very nice response from Brenda Kellogg, the lady I sent photos to of that day. After I wrote Plow Day I sent her a copy of the story. I wanted her to confirm I had the photos of Busty and Monty in the right places. I have very bad facial recognition skills. I might know the teller at the bank but if you take her out of the bank I won’t recognize her. I have to really know someone to pick them out of a crowd. So for me to know which man was Busty and which was Monty after spending only a few minutes with them wasn’t going to happen. And I knew that, that’s why I asked for help.

During one of my final edits on the story I realized Maxine had told me that Busty was older. I looked at the pictures of the two men and judging by gray hair alone, I had them in the wrong place. I switched them.

Later, Stephanie tells me I got it right. I didn’t know she knew the Kellogg’s.

A few days ago I got a reply from Brenda Kellogg. “I printed your article and gave it to Charles and Maxine. They were both very touched and enjoyed it. They wanted me to extend a very big Thank You. Hope your blog readers enjoyed it also.”

Our last afternoon at our Mountain Home found us at the Kipp’s. I love the Kipp’s home. It is so full of warmth and kindness and love that it fairly overflows!

“I made a Date Pecan Apple Pie, would you like to have a piece?” Rosie asked as we shed our jackets and made ourselves comfortable at the table.

“Well yeah!” I answer with no hesitation at all. Who in their right mind could turn down an offer like that!

Lamar helps to get plates and forks around and guess who shows up with a bag full of butternut squash?

If you said Rosie’s Uncle Jim then you would be right.

“Come on in Uncle Jim,” Rosie called cheerfully.

“I was just going to put these here on the porch and leave,” Uncle Jim said.

“Well, you are just in time for pie. Won’t you stay for a slice?”

“Well I guess I could stay long enough for that,” he replied.

See! In the face of homemade pie, no one refuses.

“Peg, what’s with Lamar?” you ask. “Is he kneeling on the floor or what?

Yeah, it does kind of look like that doesn’t it. Well, there are four chairs at the Kipp’s table and with Uncle Jim there that made five of us. Lamar, ever a gracious host, pulled a small kid’s chair from the corner and sat on that.

The conversation was just good old fashion down-homey chatting about gardens and apples, the weather and stuff like that.

I just listened because I was way too busy eating this delicious pie to add anything to the conversation.

After Uncle Jim took his leave and we saw him out of the driveway (he had to back out onto the road) Lamar asked, “Do you want to hear a story?”

 “Sure!” I love stories.

Lamar went into the other room and came back with a rolled up and dog eared copy of Plow Day. “Okay, right here you see a Plow Day sign against a stop sign,” he said pointing to the picture.

 “My dad had a Model A Ford, I wasn’t old enough to get a driver’s license yet, but I took a car load of younger kids, I went up Dempsey Hill Road to where you took this picture (he flipped a few pages back) and I turned around there,” and he stabbed at the picture of the barn with another Plow Day sign on it. “I come back down to the foot of the hill and I stopped there at the stop sign and the town cop, P.D. Hugo, was sitting there. Now this was in the 1950’s. P.D. Hugo came over to the car and says, ‘Do you have a license to have that car on the road?’

I said, ‘No sir.’

And he said, ‘Does your dad know you have that car on the road?’

And I said, ‘No sir.’

And he said, ‘If you do it again I’m going to tell him.’”

We all laughed.

“I never did it again. I don’t think he ever told him. My dad never mentioned it anyway.”

“I love that story!” I told Lamar.

“To me, policemen are supposed to serve and protect. He did both that day. You know? I never had a car load of kids out on the road without a license again. He did what he was supposed to do, serve and protect,” Lamar observed.

Do you think a police officer would let a kid go like that today?

We chatted for quite a while as Lamar flipped through my story and pointed out different landmarks to us including where his parents house and barn were, the pasture and the creek.

“My dad’s pasture backed up to the Kellogg farm,” Lamar said.

Then he came to the YOU KEEP OUT house.

“Oh, and after Rosie and I had gotten married we were living in Evergreen, we were renting from Uncle Jim, and my dad said, ‘You outta buy that place!’ So we drove down Moon Street to see the place and there was a woodchuck on the porch living there at the time. When he saw us he ran in the house.” Lamar laughed at the memory. “So we figured we’re not buying this place, it’s already taken.”

I, for one, am extremely happy that the Kipp’s didn’t buy that house because then we might never have met! And when we left that day, I had a butternut squash!

So, Stephanie, put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Confession

Sunday, November 22, 2015

My goodness! My head is fairly swimming with all the news and stories I have for you! I hardly know where to begin!

Let me start by saying that I hope this letter finds you happy and healthy.

My current desktop photo is my breezeway decorated with items from my mother’s kitchen. In her move she found things she didn’t need anymore and I was happy to have them.

Speaking of my breezeway…

When we arrived at our Mountain Home, Mike unlocked the windowless door of the breezeway and pulled it open with a groan of protest from hinges that haven’t been asked to work in over a year. He brushed aside a few old spider webs and stepping inside pulled a big sheet of cardboard from the window, flooding the breezeway with sunlight. We got our first look around and I saw it almost right away.

“Saw what?” you ask.

I saw the skeletal remains of a young bird. It was there, under the metal stool that sits just inside the door and next to the cat door.

Instantly, in a flash, a blink of an eye, even without thinking about it - I knew what had happened - and it made me sad.

The birds build their nests under the eaves and in the rafters and any place else they want to for that matter. One such bird family built a nest, laid eggs and kept them warm until they hatched. Fed the babies with unerring devotion and on Flight Day Baby jumped from the wrong side of the nest and ended up in my breezeway which became an oubliette, a prison, and ultimately a death sentence.

