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Building a log cabin “the old fashioned way,” appealed to my father in 1975 until he chopped down a few trees with an ax. Quickly he embraced the invention of the chainsaw to harvest trees for the logs for his dream house. The Hibbard log cabin became the family project. As dad cut trees on…

Serendipity had me reading the history of Truman’s campaign for the presidency during this year’s Democratic and Republican national conventions. As the national media emphasized the current poll ratings of today’s candidates, I read about Truman’s low ratings. Pollsters assured everyone he would not, could not win. Dewey had the election won hands-down, according to…

Never, say never. And yet, I said it. I ate my words within days of encouraing my granddaughter Courtney to use the sewing machine. “I will get hurt,” she said. “No way! I have been sewing for years. I have never been hurt. That is impossible.” She cautiously entered the room and sat down. “Practice…

It looked like a full treasure chest, and I wanted the treasure. “How much are the books in that plastic tote?” I asked the clerk of the resale shop. He named a price that left me salivating. “Great! I’ll go look.” I began sorting through the hundreds of children’s books: a mother lode of riches…

My grandmother Hibbard kept a stash of Hershey candy bars in her dresser drawer. I found the rich brown wrappers that she kept there in case she had a diabetic blood-sugar dip. I only remember her sharing them with me one time. I was in first grade and living with her because my mother had…

  My husband practices that old saw “Waste not, want not,” quite religiously with ice cream.             After his mother was widowed, she never kept ice cream in the freezer. Thrusting her leg forward, she would declare, “Look how my ankles have swollen after I ate ice cream last night!”     It was obviously our fault.…

“Watching the sepuagenarion presidential candidates’ has me thinking about age. In my own home I see how the mind looses some sharpness with age. For instance we recently acquired another dollhouse. It needed minor repairs. My Energizer Bunny husband has been doing house repairs all his life. In short order, he cleaned, reglued and stablized…

ou know those old dance routines with the fancy foot work as dancers swing canes from one side to the other? The dancers engage in fast, fancy foot-shuffling around the cane as if it were a small, steady table. These dances look so smooth and easy that surely anyone could do, right? Wrong! Not with…

“How do we get roped into these things?” my husband asked facetiously. What things? Things like taking care of grandchildren for a day or two weeks this summer. It sort of began when I volunteered to go to Little Rock and supervise grandchildren so my daughter could focus on a weekly business meeting. Looking ahead…

I like to share my sturdy, vintage Fisher-Price and Playskool toys with grandchildren. The unfinished wooden dollhouse stays home. Daisy likes the house so much that she bought it a miniature buffet for when she comes to play. No dolls were needed for a recent visit with five grandsons and one nearly teenage granddaughter. I…

It’s just not the same viewing life electronically. No matter how many proclaim the wonders of the Internet, nothing compares to experience. Consider the difference of “seeing” the Grand Canyon in an Imax theater and actually going and looking over the precipice at that hole in the ground. I’ve done both. In the Imax theater,…

Every time I turn around this year I am updating some familiy member’s address. Our family simply will not stay put. The urge to move has spread through the family like a virus as infectious as COVID-19. It began with son #2. For the past 15 years or so he has shared living quarters with…

This year it wasn’t snow or icy roads that closed schools, shut down businesses and kept folks at home. No, COVID-19 did all that with a vengeance. Grandchildren stayed home. Some parents went to work, others waited for the unemployment and stimulus checks. On Sundays we watched the weekly church service from our lounge chairs…

“I had the strangest dream last night,” my husband said one morning (well actually he says that most mornings). “I dreamed about goulash. That sounds so good.” “Hmm. I haven’t made that in a long time,” I replied. For some reason I had been thinking about goulash. My mother used to make it often: a…

We love to hear from our family, but rarely do the grandchildren call us. So I was a bit surprised when I answered the phone to hear, “Hi, Grandma. I have been in an accident. I need some help with cash to get home.” The caller sort of sounded like my grandson, but I usually…