When Father Was a Boy

For all of you who have heard family stories of having to walk to school, uphill both ways...and in a blinding blizzard...or other similar tales, this poem is for you. I don't know who wrote it, but it was one my mother saved in her things. She thinks it is one her mother saved.

Anyway...the pictures are of MY father...when he was a boy.

When Father Was a Boy

My father sometimes likes to tell how,
When he was a boy,
That chopping kindling wood was fun
And milking such a joy;
And how he'd hustle home from school
As fast as he could run,
And never think of playing 'til
Every chore was done.

He says he thought it was a treat
To pick the plums and cherries,
And even tries to make-believe
He liked to stem gooseberries.
But when he's telling of the time
When he was just a "kid"
And what a busy one he was
And all the work he did,
My grandpa he just sits and smiles
But never says a word
About what Father's telling
As if he hadn't heard.

But I'll bet you most anything
You'd mention, like as not,
Grandpa remembers many things
That Father's just forgot!

age 4



2nd grade



age 12

Pepperoni Rolls

Tonight at dinner time, I was hungry for a taste of West Virginia. WV was settled by several different ethnic groups. Up north, around Fairmont and Clarksburg, there were many Italians who came to work in the mines, so the food of that area reflects that heritage. The miners needed lunch food that was easy to take with them underground. It was between 1927 and 1940 that a local bakery started making pepperoni rolls for that purpose. In modern West Virginia, you can buy pepperoni rolls almost anywhere...gas stations, convenience stores, Walmart, Amish bulk food stores, etc. We found them to be tasty and convenient when we had to travel, or on busy days with little time to cook. We left West Virginia in November of 2008, and have not had a pepperoni roll since.

Since they are not readily available commercially around here, I decided I just better make my own today. I made the dough with yeast, water, sugar, powdered milk, salt and flour, then let it rise until double.


I divided it into 12 pieces then flattened each piece and then put slices of pepperoni down the middle of each piece.



Then I rolled the buns up rather like a jelly roll.



I placed them on a pan, ready to bake. I covered them with a little bit of melted margarine and egg.



Then I baked them for 15 minutes.





Changes I would make when I make them again:
I used the low fat turkey pepperoni as lowfat is best for us. The real WV rolls use regular pepperoni, which often leaves a little orange color from the fat in the pepperoni where the roll is sealed. They are also a little more moist. I think maybe next time I will try adding a teaspoonful of pizza sauce in with the pepperoni. You can also add cheese.

It was a lovely reminder of our time in West Virginia.

Hear the Wind Blow

Recently I’ve been hearing from friends in our old home of a windstorm that lasted several days. It reminded me of how much I hate the wind.

It seems like we got severe windstorms several times every year which caused all sorts of problems. I didn’t mind so much when it snowed, but it seems like within a day of a snowstorm, along would come a huge wind to stack the snow up in drifts.

One day I was watching a neighbor’s child while her mother went to the hospital to have a baby. By the time her mother came home from the hospital, it snowed, it blew, and the road was filled with 5 feet of snow. The little girl ended up staying with us for several days until snowplows manned by the Alaska National Guard came to reopen our road.

Sometimes when the road filled up with snow, the surrounding fields would be scoured clean of any snow. At least once after being snowbound for a week, we escaped by driving across the fields since the road was not usable.

We had a greenhouse about 8’ x 16’ so we could grow tomatoes. It was covered with fiberglass panels. The peak of the roof was covered by a special metal strip. One day the wind blew hard with gusts up to 117 mph. It took that metal strip and just sort of rolled it up like those old metal strips you roll off with a key on a Spam can. Then it blew away all the fiberglass panels.

Of course wind chill was always something we watched out for. At school the children went out for recess unless the temperature was lower than -10F when adjusted for wind chill.

Sometimes the wind was blowing hard when the school bus pulled up to the school in the morning. It was strong enough to blow the little kids head over heels across the school yard. When the children arrived they were kept on the bus until adults and larger 5th and 6th graders could get out to the bus. Each adult could usually hold on to 4 small children to get them safely into the school.

One time I HAD to get into town when our road was snowed shut, so I had to hike up the road to the main road where a friend picked me up.

Kindergartners were released from school about 11:30. Sometimes when the road closed, another mother from our carpool picked up my child and dropped her off at the top of the road. I would hike up to the road pulling a plastic sled. On the way back home, it was downhill, so we’d both climb on the sled and slide on home with the wind pushing us along.

I could handle the cold, long winters, but I don’t miss those windstorms!

Frost Pictures

We've hit a patch of cold weather lately...maybe not by Alaska standards, but cold enough to go below zero a few times..cold enough that the recent snow has not been melting. Many days have been rather gray and dreary, so the days when the sky is blue seem especially pleasant.



Finishing the remodeling work at the woodwright shop has been a rather chilly job, since the shop is really not heated when no one is there. A benefit of the lack of heat, though, is the wonderful frost pictures on the windows of the shop. The first two pictures were taken from the outside, looking in, so if you look closely you can see some of the work we've done inside the shop. The frost left wonderful feathery looking ice crystals on every window.







It's almost too bad the frost won't hang around in summer when we complain of the heat! By Baby Animal Days, it will be a thing of the past.

Happy New Year!

Rather than try to coordinate schedules between various families for Christmas, our family has chosen to get together for a family Christmas celebration at New Years. This year we got to host the party at our house for us and 3 of our 5 children and their families. The only thing which would have made it better would have been the 2 missing children, but they also live further away. It was great to see the ones who could make it. This year's theme was 'pajama party'.

As in many family gatherings, the first order of business was food. It is always interesting to see what happens with a potluck! This year there were a spiral sliced ham and ever so many interesting dipping things. We had a delicious lemon flavored fruit dip and plenty of fruit to dip in it, hot spinach artichoke dip, 7 layer dip, a meat and cheese tray, and from our daughter who loves to explore cooking history, a fondue, complete with 1970s era fondue pot!

As it was so soon after Christmas, some of the gifts between family members were saved to open that night, so the Christmas tree was still up. All 16 of us gathered while the youngest boy there had the job of getting gifts from under the tree and delivering each gift to the correct person. He even found out his feet fit just right in the wooden shoes.







Later we adjourned to the garage to do a piñata. Those kids were vicious with that thing!



Later we all watched 'Despicable Me' and then played games until time to celebrate with sparkling cider at midnight.

When we finally woke up on New Years Day, we fixed brunch with 2 different breakfast casseroles and about anything else you could want for breakfast.

Hope everyone has a great 2011!