Chapter 3



May 7, 2000
favorite restaurant
my favorite was broiled snapper on my honeymoon we went out to the east coast all of the eating places had lobster of course but i wouldn't order it i couldn't stand the idea of something being boiled alive i don't care much for lima beans either but i love butter beans



May 7, 2000
favorite restaurant
when i lived at home there was a restaurant about five or six blocks from us i forgot the name but it had the best spaghetti and meat balls you ever tasted red and white table cloths on the tables candles on the tables i loved spaghetti and meat sauce before i lost the use of my left hand that's the hand i held the texas toast in now when i try to eat it one handed i finish looking like i have been in a spaghetti fight i have heard that there is a country in asia where if they catch someone stealing they cut off their right hand they eat out of a common bowl by dipping into it and it is considered a sin for them to use their left hand



May 9, 2000
Mercury Hour Magazine
i have ideas that have been flamed in some groups one i tend to think every word in the bible is to be taken literally when i read awhile back that currently there were many more multiple births now than there have been in the past my thought was god is seeing that the aborted babies get here especially those he had a partrticular purpose for and another group they were saying the ark never existed was the reason it had never been found i posted yes it did exist the bible said it did i got some really explicit answers to that suggesting i have the dr change my medication because the one i was on wasn't working suggesting i was out of my mind for taking the bible literally oh well let them rave i just think i will have the last laugh not a christian thought but i'm human too



May 9, 2000
Advice~All Read~Do not become a victim
this reminds me of something that happened to me shortly after i graduated from high school it was late 1944 i was 18 but i was so short i always looked younger the place i worked was on the street next to the river a less than desirable part of town even back then i had walked up to the next block to wait for the bus i was standing on the corner waiting for the bus a man in a car pulled up next to me and tried to talk me into getting in the car he even offered me a candy bar of course i didn't know at that age what a man could do but i had been taught never to get in a car with a stranger i was standing in front of a tavern on the corner i told him if he didn't leave i was going to run in the tavern and yell for help he drove off in a hurry i don't know what he had in mind but i'm sure it was nothing good i wasn't afraid but when i went home and told my mother and dad they seemed very frightened and told me i had done the right thing even though i had been taught all my life that a good person would never set foot in a tavern



May 9, 2000
ways to defend yourself
hildas letter reminded me when she was talking about ways to defend yourself after i graduated as an l.p.n. i worked for many years in a mental health clinic they had many classes and clinics on what was called the gentle art of self defense we were taught many ways to get out of different wrestling holds i don't remember them all but they were effective if you did them correctly but it took practice we couldn't poke them in the eyes or knee them in the groin that would have been patient abuse but i did get over confident i went home and told my husband who had spent 14 years in the infantry in two wars that there wasn't a hold i couldn't get out of he said you think so? he reached out and put both hands around my neck and when i tried to get loose he just stood there and said you're dead you're dead



May 9, 2000
visiting father
when i was growing up there was a family that lived across the alley from us they had been born raised and married in scotland their oldest son had been born there once when the war was on his father came to america to visit he brought a kilt with their families plaid have any of you ever handled a real scotch kilt they are heavy a few years ago we were at the library for some reason i wanted to look up the stewart kilt i had been reading story it was there and right next to it it showed a picture of their plaid their name was sommerville i don't know if it pictured the plaids alphabetically or what they never acted like they had been important people



May 10, 2000
beat up by hail
some years ago we had a beautiful dog a liver and white brittany spaniel we fenced off part of the backyard and he had a nice doghouse the doghouse was right under our bedroom window one day it started to storm and it started to hail i wasn't home but my husband was standing at the window watching the dog the hail was about pea size bill said he looked around like he didn't know what was happening he ran around for awhile looking back over his shoulder as if to say what are you doing to me just as Bill was getting ready to go out and bring him in he ran into his doghouse thank goodness the hail wasn't big enough to hurt him but bill said he looked so funny when it first started a few years later that dog went crazy he wasn't rabid but he would bark and growl if you went up to the pen like he didn't know who you were the vet said it happens some times for no known reason and if we left him he would just get worse so we finally had to have him put down it was like losing a member of the family but there was no help for it the vet said once it happened there was no cure for it



May 13, 2000
WHY WE ARE HERE MHO
i had once what i think was a mild heat stroke was picking and cleaning the ears in a little corn field for my neighbor i kept getting more and more uncomfortable and doing a sloppier and sloppier job on those ears suddenly i knew i had to get home i got home stripped and lay on my back on the hardwood floor in the living room i lay there minute by minute feeling a little better my husband got home and said what happened to you i said i think i just got too hot he helped me up helped me get dressed and i lay on the bed for a few more hours i was none the worse for wear but my second husband had contacted malaria while he was in korea and every once in a while he would have a reoccurance one time he was up on a roof tarring it he passed out and they had to take him out and carry him home he said the drs. told him malaria was nothing to fool with that he could have a reoccurance if he overdid or got overheated to that extent and that it could be fatal