I saw his bones and feathers dried into a pile of lifelessness and dust and it made me sad. The only light onto the breezeway would have come from the clear plastic flap of the cat door and that is where he spent his final moments. In my mind’s eye I could see the poor creature trying to get out into the day only to be met with a locked door.

Sigh.

Could he have gotten out if the cat door hadn’t been locked? I wondered. I didn’t know but at least it would have been more of a chance than he had. I’m going to make sure it’s not locked when we leave this time.

I really hate that he had to die that way.

The first time we came back to our Mountain Home after having been gone for a few months, I found a mouse in the bottom of a trash can.

Starvation, dehydration is a death I wouldn’t wish on even a mouse. I turn all of my cans upside down before leaving now. And a few years ago I saw a litter of newborn kittens, abandoned by their mother, die of starvation. It isn’t fast and it isn’t pretty.

“Peg, it would have been kinder to kill them,” you say.

Yeah, it would have been kinder, however, I couldn’t do it. And secretly I was hoping another cat would adopt them. When it didn’t happen, I put them out and let the night take them.

The next few days were a whirlwind of cleaning the apartment, moving things out of the RV and getting settled into our Mountain Home.

 Sweeping and cleaning the breezeway was a little ways down on my list of things to do and I could manage to walk in and out of the breezeway without taking too much note of the little guy laying there. His little feathers were dark and blended in with the myriad of spider webs and dust bunnies that lived there with him - and being under the stool helped too. But eventually cleaning day did come and he got swept up and unceremoniously put out with the trash.

Sigh.

At least I wouldn’t have too see it and think about it anymore, right?

Yeah.

Well, you know something?

I love the visions that words evoke. You would think, judging by what I wrote, that I cleaned my whole breezeway, wouldn’t you. Had there not been any more to this story I’d have been happy to let you go on thinking that too.

Confession is good for the soul.

I didn’t clean the whole breezeway.

When you step from the apartment onto the breezeway you can go left or right. On the left is an alcove with a desk, a chair and a couch. It’s where my recyclables collect and live until I take them to the recycling center. It’s where all the boxes of Momma’s things are piled as well as a few boxes of other stuff. Against the wall and straight across from the apartment door are three chairs and an old microwave stand. The breezeway doglegs back to the right at this point and in that section is where the little metal stool sits (where the bird died) with a table on the opposite wall and the outside door is straight ahead.

I wasn’t actually to the Clean Breezeway part of my list yet when I spotted the baby bird laying there once too often and felt sad for it yet again.

Oh for heaven’s sake, Peg, just sweep it up and be done with it, my ever practical mother said in my head. On an impulse I grabbed the broom and started sweeping and once I started I kept on sweeping, at least up to the apartment door, choosing to deal with the packed boxes beyond that point another day.

Days passed into weeks and I didn’t think about that baby bird anymore. Then one day, standing there sorting through the recyclables, I see a loop of string, hanging from the end of a pan, sticking up out of a box, stacked on a couch so full of stuff you couldn’t sit on it if you wanted to.

I helped Momma put some of those loops on pans so she could hang them on her wall. Hey! I could hang them on my wall right here in the breezeway!

It took me long enough to think about that. We’d been there a month at this point.

And thus, Decorating Day arrived.

I had a good time pulling things from boxes and finding homes for them on the wall. Slowly, one by one, the boxes were unpacked or moved to the back of my shop for extended storage. Then I grabbed the broom to finish sweeping the breezeway. That’s when I saw it.

“Saw what?” you ask.

Well, I didn’t know what it was, not at first. I thought the desk was damaged and then upon closer inspection I saw it was white and it was on the cross brace of the desk and on the floor beneath. It looked like bird poop. I puzzled over this, probably longer than you would have, before it dawned on me that that’s where the baby bird had hung out. Maybe he went back and forth, spending his days on the cross brace of the metal stool, crying out for rescue, seeing the light but unable to get to it, and maybe spending his nights on the cross brace of the desk.

And…

I was sad all over again.

“Peg, death is just a part of life.”

I know. Try telling that to my heart.

<<<<<>>>>>

That cat!

That darn cat!

Yeah, Baby Blue.

We have three sets of shelves in the apartment and Baby Blue liked to climb up and get in one of the cubbyholes.

“Let’s clean it out and make it for her,” Mike suggested so we did. I moved things onto other shelves and we put a rag down for her and…

She wouldn’t use it.

No open flat space in my home goes unused. I tossed a hat on the shelf.

A few days later I put a box in front of it. “Baby Blue! Get off there!” I told her. “That’s not yours, it’s Kandyce’s!”

“You better put it in the RV or you’ll forget it,” Mike said.

I put the box in the RV and over the course of several more days I added stuff to a stack I had started in the unused cubby, stuff I didn’t want to forget.

Yeah.

Now it’s juuust right!

Baby Blue always thinks anything new in the house is hers. I bought a two pack of Multi-Cat cat litter and saved the outer box (which is sturdy) to put some stuff into.

Yeah.

Baby Blue has certainly brought us many smiles through the years and life without her wouldn’t be near as much fun.

Having her declawed wasn’t anything we wanted to do and once in Pennsylvania and far from our vet, Baby Blue started limping. We were eight weeks past her surgery. Did she have a piece of litter stuck in there causing her problems? Surely if that was the issue it would work it’s way out, right? It wouldn’t be long until we’d be heading west, so I decided to just watch her and take her to our vet when we got back to Missouri if she wasn’t any better by then.

A couple of days later Baby Blue is holding her paw off the floor and not walking on it at all. I was worried about her.

We have a vet in Wyalusing, not far away. There’s a vet in Wysox which is just twelve miles away. Do we go to either of those? No! We drive thirty miles to East Smithfield! I didn’t want to drive thirty miles to East Smithfield! Because guess what. You then have to turn around and drive thirty miles back!

