Look it up, Mary

My Mom couldn’t stand to have a question and not have the answer to it. Our small farm house had two sets of encyclopedias when I was growing up. We couldn’t afford the World Book from the salesman that came by, but my resourceful father found a Funk and Wagnall’s set at a garage sale. [...]

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Life Interrupted (by WWII)

I distinctly remember my mother telling me about her life her first year of college at Tennessee Martin Teacher’s College. She started college when she was 16 and was one of the youngest there. She was on the school women’s basketball team and basketball was big in Tennessee. It was played with half-court rules then.  [...]

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Attending Church

I grew up in a Brethren church or rather my parents dropped us off at a nearby Brethren church every Sunday morning. The Church of the Brethren is rather like a Mennonite church. Their “Thou Shalt Nots” number far more than the Ten Commandments. Most specifically, our church didn’t believe in war. There was a [...]

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Living on the Edge

My mother grew up on the edge. It was the edge of the Appalachian Mountains, but it was in reality it was the edge of society. She was the youngest of 4 children in a one-parent family. Her father was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse and her mother spent a few years in prison [...]

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Football Boogie!

I love football. You can blame my Dad for that. You remember that he grew up in a family of 10 boys. (See: Being a Middle Child – #7 of 14). Football was important to him and his brothers. He played in high school and from the stories I heard (from him), he was quite good . . . . read more . . .

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