Category: Uncategorized

Before self-checkout at the big box stores, we had self-serve gas pumps. Hubby and I have our preferences, although we each buy gas at either place. Last weekend. I could not find my favorite when the tank screamed “empty” so I swung into hubby’s favorite. On every single tank dangled a sheet of paper declaring,…

 “Let’s go see the model trains at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry,” my husband insisted when the boys were little. We piled them in the station wagon and drove to Chicago. The boys enjoyed looking at the display of 1,400 feet of track and watching the 20 model trains run from one miniature…

Nothing like a good story. Some I read. Some I watch. Some I find at estate sales. The mechanic who no longer needed the tools collected over the years. The crafter who once upon a time gushed over decorative odds and ends now left for others to discover. The shopaholic’s unworn hoard of clothes that…

With hours of traveling behind us, Hubby and I needed a break from road noise. We did not want a rest area. We wanted to leave the car, sit down and have a snack that did not require a long wait for the kitchen to prepare food. A fast food joint loomed on the horizon.…

“I do not want a job handling people’s dirty dishes! I will find a job doing something else.” her voice and face declared such work quite beneath her.  “We do not do that!” sniffed the mother of a military aged man who talked with a recruiter about joining the Army and going through Boot Camp.…

With cellphone in our pocket, we push a buggy through the store gathering groceries for the week. Once we complete the list we head to the checkout. It does not matter if we choose to have a clerk check us or do it ourselves at the self-checkout, the items will be scanned for their price.…

I anticipated a quiet weekend with my daughter Sharon and her three daughters before I received the phone call. “Katie, tell your grandmother what you want to do when we come,” Sharon prompted. “I want to make cookies and have a tea party,” third grader Katie said. “I want to work on a t-shirt quilt,”…

“With 18 grandchildren and 19 great-grands you probably don’t know all their names,” my cousin speculated during a recent conversation. “Yes, we do. We pray for each one by name every day,” I said. I could have added that we travel hundreds of miles a couple times a year so we know each other better…

“Did you know Herbert Hoover was the one who standardized screws, board lengths and much more for industry?” my husband asked recently. “Herbert Hoover? The United States president on Black Friday in 1929? That president initiated industrial standards?” I was skeptical. I soon learned he did that and much more. Hoover, born 150 years ago…

Peggy Head has built many memories during her nine decades on earth. I have known her for about half of those years. With retirement we have shared events and excursions. One of our first excursions took us east to Jerome and Rohr where Peggy lived as a child on the cusp of World War II.…

Summer camp fun began the year I finished second grade. I went alone my first year. That year I lay on my bunk staring at the bare rafters feeling the breeze through the screens only windows and fought back waves of homesickness. By design daytime activities distracted me. Where else but at summer camp does…

At five years-old, fire burnt 75 percent of Kyle Hebert’s body. Strong pain killers got him through two years in the burn center. At 7 and back in school, classmates taunted him for his scars. Enraged, he responded with both fists flying. At 10, his parents decided playing football and other sports would counteract that…

Before our first baby, Hubby remodeled our kitchen to accommodate a stacked washing machine and dryer. In that era before disposable diapers, he knew we would need one. When the infant woke me in the middle of the night, I transferred clean clothes from washer to dryer and shoved dirty clothes into the washing machine.…