I called Wysox Pet Clinic. Closed on Friday’s. It was Friday. Who closes on Friday!

Grumble, grumble.

Well, despite the fact that Wyalusing Pet Clinic told us to take our animals some place else, maybe if I apologized they would see us? Surely after all these years their grievance against me has faded. Maybe? Maybe if they won’t see us I could ask the Kipp’s to take Baby Blue for me? I love the Kipp’s and I would almost bet my bottom dollar they would do it for me if they could, but I didn’t really want to ask them.

I called the Wyalusing Pet Clinic.

“This is Christy, how may I help you?”

“Our cat was declawed two months ago and now she’s limping, could you see her today?” I asked.

“Did we declaw her?”

“No,” I answered.

“Have you been here before?” Christy asked.

Uh-oh. Here it comes. What am I going to say? I was quiet for a moment trying to decide. “I don’t know how to answer that,” I started. “We were there a long time ago and...and...” I hesitated. I was a bitch, I don’t want to say that - even if it was true! “I’m afraid I wasn’t very nice.” Yeah! That was true! I hurried on. “But if I promise to be nice will you see my cat?”

“What’s the name?” she asked.

I gave her my name and waited for her to type it into the computer. The moment of truth was at hand. Any second a big red flag will appear on her screen saying this person has been blacklisted. “You can just take your pets someplace else.”

I waited.

“We can see you at eleven-ten,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said appreciatively and hanging up I breathed a sigh of relief. That wasn’t too bad and we wouldn’t have to drive sixty miles. Yay!

We arrive for our appointment fifteen minutes early and they kept us waiting for another forty minutes as other people came and went. Fun. But I didn’t get mad. I promised to be nice, and I was nice. When our turn finally arrived the vet checked Baby Blue and saw that she does indeed have something going on with her paw but she didn’t know what.

“Her nail could be re-growing,” she told us and I hadn’t known it could do that. Our twelve year old Molly has a nail that I thought the vet just missed, now I know it probably has re-grown, but it hasn’t caused her any problems so we let it be.

The vet gave Baby Blue a shot of an antibiotic that is supposed to last for two weeks, four syringes of an oral pain medicine that I had to give her one a day and one hundred and fifteen dollars later we leave.

I was out with Ginger and Itsy when our fabulous neighbors the Kipps, Rosie and Lamar, Maggie Dog and Mama Cat, came walking up the driveway.

Rosie, Mike and I settled on the patio as Lamar took care of the cats.

“Guess what we did today?” Mike asked as soon as Lamar joined us.

“What?” the Kipp’s said in unison.

Mike looked at me. “Took Baby Blue to the vet?” I ventured.

“How is she?”

“Well, the vet didn’t know for sure, she saw some weeping and scabbing and gave her an antibiotic and some pain medications,” I answered.

“Guess what Peg did?” Mike asked with a Cheshire Cat grin on his face.

The Kipp’s looked at me expectantly. Mike looked at me waiting.

Really Mike?

I don’t have any problem telling on myself but I do like to save some stuff for my letters. “I apologized,” I said simply.

“The people who are there now aren’t the same ones as owned it before,” Lamar said.

Doggone it! I’d swallowed my pride and apologized for nothing.

“But that’s okay,” he went on. “She listened and you got it off your chest, so it’s all good.”

Yeah.

Confession is good for the soul.

Heaven's Angel

Cindy had lung cancer.

No one knew anything about it until she started getting the migraines, that’s when they found it. During the course of this harrowing and heartbreaking journey they discovered that Cindy had had her lung cancer for about two years.

My cute little redheaded brother Richard and his beautiful wife flew to the Cancer Institute in Chicago. “Cindra (Richard often calls her by her proper name) did not like to fly...she thought she would not like flying. We went to these parks and fairs and stuff where they had the Ferris Wheels and she never liked being up high so she figured she’d never want...doesn’t want to fly but we had to go out to Chicago and we had to be there right away so she said okay. We were at the very back of the plane and the stewardess was right there. She noticed I had my Go-Pro Camera and I wasn’t pointing it out the window, I was pointing it toward Cindra. She asked about it and I told her it was Cindra’s first flight, she probably wouldn’t like it so I wanted to make sure I got it taped. Laugh about it later, you know? We were up there and hit a little bit of turbulence and she looked a little worried, but not that much. We got on the ground and she said, ‘That wasn’t that bad,’” and Richard chuckled at the memory.

At the cancer center they removed the tumor that was causing the migraines. “Cindy does not like having her picture taken,” Richard told me. And she’s not alone in that! There are a lot of us who don’t like to have our picture taken. That makes this picture of her, as she lay in the hospital bed after the operation with her head bandaged, even more remarkable. “She took this picture herself!”

As sometimes happens, especially after something as serious as a brain operation, complications set in.

Cindy had a strain bleed and although they caught it and repaired it right away, fluid accumulated faster than it could drain and her brain swelled. When they tried to wake her, she wouldn’t wake up. From there things went downhill, Cindy developed pneumonia and her condition continued to deteriorate.

Richard was alone. He was in a big city hospital and he was all alone. Chicago was far from family and friends in miles, but we were all with him in thought and prayers. Not the same thing, of course, and our oldest and much adored sister Patti jumped on an airplane and flew to Chicago to be with him!

Oh my gosh! What a great family we have! My heart is fairly bursting with love! I am so thankful that at a time like this Richard didn’t have to be alone anymore. Patti was there to offer a shoulder and an ear.

“Cindra never wanted to be a burden to anyone, she said she didn’t want anyone to wipe her butt! She didn’t want that!” Richard told me.

I smiled. I have often said the same thing myself!

“She wouldn’t even let me do things for her, she always said she could take care of herself. Before this operation - in fact we talked about this years ago! - before we left home Cindy wrote a letter saying she did not want to be kept on a machine. It was her wish.”

