Mud Rooms and Back Porches

Woke up a little after 4:00 a.m., trying to go back to sleep when I began thinking about my granddaughter's new mudroom.

I had seen pictures of it in progress and finished, but was looking forward to seeing it when we went to great-granddaughter Brynley's birthday party last month. I just couldn't visualize the changes made at the back entrance. I needed to see it in person. Unfortunately, I was suffering the effects of spring allergies, plus the additional threat due to the coronavirus outbreak, so I'll be waiting a little longer to see her wonderful new addition.

Mudrooms seem to be a big deal in new and newly remodeled homes right now. I can totally understand the desire/need for them. Especially with a family. A mudroom would help contain the chaos of coats, boots, shoes, sports equipment, etc. upon entering the house and keep it from spreading dirt and clutter any further.

I started thinking how nice a mudroom would have been in our home when I was growing up. Then I realized we had one! It was called the back porch.

I barely remember what it was like when I was little. That's the doorway and some covered over windows of the back porch of our farm house in the background. I remember isinglass windows instead of real glass panes and tar paper over the door and windows, though in this pic, it looks more like cardboard.

I don't remember what year the real windows were installed, probably after the war years (WWII) when money and supplies were more plentiful. The door to the outside was new, too. It had two separate parts, one a screen section for warm weather and the other with glass panes for cold weather. There was a special rack suspended from the rafters in the wash house to hold the off-season door insert and keep it safe until time to switch them out again. (Built by Dad, I assume.)

More than half of the floor space on the back porch was a flat 'cellar' door to the basement. It was seldom open until the basement was finished, then it was always open, secured by a bent wire hook so it wouldn't fall on anyone.

The walls had double rows of hooks, ones high up for Mom and Dad's coats and coveralls, lower ones for us kids. Mops, brooms, flyswatters, yardsticks and other miscellaneous tools also hung on the porch. There was a permanent built in broom hanger in which Mom's 'good' broom always hung.

Hanging on nails under the windows were the egg basket, milk buckets, and water bucket. The coal bucket and cob basket sat on the floor along with the ubiquitous slop bucket - the pail that held potato, carrot and apple peels, grapefruit and orange rinds and anything else that the pigs might possibly eat in their swill.

Floor space was also used up by all the everyday shoes and boots of a family of six. If you think that back porch didn't keep a lot of dirt and clutter out of the house, you should have had to clean it every week or so.

I am certain Katrina loves her new mudroom and can't imagine it ever being as dirty as our psuedo one, but I don't see how we could have managed without the old back porch.

Common, Everyday Lives

Spotting the first plum blossoms in the hedgerow thickets provides a peculiar pleasure for me.

"As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful." 
     ~Laura Ingalls Wilder~

Nature and Art and Poetry

...and then I have nature and art and poetry,  and if that is not enough, what is enough? (Vincent Van Gogh)

I never had any artisitic talent which may or may not explain my interest in art. As a teen, I began checking out books about art at the library and familiarizing myself with artists and their paintings.
I have gradually learned about artists whose works I didn't care for as well as the ones I admired.

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was one I appreciated and learned about.

When I heard his name, I thought about paintings like these,  The Fog Warning and

Breezing Up A Fair Wind which was used on a 4c stamp in 1962. In other words, pictures featuring seascapes and sailors and dark colors.

This morning, thanks to my daily jigsaw puzzling, I learned he painted much more than dark paintings of men and the sea.

I loved the pinks, grays and soft blues and greens of his Girl With Laurel. So once the puzzle was completed I went in search of more of his artwork and realized how varied his subject matter and mediums were. These are just a 'few' of the ones that caught my eye.

The West Wind

Snap the Whip - This one was familiar to me, but I did not remember it as a Winslow painting.

Crossing the Pasture

Of course what do you see when crossing the pasture but Cow In Pasture?

During the Civil War he was sent by Harper's Weekly to sketch battle scenes and camp life. The Sharpshooter On Picket Duty is a painting of that time.

Beach scenes were also the subject of many of his works. This one, On the Beach, Marshfield. One of my classmates/friend had a home there. I wonder if Linda had this same view?

I particularly like this one, Old Friends - tree lover that I am.

Girl On A Swing

Houses On A Hill makes me think of a Wyeth painting; no wonder, N.C. Wyeth was a student of Homer's.

Morning Glories

The Butterfly Girl

Even one titled The Turkey Buzzard - something under discussion earlier this week.

I am drawn to the darker paintings. Look what he does with light in this one: Twilight At Leeds, NY.

So many paintings; so little time.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. (Thomas Merton)

Penny In My Pocket

I woke a little after five this morning with the tune and the lyrics ♪ Got a penny in my pocket ♪ going through my mind. When I could remember no other lyrics, I started thinking about pennies; what a penny would buy when I was little - penny candy, a piece of bubble gum or a round piece or two out of the gum ball machine and if I saved them up, a three cent candy bar or a five cent ice cream cone. I remembered my little red plastic purse and how good I felt to have some pennies, even a nickle or dime, rattling around in it. So grown up!

And when I was older, the way I wanted a pair of penny loafers in which to place a shiny penny. And lucky pennies. Did I have a lucky penny? That made me think of Wheat Pennies and how I had started saving those once they became scarce. (They were minted from 1909 until 1956.)

