N is for Nostalgia ~ A to Z on Mondays, backwards

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My baby boy, all sticky and sweet while enjoying his lolipop.

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Long, long ago, back in 1962 I gave birth to a precious little boy after nine years of marriage. My oldest sister, Allene, had a son who was about 11 years old at this time. Our middle sister, Helen, had not been able to have a baby and had been married for about 12 years. After my baby was born, they enjoyed him so much it must have made them want one of their own. When my little boy was 14 months old, my sisters both had babies just 2 weeks apart! Allene had another boy and Helen had a girl. Nineteen months later Helen had another girl. They were all so close together in age and since we lived in the same town, it was almost like the were brothers and sisters instead of cousins. In the picture below, Helen's girls are in the chair, Allene's son on the left and mine on the right.

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Here they are visiting my Daddy and Mama. They always liked for them to all visit at one time. Either they wanted them to play together and keep themselves entertained, or they wanted to get it over all at one time:-) I suspect the latter!

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We lined them up to face the sun and the camera fairly often.

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This is one where they were all enjoying peppermint sticks. Maybe it was Christmas, I can't remember.

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Below, our kids are enjoying a swim in the pond with their Granddaddy while spending some time at the farm. I think Granddad was having as much fun as the kids!

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They grew up all too soon! Below, they must have been young teenagers. The girl on the left became a medical doctor, the boy in the middle is in the National Guard and serving overseas, the girl on the right is a Physical Thearapist for a Home Health Agency, and the boy on the right is my son and he and his family live and work about five miles from us.

If you still have young children at home, enjoy them while you can, because all too soon they will be grown up and out on their own!

Jen at unglazed is hosting this Meme. Click on the title of this post or Here to go to her blog to join the fun or see what others are posting for the letter N, as we travel backwards from Z to A on Mondays.

Absolutely my last post about the Ag Museum!

The Surrey with the fringe on top is my very favorite thing on the museum tour! This is my last post on our tour of the museum. I just wanted to show you a few more things.

I believe this is a Model T Ford. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Here is another one of the many buggies.

This metal wheeled John Deere tractor is at the entrance to the museum.

This big, lavender bush looks like an Althea.

This wooden wheel with wooden spokes and a metal rim looks like the ones that were on my Daddy's old wagon.

The sign said that this was a Turpentine distillery. I was thinking something else.

This is an odd looking tractor. Check out the wheels!

I wish I had written down information about all of these displays. I believe this is a Stearman bi-plane.

More Agriculture Museum Pictures

This is a sign that was at the entrance to the replicas of buildings you might have seen in a small town many years ago.

This is a typical service station you might see in the late 1930's and 1940's. Check out those gas pumps where you could see the orange colored gasoline in the top of the pump. The cost per gallon in this era was about 30 to 40 cents. You could have a mechanic repair your car and get tires, oil, etc.

This is the village church. I didn't see a designation of the denomination, so I guess this is the church everyone attended.

Most every small town had a Masonic Lodge, which was always a two-story building.

This is a replica of the old General Store, where you could buy anything from candy, groceries and sewing notions, to farming needs and feed for the farm animals. This was one of the places where men met for conversation and maybe a game of checkers around the old coal burning pot-bellied heater that usually stood in the center of these old stores.

Hope you are having a great weekend!

Miscellany

Maybe you already know that I like to photograph old barns. Someone told me about one that is not far from our house. I have been itching to go by and try to find it, so today was the day. It's old and quite unique. It has lattice work in the open area between the two sections of the roof.

While visiting my sister this afternoon, we watched her Squirrels playing in their big tree. They chased each other round and round and then one of them walked the wire down to their roof.

This Rabbit was an afternoon visitor to our yard. I managed to get a few pictures before he ran under our storage building, which is near the woods. A little half grown Rabbit was in our garage one afternoon. He finally came out and went flying across the yard!

I looked toward the South yesterday afternoon and saw this beautiful thunderhead. We have really had lots of rain lately. What we had today was just a few showers.

Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together. Psalm 34:3 (NIV)

Nostalgia

Passing by my Aunt and Uncle's old home place yesterday, I stopped to look at the beautiful red Spider Lilies I saw blooming there. A creek runs between their farm and the farm where I grew up. This is a picture of the old barn which is slowly melting away. Many years ago horses, mules and cows were sheltered here and fed fresh hay which was stored in the loft. The creek ran beside the barn, and not far away there was an old swimming hole in the creek where we learned to swim. Directly behind the barn were some of the largest native pecan trees I have ever seen. They produced small pecans with a very hard shell and some of the tastiest kernels I have ever eaten! When these trees were cut down their trunks measured well over three feet in diameter. Down behind the barn, and across the creek on our farm, there was a blacksmith shop which was shared by my Daddy and my Uncle.



This is the covered window in a shop near the house and the vines are beginning to add their foliage to help cover it.


Out in front of the shop is a huge bed of Red Spider Lillies that mulitply and come up year after year to add their beauty to the happy memories that linger here.


This was the old corn crib where dry ears of corn were stored until they were needed to feed the chickens and pigs.

Here is the Tool Shed that is near the home and the old garden spot. All kinds of fruits and vegetables were grown in the garden between this shop and the road. Lots of work went into raising, canning, freezing and preserving the delicious produce that was grown here. Most of you who will read this blog don't remember the days when farms were pretty much self-sufficient. The two things that I remember we couldn't raise were coffee and wheat for flour. Almost everything we ate was raised on the farm. We had pork, beef and chicken and sometimes wild game from a hunt. We had milk and butter from the cows and eggs from the hens. All sorts of fruits were grown in the orchards and canned, preserved or dried for later use. The different kinds of vegetables that were grown in the garden are too numerous to mention. I was born after the great depression and I remember a little about WWII and about times being hard for most everyone, but we always had food, shelter and lots of love. I think the the hard times made us more appreciative of the everyday things that so many people take for granted. Sometimes I think God brings us to ours knees so that we will be in the proper position to give Him honor and praise.