The days passed as we waited and prayed for Cindy to wake up. During this time she had a birthday as she lay unconscious in her hospital bed.

“She wasn’t going to wait for her birthday to have this operation which is really sad because she just turned 60 years old.”

“Did you sing Happy Birthday to her?” I asked.

“Everybody did. I put the kids on the speaker phone and even the nurses out there, you know, they heard us and wished her a happy birthday also. They are very caring people out there. Very.”

Richard stood by her bedside all week long watching life ebb from this strong and independent woman. He watched, he prayed and he listened as the doctors told him what to expect.

“No hope,” are the words they uttered. “No hope.”

Are there any words in the English language more terrifying than that?

The decision was made.

Cindy’s girls would arrive on Sunday. If there was no improvement by then, they would remove the life support.

Having just gone through something very similar myself, I can imagine how much it meant to the girls to be able to see their mother one last time, to tell her they loved her, one last time, to kiss her, one last time.

“I was there and the girls were there at her last moment. I had my lips on her lips and I knew when her last heart beat was and at that moment I knew she was at peace and I was at peace.”

And on November 8, 2015 Cindy went home to our Lord.

“What is one thing you want all of us to know about Cindy?”

“One thing...there’s more than one thing! She was very independent...and she had a big heart...” Richard paused then went on, “...her heart was...she loved kids! That’s what it was all about. She opened a daycare and had six kids at one time, but now she has just been taking care of the grandkids. If you look at this place, it’s full of toys and stuff. She was more concerned about the kids than anything. It was always about the kids.”

I interjected a few, uh-huhs along the way but mostly I let Richard talk and tell the story in his own way.

“Don’t get me wrong, she took good care of me too. Anything I needed she was more than willing to buy and she did! I have two packs of brand new socks in the bottom drawer of the dresser and a pack of underwear up there too. I have two bathrobes and one I’m still wearing and this is like five or six years later and I’m still wearing the first one because it’s not wore out yet...she’d find something that I like, she’d buy two of them so I’d have another one when that one wears out.

We had a good life and the bills were paid and there was always something...” I have a feeling Richard was going to say always something to eat but he didn’t finish as another thought occurred to him. “We’ve got so much food in the freezer right now I gotta start giving it away because there’s no way I’m going to eat it before it gets bad.”

“What do you think kept you together for twenty-four years?”

“Our kind hearts. She knew I was a good person and she was a good person too. We had our arguments and everything but a lot of times they would last a couple of hours or even overnight but in the morning she’d be there making coffee and I’ll...I’ll just walk up behind her, you know, wrap my arms around her and...” he paused as if remembering. “...give her a kiss on the neck and that was it! She’d turn around and we made up right there,” he laughed at the happy memory of make-up kisses.

“Uh-huh,” and I was smiling too.

“Life is rough, that’s for sure. She kept the house and when the bills need paid- everything was paid. I mean I got a real good credit rating right now - damn good! - because she made sure all the bills were paid.”

I could hear a great amount of pride in Richard’s voice as he spoke of his beloved wife.

“Can I write a follow-up to the first story I wrote?”

“Yeah. Something simple, nothing long, you know, maybe a couple of paragraphs, keep it real simple,” Richard says and I had to smile at that. He doesn’t know me very well, does he?

Cindra leaves behind two daughters, two step-daughters, twelve grandkids, one great-grandson and...

Heaven has gained a new angel.

And heaven’s new angel is named Cindra.

Plow Day

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Saturday morning breakfast continues to be a tradition with us only now instead of having it with Margaret at the Golden Corral, we have it with the Robinsons and it’s usually at the Ram Zone in Wyalusing. However, because it was parents day at their daughter Jonecca’s school, we had to relocate one of our Saturday breakfasts to the Jolly Trolley in Dushore which was on their way down to Jonecca’s college.

As Mike made a U-turn to park in front of the restaurant I snapped a photo of the fruit hanging from the trees there along the main street in Dushore and it is my current desktop photo.

You know something? This isn’t even an especially good photo however, sometimes I get a little too busy to devote the time it takes to sort through the photos. Which -- I only thought I was behind on posting photos before! I haven’t posted since September twenty-first and I haven’t even looked at what I’ve downloaded since October twenty-fourth! And as a result I have been looking at this photo on my desktop for a long time now!

After our breakfast with the Robinsons, Mike and I drove around Dushore for a little while.

 Coming back to the main street I see the Catholic church up on the hill to our left. “Mike, the road that goes up to the church is the Dushore Overton road. It should take us back out to New Albany. Do want to go that way?” I asked always looking for photo opportunities.

“Okay,” he said and off we went.

I’m happily snapping away at barns and cows and Mike is poking along, not in too much of a hurry.

Occasionally he would pull over to allow an impatient driver around us. We’re following the road signs and we come to an intersection that says straight across is Kelly’s Hill Road. On our right is Hottenstiens Hill Road. We were on the Dushore Overton Road and the way to the left wasn’t marked.

“Which way?” Mike asked but I didn’t know. We took the unmarked road and I got a few photos I wouldn’t have gotten had we not gone that way,

but a mile or two down the road Mike says, “I don’t think this is right.” He turned around and as we approached the crossroad of our mistake, we see a sign saying Overton is one mile straight through. We should have gone right instead of left.

Once through Overton and back on familiar roads we are heading for home when we see a sign that says ‘Plow Day’ with an arrow pointing to the right.

“What’s Plow Day?” we both asked at the same time.

“Let’s call Jon and Steph,” I suggested.

“It’s when a bunch of people get together and plow the field with their horses,” Jon told us.

“You wanna go see that?” Mike asks.

“Well, yeah!” So we follow the signs and get off onto some country dirt roads.