May 13, 2000
What is the weirdest thing.....
mine is probably not the most unusual but it is far from what a DIETICIAN WOULD SUGGEST and that is a coke and a candy bar the coke for the caffiene i don't like coffee the candy bar usually chocolate just because i like it i do like breakfast though eggs over easy bacon good and crisp and hot cereal i prefer oatmeal and hot chocolate love orange juice too but can't have it now the dr. said i was allergic when i was first here i asked them if i couldn't have that for all three meals but for some strange reason they said no way the state dietician wouldn't approve



May 15, 2000
Bed and Breakfast
when i was on my first honeymoon we went east from illinois to the coast where i had a choice of taking a tour of new york city or washington d.c. i chose washington it was a limosine tour we stayed the first night in a hotel i asume we ate there but i don't really remember in indiana we stayed in a house that had rooms for tourists i don't think they fed us though i don't remember then after we left washington we went up the coast into maine we went across maine into quebec there was a place where they had cabins we stayed in one of the cabins and in the main house there was a dance hall where they served breakfast the only thing that bothered me there was that i couldn't read the signs i finally asked the hostess what one said and she said it said no dancing on sunday their priest had forbiden it and when we first signed she called me madam which sounded strange we went clear across quebec into ontario when we got to the straits of macanaw where we were to cross into michigan it was two weeks we were out of money we had started out with $500 which should have lasted but we had to call home to ask for some more then we came down across the straits into michigan we got to chicago on labor day we went around it the traffic was something terrible oh the cabins we stayed in were $5 a night the first night after we were married we had stayed in the hotel in peoria but by the next morning i had such a terrible head ache i asked him to take me home and i crawled into bed with my mother who was also down with a headache my mothers two aunts from indiana were still there from the wedding they were in the kitchen fixing my dad's breakfast and i heard him say to them they're just alike when we were in maine all the restaurents served lobster they said to me you should eat it it's really good out here but i wouldn't i didn't like the idea of them being boiled alive



May 16, 2000
Fire Up the Grill
my favorite was not a grill but when i was in high school i got to go to camp one of the leaders took us out hiking she showed us how to put the sticks to build a little fire then she took a long sharp stick put a piece of potato a piece of meat potato meat and just kept alterrnating them for about a foot then she had us put them over the fire and turn them till they were done oh they were so good but i had been walking through the woods and was hungry so was everyone else i guess you could do the same thing on a grill but it was a lot of fun the way we did it and really good



May 16, 2000
Fire Up the Grill
my favorite way with pork chops was to get them just brown pour on a large can of tomato juice cover and simmer for about an hour the tomato juice cooks down to a thick tomato gravy and the chops are so tender when we lived on the farm we had a wood stove with a door that opened down we would wait till the coals were just glowing then we would open the door put marshmellows on sticks and just toast them some times we would take graham crackers pieces of a hershy bar and make smors when i was younger my mother showed my girlfriend and myself how to take marshmellows put them on top of a soda cracker and put them in the oven till the marshmellows were just brown that's good too if you never tried it



May 17, 2000
Stretch Jeans
every year there is a group comes to the home it is called cloths to you i think they are from st. louis i got several dresses they are very unique they are cut out in the back they have a u cut out in the back from the hem up to your waist of course they are not recommended for anyone who is up walking around but when you are siting i in a wheel chair the front of he dress comes around and goes down over your knees which keeps them from getting cold a lot of people in wheel chairs have a lap robe but if i have a lap robe i have to have one that ties behind my chair because if i have a lap robe i have to use the only hand i have to wheel the chair i use one hand and one foot to move the thing and the state doesn't like them to tie the robe behind you because they consider it a restraint i said what do they think i'm going to do get up and run away they said no but we have to follow their rules or we get in trouble so the dresses strange as they may seem are a godsend to me i don't like to wear pants because i'm afraid whoever gets me undressed at night will pull the shoe off on the side with my brace and then they would have too pick me up and lift me and i'm too heavy



May 18, 2000
Berry picking
my daughter age 3 came into the house one day eyes as big as saucers she had been playing in her sand box she said mommy i stepped on a snake i went out to look and it was a big old milk snake it was crawling up the tree watched it until it crawled up the trunk and into the crotch of the tree and that's the last we saw of it



May 18, 2000
Berry Pickin' ~>Dottie
i had a girlfriend whose family had about two acres of strawberries they raised them as a truck farm product she said when they got ripe the whole family was out picking them till dark she said they kept geese in the fields because they would eat the weeds but not the berries