The first thing I looked up was the lyrics and singer of Got A Penny In My Pocket. That search informed me the title of the song was really Angel On My Shoulder, written and sung by Shelby Flint and released in 1960. It reached #22 on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles Chart in early 1961.*

Got an angel on my shoulder
Got a penny in my pocket 
And I found a four leaf clover
And I put it in my locket

Wished on all the stars above me
And I caught the nearest rainbow
Gonna find someone to love me
Gonna find someone to love

Well I tossed a lot of nickels in the wishing well
And saved the fortunes that the fortune cookies tell
I got a lucky penny and a mustard seed
But a warm and tender love is all I need

And I want a love that lingers
And a strong one through and through
So I'm gonna cross my fingers
That I'll find a boy who loves me true
And I'm gonna love him too

Once my curiosity was satisfied about the lyrics and singer, I turned to my thoughts about wheat pennies.

These were the first seven I could easily lay my hands on. You can see by the design on the back why they are called wheat pennies.

These range in date from 1942, two top ones, counter clockwise to 1944, 1950, 1955, 1956 with my oldest one, 1920 in the middle.

What is not pictured is a copper penny from the year I was born, 1943. That is because there were only 40 copper cents minted in that year, all others were made from steel - although I have always thought of them as lead pennies for some reason. When I was younger I disliked those steel pennies so much, they were so common. I wanted to find a copper one with my birth year. If I have any of the steel 1943 pennies they are in the safe and I haven't looked there yet.

I knew I had some in a jewelry box which is where I found nine more copper wheat pennies dated 1928 (top), 1940 and 1942 followed by two 1944's, then a 1945 and a 1946, ending with a 1953 and a 1956.

The flattened oval penny at the bottom reads: Seven Falls The most beautiful mile of scenary in Colorado. You've probably seen those machines at a number of tourist spots. Put in a penny and get back a souvenir. I have several of these around.

They remind me of the flattened penny my Mom had. When she was young, the kids would put pennies on the railroad tracks and wait for a train to go through and squash them. If I remember correctly her's was pressed smooth on the tracks near Nodaway.

I also remember Mom having ration tokens like these and sales tax tokens, but that's another story for another day.

(*The record producer was Perry Botkin, Jr., same surname as my first husband and my oldest son - not that there is/was any relationship that I know of; just an interesting aside.)

Quarantine and Isolation

Quarantined and shelter-in-place are two terms we've heard alot since the coronavirus, aka Covid-19 arrived on our shores in January.
I have hesitated using those terms because of my interpretation of what they mean. I think of shelter-in-place as finding a safe spot where you are during something like a storm or an active threat from danger in your neighborhood, like gunfire.

And quarantined I relate to 'back-in-the-day' before vaccines and antibiotics, when diseases like measles, scarlet fever, diptheria, poliomyelitis and influenza killed hundreds of thousands.

Quarantine meant the local health department tacked a sign on your door forbidding anyone from going out or coming in. It was a sign of shame.
Now, it is more an effort to separate and restrict the movements of those who have, or may have, been exposed to coronavirus to see if they become ill.
This is why I prefer the term self isolation for what the majority of us are doing - voluntarily staying in our homes, away from others, in order not to contract nor spread the virus.

This has been comparatively easy for me, retired, and a homebody at heart. I've changed my shopping from once a week to once every three weeks. We never have had alot of company, or gone out to eat or visit others. So, self-isolating hasn't been difficult.

What I do miss and wish for are more photos of  my great-grandchildren. Seeing those cute faces on my computer really brightens the day. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, my grandchildren have not posted as many pictures of their children as they used to. I hope that changes.

The only one I have seen pictures of recently is our youngest, Maverick, shared by his daddy, Evan, and titled "My little bear."

And this one of his big sister, Lily, working at home and "missing going to school".

Whether you say you're quarantined or sheltering in place or self-isolating really doesn't matter. We are all going to be so happy when we can freely and safely move about again.

Stay well.

Another 'Why This Song?'

Woke in the middle of the night with the song Wolverton Mountain running through my mind. Now that's a tune I haven't thought of in years. What made my subconscious dredge up that old ballad? I couldn't even remember the lyrics beyond "They say don't go on Wolverton Mountain" and something about bears and wolves.



I finally went back to sleep, but remembered the night time music and looked up the lyrics and singer (something else I couldn't remember) this morning.

The first two stanzas are:

They say don't go on Wolverton Mountain
If you're looking for a wife
'Cause Clifton Clowers has a pretty young daughter
He's mighty handy with a gun and a knife

Her tender lips are sweeter than honey
And Wolverton Mountain protects her there
The bears and the birds tell Clifton Clowers
If a stranger should enter there
    (Ah, bears and birds, not wolves.)

The singer was Claude King. The song spent nine weeks at the top of Billboard's country chart in 1962 and crossed over to reach #6 on the pop chart and #3 on easy listening. I don't have any specific memories related to the tune, just that it was a song I really liked at the time.

Until looking for the lyrics and singer, I never knew there really was/is a Wolverton Mountain in Arkansas nor that Clifton Clowers was a real man who lived on the northern edge of it. He was born in 1891 and died at the age of 102 in 1994.

All this info was easy to find on the internet. What I'd really like to know is why the song was wandering around my mind at 3:00 a.m.?

Decade For Daughters

Reading my journal from 1983-84 the first of the week, I found this poem in the back of it. I wrote it for Kari who was 14 and a freshman in high school. I don't believe I ever shared it with her.

Decade For Daughters

Take my hand, my daughter,
       and let's move together
             toward your future.

It's a decade for daughters
      and you are here
      with all your energy
             your bright eyes
             your ready mind
willing to share my decade
             while rushing 
to get started on one of your own.

Then you will drop my hand
       perhaps to balance better alone
       perhaps to take a tiny hand in yours
               and share your decade
               with her.

I had a wonderful relationship with both my mother and my daughter. I had hoped that Kari might experience the same bond with a daughter of her own. That did not happen, but over the years our parent/child roles evolved, became one of best friends.

(I love you sweetie; hope this doesn't embarrass you too much.)