“Which way?” Mike asked as we were approaching an intersection.

“Ummm…” I say stalling for time as I snapped a few more pictures of an old truck sitting beside the road. It’s hard to take pictures and watch for signs!

“There it is,” Mike said spotting the directional sign.

We drive on and after a while we see where cars and trucks and horse trailers are pulled off into a field and cars are parked beside the road. There’s a trailer and a tent and a Port-A-Jon set up on the edge of the field and people are cooking over open fires with pots steaming on top.

“Do you have some money?” I asked Mike. I saw a table set up with a couple of big roaster ovens and a couple of ladies were fluttering around with big spoons, lifting lids and stirring things. We had just come from breakfast and I wasn’t hungry but I was open to buying a cup of coffee.

“Yeah,” he answered as he got out of the Jeep.

With nothing to stop the wind it came across the hilltop, blustery and cold. I pulled my sweater a little tighter around me and headed for the table.

“Hi, I’m Sue,” a lady said as she came up to us holding two pens. I thought we were going to have to write something but when she held them out to us and said, “Welcome,” I realized they were gifts.

“Thank you,” I said taking a proffered pen as Mike took the other one. I turned it over to see what was written on it while Mike was chatting with Sue. Albany Valley Plow Day 2015 was printed on the pens. Aww. How sweet is that? They had pens made just for the event!

“If we stay on this road,” Mike asked pointing to the dirt road we had just come in on, “will it take us to the Marsh Road?”

“It’ll take you out to Evergreen,” Sue said. “This road just makes a big circle,” and she made a big circle with her arm.

“Evergreen?”

“You know, where Lamar grew up,” I said speaking of our neighbor.

“Oh,” Mike said with realization dawning.

Sue went on. “There’s a lot of food over there, and coffee. Help yourself and if it’s not open and you want some, just go ahead and open it up.”

“Thank you,” I said minding my manners and smiling. “Can you tell us what’s going on here today?”

“Well my mom and dad started Plow Day and my mom makes all the food and everyone comes out with their teams and plow. That’s my mom over there,” she said indicating a lady who appeared to be presiding over the event.

“Sue! Hey!” someone yelled and she turned to look.

“Go on and get some coffee or a roll or something,” Sue said taking her leave.

“Thank you!” I said a she walked away. It was ch-ch-chilly! I only had a sweater on and Mike a long sleeved shirt. Coffee would help.

I walked over to where the tables were set up, located the cups and got some coffee. Then I scoped out the food and saw a cream cheese filled Danish and even though I wasn’t hungry, I couldn’t resist. I opened the box and picked one up and went back to where Mike was. “Wanna bite?”

“No. I don’t feel right about it. This is for their family and friends,” Mike said. “Not for us.”

“Mike, we were invited to help ourselves and to not do so would be rude.” I just don’t have the reservations about accepting hospitality that Mike does.

I ate my Danish in silence and drank my coffee as Mike and I watched the people bustle about.

I had my camera with me. “I should try to get someone for my Humans page,” I said to Mike and snapped a few photos of people.

“Peg, you can’t just take pictures of people without their permission,” Mike said. But in my experience most people don’t mind and if they do object they manage to communicate that to me with no problem at all. Usually by throwing a hand up to block their face or turning their back to me. Either way I get the message and don’t take any more pictures of them.

I looked around and spotted the trash can, walked over and threw my empty coffee cup away. I came back to where Mike stood shivering with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “I’m going to talk to her,” I said nodding toward Sue’s mother.

“Alright.”

I walked over and she looked up at me. “Hi! I’m Peggy and I do a webpage. Could I put you on it along with your picture?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Great! What’s your name?”

“Maxine,” she answered and when she paused I fired away with my first question.

“You started Plow Day?”

“Kellogg.” Oh. My bad. I didn’t wait for her last name. “Mm-hmm,” she answered my question.

“What made you start Plow Day?”

“I don’t know, he just decided he...he bought the horses and wanted to do something...and the kids wanted to help do it and everybody thought it was a good idea and...and...this is where we are,” Maxine finished with a laugh.

“How long have you been doing this?

“Seven years.”

“Uh-huh uh-huh,” I said having the habit of saying it twice in a row like that. “And do they make it a competition or is it just...” I was going to go on to say something to the effect of it just being a friendly contest, but I couldn’t formulate how to say that thought so I let it hang.

“No, they just...people just get together and plow. Show off their horses,” Maxine answered.

“Is that what it’s all about?”

“I think so,” and Maxine laughed.

“How many come out here to Plow Day?”

“Well last year we had a hundred or more and we had ten teams.”

“What’s the best thing about Plow Day?”

Maxine thought about it for a moment. “It’s the meetin’...” she stopped and started again. “I think it’s the people you meet and you get to know a lot of people.”

Just then she spies a man walking by, “What do you think Monty?” Monty stopped and Maxine went on. “This is my son.”

“Hi Monty, I’m Peggy, I do a web page and we just stumbled on your little event here, what’s the best thing about Plow Day?”

“Family and friends,” he answered quickly and simply.

“So this has been going on for seven years and your mom and dad started it all...” I didn’t have a question but I was hoping he would pick up the ball and run with it.

“Couldn’t do it though if it wasn’t for the kids,” Maxine chimed in.

“How many kids are there?” I asked her.

“SIX!” she exclaimed.

I drew in my breath with a gasp. Maxine laughed from deep in her belly. She was obviously delighted with my response and must get that a lot when people find out she has six children.

“My goodness! Boys and girls? What do you have?”

“Two boys and four girls,” Maxine answered.

Monty sees a buddy and yells something about not working in the rain. “No,” the buddy answers, “I’m waiting for you to come over and pick up hay.” And Monty wanders off to continue his conversation.

“Do all of the kids come?” I asked Maxine.