May 18, 2000
Berry Pickin'
when we moved to the house we lived in in centralia the man who had lived there before us had a great big plot of strawberries in the garden he said we could pick all we wanted they are a little harder to pick than blackberries you have to get down on your hands and knees but before long he came and moved all the plants to the place he moved to but when theberries got ripe he would bring us big bowlful of them they were good and no work i think he appreciated us letting him leave the plants there after he moved but he was just a good neighbor he had a little snow plow and in the winter when it snowed he would come along and plow all the sidewalks on our block when i was first married i had the first garden i had ever kept i thought i don't know much about keeping a garden so i will plant what i know we like i planted 5 pounds of peas when it came time to can my canner would only take pints so i canned 78 pints the first time i went to the grocery store after that brought home two cans of peas my husband looked at the groceries and said do you think they were really necessary i had just picked them up without thinking because i always did get peas for us but by the time it got time to can the next year they were all gone



May 18, 2000
Weather...=-(
it's supposed to storm tonight with hail but i don't hear any rumbles yet besides when i was a girl in peoria we had a hail storm once that make any others i've seen look like big hard raindrops that time it started with high wind enough to bend the trees over my mother and i were in the basement but my dad was up at the back door looking out she kept saying joe come in come in you'll get hurt then the hail started it sounded like an express train then he did come in mom grabbed me and hugged me and she was saying oh joe what is happening he said it's only hailing when it was over we went out the hail just covered the back yard the hail stones were about 3 inches across and over an inch thick they were built up in layers someone told us later they kept being thrown up into the clouds and every time they got thrown up it added another layer of ice the layers were about a quarter of an inch thick we heard later they took out every window downtown on main street it didn't break any of our windows but the neighbors had just put new aluminum siding on their house it put great big dents in it it didn't only hit the town it hit all over the country a number of years later when i got married i married a man who lived about 20 miles north but still in peoria county he said they had to replant one whole field of corn out on the edge of town there was a man who had a truck farm he had two acres of tomatoes just ready to pick i will leave it to your imagination what his tomatoes looked like after the storm i never saw anything like it before and i hope i never do again but i never heard of anyone getting hurt in that storm my girlfriend worked at a drive in called hunts she said it took out every one of their windows and my aunt worked in a plant on main street not as far up as the department stores or the dime stores but she said they thought he whole front was coming in at them



May 19, 2000
LITTLE HOUSE OUT BACK~>
no i have seen signs on doors everyplace they just say no smoking oxygen in use but i've never seen one that said no smoking gasoline stored here when i was real little there was a little house like that at my grandmothers my great grandmother born in 1855 had never come to terms with an indoors bathroom she thought it was a terrible idea so when we were there which was most of the time she would say donna do you have to go out for a long time i thought that was the term you used when you needed to go to the bathroom and if we were visiting somewhere i didn't know where the bathroom was i would say mother i need to go out she would tell whoever what i meant and i would be shown the bathroom until i grew old enough to realise most necessaries were in the house and that most people preferred them that way



May 22, 2000
A DOGS PRAYER
they have a dog here at the home her first master that kept her in his room suffered a stroke and then was called home now there is one nurse that she follows devotedly and she takes her home with her at night so now Hally is happy again and just seeing her running around carrying her squeeky toy makes most of the rest of us happy but do you know there are some here that don't like animals oh how much they miss but i have been in chat rooms where are actually some that revile their lord oh i shudder to think how much they will miss



May 24, 2000
Why This Group?
i got my web for christmas 99 didn't know anything about computers or the web though i had heard the expression surfing the web saw the web machine advertised on t.v. so i asked my daughter and i got it for christmas as i said i didn't know anything strangely enough our school didn't have them of course i realise that may have had something to do with the fact that i graduated in 1944 anyway i had got to community saw bragging and discussing your grandchild right there in a frame by talk city well i only have one grandaughter and she was born in 1971 so i hesitated but finally clicked on it you got so many right at that time i think some of the granies got frustrated but after that i didn't know how to get back but someone finally told me so here i am and here i stay though i have found two other i like i tried history and found a group where they are still fighting the civil war anyway there are some good people there if they are rebels and discuss astrology i like because astrology was one of my main hobbies thus my strange name so now i post in all and really enjoy hazel 62 stopped to see me on her way back from indiana she tried to show me how to put a flower vine gif in but i lost every thing i had then barb took pity and tried to help me get the color back i copied her list but when i tried to put it in the sig box it wouldn't show i tried it about i guess thats why the name comes up so many times anyway i'm not going to try and change it anymore sign keeps popping up and says you haven't set a favorite key for that but i don't know anything about the f keys so i just went on



May 25, 2000
Noise to Sleep?
i'm one of those oddballs that loves a storm at night especially thunder and rain when i was little my dad worked nights and when there was a night storm my mother would get me out of bed bring me into the living room and play the piano for me whatever i aked her to i just loved that and still like to hear a storm at night



May 25, 2000
Noise to Sleep?
for three years i worked nights at one of the nursing home the nursing ward was a hallway a lot of time there was nothing to do but sit at the desk we were close enough to hear anyone that called and then there was a light they had that lit a light at the desk and beep but a lot of times it was just quiet sometimes i would fall asleep my face would fall down and hit the desk that would wake you up in a hurry better than an alarm clock



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