Killer Tomatoes (Tales from the Toilet)

A well-worn path led down the hill to the toilet located far enough to cut the odor and avoid contamination of our well.  Mama was vigilant about sanitation and shoveled lime into the pit to aid decomposition and screened the open back to foil her chickens who considered the flies and maggots a tempting buffet.  Chickens are not known for their

Missing my Mom on her Birthday

I love this tender story from Lorieb!

Lorieb (Lor-eee-bee)

Today, June 9th,  would have been my mom’s 85th birthday.  Although she died twenty years ago, it seems like just yesterday to me.  I’d like to share a funny story she told me once about her birthday being on June 9…

I don’t remember how old she was when she pulled this stunt, but I still chuckle when I think about it.  My mom grew up on a farm in Osnabruck Center, Ontario.  June 9 on a busy farm meant potato planting time, so every birthday although she dreamt of birthday celebrations, she planted potatoes instead.  One June 9th, she thought she would take the bull by the horns and plan her own birthday celebration, so invited some friends to her home after school.

Her mother apparently did not miss a beat, came in from the garden where she was planting potatoes, and started making sandwiches and a cake.

I…

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Farm Life: Gotta Have Guts

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Daddy loved home remedies and dosed his kids and livestock readily.   Mother did run interference for us on cow chip tea and coal oil and sugar, but did let him load us with sulphur and molasses for summer sores. We never got summer sores, probably because we reeked so much we didn’t tempt mosquitoes. I do appreciate Mother for putting her foot down when his ideas got too toxic. No telling what kind of chromosome damage she saved us.

You Catch More Flies

The school was buzzing about the play.  The community was putting on a play at the school.  The adults, not the kids!  According to Sarah Nell, the snottiest girl in school, her mama was the teacher’s best friend.  Her mama was going to be in the play!  Maybe my mama could be in the play.  I flew home at noon to tell the news.  Mama was shocked!  She squashed that idea like a bug. “No, I’m not going to be in a play.  I am not interested in that kind of foolishness!  I have more to do than get up and parade myself around in front of folks like I think I’m something special. Now wash your hands and eat.  You’ve got to get back to school on time.”

I was very interested in that kind of foolishness.  “Well, can we go to the play?  It only costs a quarter for adults and a dime for kids. They’ll have an ice cream social afterwards.

“No.  That would be close to a dollar for all five of us.  Our rent is three dollars a month.  I am already doing Miss Lonie’s wash to pay that.  We don’t have money to waste on a play.  It’s going to take me all day today to finish Miz Watson’s dress.  I need the dollar I get from that to put on the bill at Miss Lonie’s store.  I’m hopin’ there will be enough scraps left from Miz Watson’s dress to trim that dress I’m makin’ for you.  I have two matchin’ feedsacks saved back for it.”  She went on with her budgeting plans as my spirits plunged, knowing I wasn’t going to the play.  I dawdled my way back to school not wanting to admit to Sarah Nell I wasn’t going to the play.  I needn’t have worried.  She wasn’t interested in me, anyway.

The evening of the play, I watched the comings and goings at the schoolhouse enviously, as long as Mama let me stay outside.  For once, living almost on the school yard was not an advantage, giving me a prime view of all I was missing.  Had I even suspected what I was missing, I’d have grieved even harder.  It seems Sarah Nell’s mother was in the middle of the performance when Sarah Nell swallowed a fly, along with her ice cream.  Panicking, she raced to her mother on the stage.  Just as Sarah Nell reached the heroine, she vomited copiously all over her, bringing the performance to an end.  There was no encore.