“Yeah, they’re all here today.”

“It’s really nice you kept your family close to you,” I said thinking how far and wide mine was scattered and how hard it was for all of us to get together.
“Suzy is the fartherest one away and she lives in New Jersey.” (Mom calls Sue by her little girl name.)

“Do you do this the same time every year?”

“Just about, now last year it was the 25^th and today is the 24^th.”

“And how long does it last?”

“Usually until around three.”

We were quiet for a moment. “How many acres do you have?”

“I don’t know,” Maxine answered, “Hey Busty!” she called and a man turned and headed our way.

“Is this one of yours?” I asked Maxine as Busty made his way towards us.

“That’s my oldest boy,” Maxine said as he joined us.

I turned to him and he smiled at me.

“Nice to meet ya,” I greeted him.

“How you doin?” he returned.

“How many acres do we have here?” Maxine asked.

“There’s a hundred twenty-two...on this.”

“I don’t know how many over home...” Maxine said.

“Umm, 80 or 90,” Busty answered and with that he was off to finish whatever he'd been doing when we interrupted him.

“How did he get a name ‘Busty’?”

“His name is Charles and everybody’d call, he’d come, and...and...I don’t know, just - Charles!” she yelled. “That’s my husband going there in the blue coveralls.”

“So you have a Charles and a Charles Jr.?”

“Mm huh.”

“And Charles Jr. you call Busty but you don’t remember how he got his nickname,” I said confirming my facts.

“No,” and she chuckled under her breath a little.

I had a feeling that there was a secret here but she wasn’t going to tell me. I changed the subject.

“Your husband’s still getting around pretty good,” I observed.

“Charles was eighty in September and I’ll be eight-two in April.”

I gasped, “You got a younger man!”

Maxine laughed from deep in her belly again.

“How long have you been married?”

“Fifty-nine years,” Maxine stated.

“Fifty-nine years!” I echoed. “Oh my gosh! What does it take to stay married for fifty-nine years?”

“I don’t know, there have been some good times and bad times, but I think it’s the kids...it was the kids I think...that when we had the kids...they was...” There was a long pause then a, “Yup,” and Maxine trailed off not finishing any of her thoughts as we both watched this lady come across the field carrying a plate of goodies.

“Well hello there!” Maxine greeted her and I realized it was a Bring A Plate affair. I would remember that if we made it back next year.

“Hi,” this lady replied pleasantly.

“How are you?” Maxine asked.

“Hangin’ in there,” she answers, then she turned to me, “I’m sorry.”

“Go right ahead,” I told her and I got up from my seat.

“So they didn’t get started yet?” I heard her ask Maxine.

“No, no, everybody’s been a comin’ and...and ...” Maxine let it hang.

After a pause this lady said, “Ten o’clock must just be an estimate,” and she laughed right out loud.

“And they’re visiting,” Maxine qualified.

“Yeah, yeah, you gotta do that,” and she laughed again. She seemed like a really nice lady but I wandered away leaving these ladies to catch up and looked around for Mike. I didn’t see him anywhere! I bet he’s sitting in the Jeep, I thought and when I got back to the Jeep -- there he was! Engine running, heat blasting, talking on his phone.

I opened the door and climbed into the welcoming warmth. I let him finish his conversation. “They haven’t started to plow yet and it goes until about three, let’s go home for a little while,” I said. “I need my jacket.”

“Wanna go this way?” Mike asked pointing forward to uncharted roads.

“Well, yeah!” I’m always ready to see new sights.

We start driving and the already narrow dirt road becomes even more narrow. “Is this someone’s driveway?” Mike asked. I kid you not, that’s what it looked like.

“There’s a guide rail and I don’t think the state puts them on private drives.”

We go a little further and the road curves to the right. Once at the curve we look ahead, “I don’t know Mike,” I said, “It looks like the road just goes up to that house.”

Mike put it in reverse and backs up to the curve and a little cut-off that’s there and he gets us turned around.

It reminded me of growing up. We had a really long driveway and we occasionally had people come in only to realize it was a private drive and turn around and go back out.

“Who’s that?” one of us kids would ask when we saw an unfamiliar car coming down the lane.

“Someone turning around,” was the answer. I never could figure out why they came down our driveway to turn around.

“Maybe it goes around the house,” Mike said and he’s creeping along and glancing back over his shoulder. We get to a spot where we can see that the road does indeed go on around the house. “Yep, it does.”

I was looking too. “I see it now.”

“Let’s turn back around,” Mike said and as soon as he could, he did! We turned around again and as we get down around and on the other side of the house, the road gets even more narrow, if that’s even possible. It is little more than a driveway at this point.

“I hope we don’t meet another car,” I said.

“Me too,” Mike agreed with my sentiment. In many places there just wasn’t anyplace to pull off and let another car pass. Luckily, Mike is a great backer-upper. He backs up better than I drive forward! I knew if the need arose he could back up until we found a wide spot. We didn’t pass any other cars and we just enjoyed our ride on these country back roads. I snapped pictures and after a while we come to a T and the adjoining road was wider.

Before going back to our mountain home, we decided to go to an antique store and we browsed our way through the rest of the morning.

When we got home we had two spoiled little dogs waiting for their Saturday morning treat. I always save them something from my breakfast plate and believe it or not, they know when Saturday rolls around!

After freshening up and making a travel cup of coffee, I grabbed my jacket. “Are you ready?” I asked Mike.

“Yep.”

“Can we take the Gooseneck Road?” I asked as we got back in the Jeep and snapped our seatbelts.

“Sure,” Mike said and leaving our driveway he turned the Jeep in that direction.

We hadn’t been down that way yet and it’s just nice to see what changes have happened in the year since we’ve been gone.

One of the first things I noticed is the old saggy-roof Oak Hill Church had gotten a makeover. A new metal roof and siding.

