I don’t know about you, but Grandma Moses’ paintings always go straight to my heart. If only I could find my way into one…!
What do you say to a little trip down Memory Lane?
When I was 12 or so, maybe a little younger, my Grammie and her new husband took my brother and me with them on what was meant to be a camping trip. Grammie was a Pennsylvania farm girl, and the campground happened to be very near her home; so it wasn’t only a camping trip, but also a chance for her to visit her brother, cousins, and other family members she hadn’t seen in years.
After heaven knows how many hours on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, we finally arrived. We stopped at the farmhouse first, and there things began to go pear-shaped.
First the car door closed on my finger. Now that’s pain! Then we went on to the campground, set up the tent and the cots, had a bite to eat, and went to bed. It rained heavily that night. That was how we discovered the waterproof tent wasn’t even sort of waterproof.
So instead of camping, we spent the whole week at the house. It was a very big old house that had been added to, now and again: a map would have come in handy.
But it was wonderful! Four generations of the family were living there, with room left over for guests. They had no TV, so after supper each night, everybody who didn’t fall asleep played games. There was always someone to play with.
Uncle Walt taught us to make really good slingshots. Great-Uncle Mac took us fishing. We played with our distant cousins. Then a lot of slingshots got made and we had a rousing good slingshot war in which three generations were represented. *
I wouldn’t have minded staying there all summer, or even longer. But eventually we had to come back, and none of us ever had occasion to go there again. I doubt I could even find the place, now. It’s just another one of those much-loved places that I might have only dreamed of, for all that remains of it now.
But it was a good dream.
*P.S.–For ammunition we used harmless soft green pine cones–no danger of anyone putting your eye out.
What a wonderful blessing memories like this are. (except for the smashed finger). I remember doing that very thing one morning on the way to church. Ouch!
As you were telling the story, I could picture it in my mind – maybe because I have similar memories (also on a farm in Pennsylvania). But we went there often. My aunt and uncle and cousins. Fantastic memories. Picking elderberries from the bushes that grew wild on their property was so much fun – not only because we always wound up purple from the elderberry flinging contests 🙂 but because my Gramma made the best elderberry pies!
Wow, seems that some of us have great memories. Mine were quite similar, only they took place in southeastern Missouri. We had big families on mother’s side and even bigger ones on daddy’s side. Plenty of cousins, plenty of good music, big stories, great food, loads of room to run around, with woods, creeks, fields, …we had it all, didn’t we?