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A Tennessee Story
Day 8 of our virtual road trip takes us northeast from Georgia to Tennessee. My family lived in a suburb of Nashville for about 6 months when I was 6 years old. Since we were there such a short time and I was so young, my memories are pretty vague. I remember playing with the neighbor kids on our swing set……
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An Arkansas Story
Day 4 of our virtual road trip takes us east from Oklahoma to Arkansas. We moved so many times over the years that no one place really seems like “home” to me unless it would be Grandmother and Granddaddy’s home place in the Ozarks. They lived there as early as I can remember, and when they finally sold it in their retirement…
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An Oklahoma Story
The third day of our virtual road trip takes us north from Texas to Oklahoma. Three of my great-grandparents were still alive during my growing-up years. They were all three on my mother’s side and they lived in Eldorado, Oklahoma–a tiny town in the arid southwestern part of the state where my mother grew up. We went to visit them several times…
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A Texas Story
The second day of our virtual road trip takes us west from Louisiana to Texas. The summer I was 8 Dad accepted a call to pastor a church in Lufkin, Texas. How exciting to be moving again. We lived in Arkansas at the time. We had never been to Texas before. It sounded so exotic. It would be really hot there,…
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A Louisiana Story + My Gumbo Recipe
Today kicks off the Write 31 Days blog challenge which runs through the month of October. You may remember that I participated last year without a set topic. I planned ahead a little better this year, and decided to share Stories of 31 States as a “virtual road trip.” I hope you’ll come along! My series begins in Louisiana, because…
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Blackberry Cobbler
I remember going out into the woods to pick blackberries when I was growing up in the south. Summers were hot and humid then. I guess they still are down there, but I don’t live there any more, so I really can’t say for sure. The blackberry bushes were covered in briars–“stickers” we called them–so we would inevitably get scratched…
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Cousins Day
Did you know that National Cousins Day is this weekend? I didn’t either until one of my cousins tagged me on Facebook a few months ago with a “Happy Cousins Day” graphic. I had never heard of Cousins Day before so I Googled it to find out more. Well, turned out it wasn’t actually Cousins Day when she posted that,…
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Baby Sisters
When I was 19 months old my parents brought home a set of baby sisters for me. I took very good care of them. I taught them to play the piano… …and how to count to three… …and how to build a snowman… plus lots more useful stuff. My parents couldn’t always give me everything I asked for, but…
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Grandmother’s Brown Sugar Icing
For today’s post I gathered all the pictures we have of my childhood birthday cakes. We always had a birthday cake, but we rarely had a party, and we didn’t have a camera for a lot of years… which is why there aren’t very many pictures. I am told we had two “parties” for my first birthday. One with a…
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Fall Fun Quiz
Today I’m playing along with this month’s “old school blogging” prompts provided by the The Miss Elaine-ous Life. What is your favorite Halloween candy? Candy corn. I only want it in the fall. I like nibbling the layers of colors off one-by-one. I’ve always liked the original flavor, but it’s fun that they’ve come out with other flavors in recent…