The fall foliage was pretty as we came down the hill overlooking the old goat farm. His Kids Goat Farm was the name of it. The house had burned a couple of years ago.

Once we had made our turn onto the Gooseneck Road there is an old farm there. I have been photographing it through the years. The barn is completely gone now.

“Do you think we can find our way back to Plow Day the way we came out?” I asked Mike.

“Yeah,” he answered with no hesitation.

I’m not sure I could. There were a couple of turns and I wasn’t driving and half the time I wasn’t even looking at the road, I was looking through the viewfinder of my camera.

“Why do you want to go back that way?” you wonder.

Things just look different when you come at them from a different direction, you know what I mean? And you also see things you didn’t see the first time or maybe you did see but missed your shot.

With that in mind, here’s the old abandoned YOU STAY OUT house coming from the other direction. It sits on Carpenter Hill Road just as you turn off Moon Street (which is not a street - it’s a dirt road!).

Because of the way the road curves I missed seeing an old rock wall the first time through. Rock walls are slowly disappearing from the landscape of Pennsylvania as they are being sold off and dismantled.

I don’t know what's in the tree. At first I thought it was the curled pages of a book.

“A book!” you exclaim. “Who would put a book in a tree?”

I know, right! I realized how silly the thought was as soon as I had it. Maybe it was the curled edge of a NO TRESPASSING sign cause it certainly looks like something paper all curled up there.

“It’s a fungus,” I hear my mother in my head.

Isn’t it funny how, that no matter how old we get, we still can hear our parents in our heads?

Our neighbor Lamar Kipp told me a story about this very thing just the other day. The Kipp girls are long raised and on their own. The family had gotten together for something and during the course of the conversation - Lamar forgets what they were talking about now- Jenn turned to Lamar and said, “You’re all the time telling me what to do!”

“I started laughing,” Lamar says.

“What’s so funny?” Jenn asked him.

“I said, ‘Jenn, I haven’t told you what to do since the first day I dropped you off at college.’ Apparently she still hears me in her head telling her what to do.”

Apparently I’m not the only one who experiences this phenomenon.

Topping the hill I see they are plowing. I raised my camera and took a few shots through the windshield.

Mike pulls halfway off the road. coming up behind a parked truck, and his phone rings before he can shut the engine off.

“It’s my brother,” he says putting the car in park and flipping open his phone. “Heeello,” Mike answers in a slow drawl. Mike and Cork talk every week.

I sat there for a little while taking photos through the windshield, listening to him talk but I knew from past experience that his conversation could last for a while.

I bailed. I was hungry and there was food over there! I got out of the Jeep and went over and moseyed up to the food table.

OMG! (Oh my gosh!) there was a lot of food! A food explosion had taken place while we were gone! I found a place in line. Sue was behind the table helping to serve. “What will you have?” she asked.

“What are my choices?” I didn’t know what was under all those lids.

“There’s chili and barbeque and hot dogs…”
“How about a barbeque,” I said. Mike likes barbeque, I’d take him one. Sue reached into the bun bag and put one on my plate. “Thank you,” I said. Then she lifted the lid and let me help myself to as much barbeque as I wanted. I put a polite scoop onto the bun and shut the lid.

“How about some beans?” Sue asked and lifted a lid.

Mike likes baked beans. “Sure!” and I put a couple of scoops on the plate. Then thinking about Mike being uncomfortable accepting hospitality, I reached in my pocket. “Can I give you a donation, you know, to help with the food?”

With no hesitation, Sue answers, “No. Mom and Dad do all of this because they want to bring the community together and eating is just a part of it.”

Country folk are just the best aren’t they! With country folk you come into the kitchen and you sit at the family table and they give you food and coffee. It just doesn’t get any better than that, does it. (No question mark there because truly -- it's not a question.)

“Thank you,” I said and made a mental note to thank Maxine too. I moved on to the dessert table. There were so many desserts! I was drooling just looking at them all! I love dessert! But I was making this plate for Mike. He hadn’t yet joined me. I didn’t know if he was still on the phone, staying warm, or just uncomfortable crashing the party.

I picked up a couple of chocolate chip cookies, put them on the plate and weaved my way through the knots of people who were standing around talking and made my way back to the Jeep where Mike was still talking on the phone. He saw me coming and put the window down.

“Here,” I said and thrust the plate at him. I’d have to get him something to drink too, I thought as Mike took the plate with only the slightest pause in his conversation.

“Peg just brought me a plate,” he told Cork. He took the plate and set it on the dash as I turned and walked away. I was going back for a plate of my own!

Once again I get up to the food tables and I’m looking things over and you know what? I decided to skip right to dessert. I know, I’m bad. I got chocolate cake with peanut butter icing and I’m standing there eating that when I hear Busty telling someone, “Let me get you some. We just squeezed it last night.” I watched as he strode past me, bent down, opened a cooler and pulled out a quart milk jug. It was a white one so you couldn’t see what was inside it. He let the lid drop, went over to the table where the cups were, pulled one from the stack and came back almost to where I was standing and handed it to a man who stood there waiting. Busty uncapped the jug and poured him a cup of what looked like apple cider.

“Oh,” I said. “You got any hard stuff?” I was channeling Momma here. She loves hard cider.

“No, we just made this last night,” Busty tells me.

“Can I have some?” I asked thinking it was private stock.

“Sure.”

Busty grabs another cup and hands it to me. I took it, he uncapped the jug and as he pours I tell him, “My mom is going to be so jealous when I tell her I had fresh cider.” I sipped. “Mmmm. This is really good!”

“Thank you,” he said. He capped the jug, set it on the table and walked away. I drained the cup of nectar of my favorite fruit and refilled it to take to Mike. I bet he’s waiting for this, I thought, but he wasn’t. As I crossed the road and approached the car I see Mike is still talking on the phone! He put the window down and took the cup from me. I went back to the party and straight for the dessert table. This time though I just stood there looking. There were pies and cakes and cookies and cobblers and brownies and too much to choose from. I couldn’t make up my mind so I stepped back out of the way and just eyed all of the goodies. “It’s probably better if you don’t eat anymore,” I tell myself. And then, to distract myself, I look elsewhere and I see Maxine sitting at her post. I’ll talk to her, I think, walk over and plop down on the step of the trailer beside her.

“Hi Miss Maxine!” I exclaim brightly. “I’m back.”

“Hi,” she replies and laughs.

We start chatting and Maxine, proud of her children, names them for me. “Marlene...she’s got a team of horses here someplace...”

“Uh-huh,” I say in her pause but I only had time for one ‘uh-huh’ before Maxine went on.

“And then Busty and Suzy and Monty - er Lisa and Monty and Katrina.”

Thinking about my Humans page, I asked Maxine, “What is the best thing about being a mom?”

“Oh my God!” Maxine said with disgust.

I laughed to cover my embarrassment for asking what apparently was a stupid question. “Do you have a favorite memory that you like to share?” I rephrased the question.

She didn’t hesitate but immediately her voice took on a different tone. “Christmastime with the kids when they was little...it was just wonderful...”

I waited for her to go on but she didn’t. In fact she added an “Mm-huh” as if putting a period on the end of a memory.

Then she did go on. “I don’t know how people can...that don’t want to have kids...that don’t want kids...I don’t know what we would ever do without them. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for any of mine!”

I know a quote for my Humans page when I hear one! I couldn’t dispute her comment and in the pause my mind drifted to something Mike had said. “This is for their family and friends,” his words echoed in my head. “Miss Maxine, do you know everyone here?”

“Oh no.”

“So I am not the only stranger here!” I felt vindicated.

“No, no.”

A man came up and Maxine reached into a box beside her. She greeted him and handed him two pens. He thanked her, put them in his pocket and they started to exchange pleasantries. I took this opportunity to excuse myself.

I found a spot to stand and take pictures. This beautiful team of black horses belongs to Maxine and Charles. I believe it is their niece driving as Charles walks beside.

“Did you see that cake?” I overheard one lady ask another.

Cake? “Did you see that cake?” Hmmm. Interesting. I better investigate.

“I didn’t see it,” I piped up and chipped in.

“You have to see this cake,” this lady said and walked us over to the dessert table. She lifted the top of the cake box and it’s one of those photo cakes. Plow Day 2015 was written in yellow icing.

She saw my camera. “Maybe you could take a picture of it for them?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t know these people. “Sure,” I said, “but I can’t use this camera, it’s too big.” I pulled Andrew’s Camera out of my pocket, glad that I had it with me and obligingly took the photo. I call my small Canon Andrew’s Camera because it’s the camera I let my grandson use when he comes to visit us.

I wander away as these ladies are talking over the cake and I see Sue. There’s how I can get the photo of the cake to them! “Sue, do you have an email address where I can send some photos?” I ask.

“Let’s see if Brenda will give you hers. She lives here and she’ll make sure Mom and Dad see them.”

Sue led the way to where Brenda was and explained what we wanted.

“Sure,” she said and started to pat her pocket for a pen and paper but I was ready. I handed Brenda a card and a pen and she gave me her email.

“I’ll put ‘photos’ in the subject line so you know it’s from me,” I told her. If she’s anything like me, she won’t open emails from people she doesn’t know.

“Thank you,” she said.

And with that I felt like my day was complete. I had lots of photos of our adventure, I had a quote for my webpage and I had an email address to send the photos to. There was only one thing left to do.

I walked over to where Maxine still sat. “Miss Maxine! Thank you for an awesome day!” I exclaimed.

She smiled and nodded her welcome.

I waved my good-bye and went on to the Jeep.

Guess who was still talking on the phone? Yep! Mike! I climbed in just as he was wrapping up his conversation.

“I’m ready.” I thought he was sitting in the Jeep waiting for me. “You want to eat your sandwich before we go?”

Mike reached for his plate and bit into his barbeque. “Mmmm.”

I was fairly bursting with my news. “We were not the only strangers here! I asked Maxine and she said there are a lot of people here that she doesn’t know.”

“Hmm.”

“And I tried to give Sue a donation for the food but she wouldn’t take it. She said that’s what this is all about; bringing people together.”

“Hmm,” was all Mike had to say about that too. Then, “These beans are good.”

I watched the last of the teams coming in as Mike finished his lunch. “How come only the women are plowing?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know, why didn’t you come over and ask someone?”

“I was just getting ready to come over,” he said, “but if you’re ready to go…”

“Yeah, I’m ready.” We buckled up and Mike pulled out onto the road.

“You wanna go this way?” he asked.

It’s spooky how sometimes it’s almost like he can read my mind. “Yeah,” I answered as if I didn’t really care, but I did. We were headed back out to Dempsey Hill Road, the road we had come in on originally and I’d only been on that road that one time. I was anxious to see how things would look going the other way or what I might have missed.

Here’s a picture of the truck from the other direction. I think I like this view better. What do you think?

What are those little crosses in the weeds for? I puzzle as I snapped a photo.

Then I glance on the other side of the road.

Oh. It was probably the old clothesline.

Even once we were back on roads we travel more often I continued to take pictures. I can’t tell you how many photos of this barn I have, in all kinds of weather, all times of the day and even in different seasons of the year.

This shed is another of my favorite subjects. It has been slowly falling through the years.

Back on our own road I take pictures of the neighbors treasures.

What a great day it was, getting to meet new people, see new things, and travel new roads.

Let's call this one done.