The "Good Old Days"!

This is my family in 1955. It goes without saying I am that cute little girl!

What a wonderful time, we lived on a farm, in-between Del Norte and Center. My dad grew rocks! Laugh if you want, but I KNOW that was his best crop. He had someone with a rock picker come in and pick the rocks, and by the following year - they were there again. Something about that land out there, just tons of rock. All small sized - 6-10 inch rounded river type rock. (If you drive in the SLV now, you will see piles and piles of rock where rock pickers have piled rock from the fields.) One of the ways of dealing with this rock today is to roll them back down into the ground, leaving some top soil above. Not sure if this method is working though. Must (at one time) been a massive lake/river there to have created all those rounded rocks. And the rocks are only in places - so it's a geological formation. I know it was an ocean, and a large lake, but unsure of where all those rocks come from! Oh dad attempted to grow alfalfa, potatoes, even grew pinto beans. He raised sheep, we had our own cows for milk and our own chickens for eggs.

We didn't have a lot of meat to eat, and had a lot of bread and gravy! Homemade bread always. I remember bread from a grocery store - tasted like candy! Wow, it was SO good!

We had a good life out on the farm, we were so very poor, but so happy. How many times did dad tell us he was the richest man in the world. We were pretty self sufficient, mom grew a garden which was canned in the fall and we lived off that throughout the winter.

We had propane, I don't remember what we heated with though. I remember when dad made the monumental purchase of a StokerMatic stove for the house. It had an auger which took coal into the fire box and the end result was a ring of "clinkers"! Seldom any ashes, just lifted that ring out.

My mom would go into Del Norte almost daily, she helped her parents throughout her life. In the end, she either lived with them to care for them or when they got too bad, she moved them in with her and my dad in Alamosa. My grandmother and mom would do a lot of canning together in the fall. I learned very young, that there were certain things I could do without rather than have to prepare them for canning! (Peas and Pears to name a couple!)

We had an electric meter out on a yard light pole in the barnyard, that my dad would go out and read every so often. Back then, people were honest enough to read their own meter or possible smart enough??!! Once a year or so they would probably audit all the meters. We had a big wooden, hand crank telephone - and to get a phone call was something! And to get a long distance call - or make a long distance call took some doing. Took a long time to get a long distance call through and was very expensive.

We had a car (52 Ford) which served us well for many years. Dad had his pickup. Gas was always a problem, as was the propane,and electricity because of the money situation.

On occasion, we would have company, wow, what a thrill for a little girl from the valley! We would have these people come who told of far away places, even places like Kansas! Then one time, a first cousin came to visit who had been in the service and brought us gifts from Japan, Holland and other distant places. OH - I think I must have been totally speechless to think I knew someone who had actually gone to these places!

I have went on long enough - so until then!!!

My First Award!!! Thank You Becky!

Springtime brings the fragrant Lilac's back, my favorite flower. I can close my eyes and smell them, Welcome Spring!!

FW: Hi!

The following is a "letter" I sent to a friend who was wanting to receive more personal and fun e-mails. At her suggestion, I post it here!

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom and Judy McCormick [mailto:tjmac784@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 10:54 AM
To: Becky and Larry Jamison
Subject: Hi!

Dear Becky,

I remember the days we would sit down at the kitchen table with our tablet (I liked the narrow lined ones) and a pen. We would sit and write to our family and friends, telling them of our days, our hopes, and our feelings. I would write to my parents, telling them of all my grand adventures, traveling and living in these far away places. They knew when one of their grandchildren cut a new tooth, they knew of my struggles and my hopes.

My dad would sit at his desk, and write those long letters to me, words of encouragement, news from home and news of him and my mom. We would all carefully fold these words up and put them in an envelope. Taking care to write the exact address and our return address! Remember when we all had to adjust to ZIP codes – my heavens, couldn’t the people at the post office read English??!! We all had to have a number because address, city and state were no longer enough??!! Anyway, remember going to the variety store – well any store you happened to be in and looking at the writing tablets. Watching to see if there was anything new and different!

And sending a letter to someone out of the country, buying that special and expensive thin, light weight paper. What was it called?? Onion Skin?? Special paper JUST for Air Mail letters!!! Remember the thrill of sending an Air Mail letter – wow, I knew someone who didn’t live in the United States! And the expense of the postage to send Air Mail!! We would write AS MUCH as we could on one piece of paper, take it to the post office to be weighed and sending off those letters that we knew would only take a few days or so to get to their destinations!

We would almost always start our letters off with “Dear” and “I hope this finds you all well” or “How are You?”. And always we found time for many questions about their lives, their families and those they cared about.

I remember getting letters from an Aunt who could put less words on one page than anyone I knew, she wrote so BIG! And a cousin who wrote so fast, it would sometimes take me days to decipher! But how I loved getting those letters. I knew they were thinking of me, wondering about me and taking the time to write and mail a letter to me.

Ahhhh, those were the days.

I hope you have enjoyed this “letter” – or today’s equivalent of a personal letter~! I do hope this finds you well and I really do care about you!

Love,

Judy

FW: Hi!

This is the return message regarding my e-mail. Our memories are such a cherished part of our lives. I have urged Becky to print her "Blogs" and have them as a gift to her family upon her passing. What a wonderful gift - far better than about anything I can imagine!

-----Original Message-----
From: Becky Jamison [mailto:becky.jamison5@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 11:34 AM
To: Judy McCormick
Subject: Hi!

Dear Judy,

BLESS YOUR HEART! You are such an awesome friend! I loved your letter and it brought back so many memories! I want to encourage you to post that letter in your blog (you can email it right to your blog). That's a wonderful reminiscing story! I thought of so many things to write back--and that's what reading a letter always did for me. As I read it, I couldn't wait to sit down and reply! That was the "conversation" part of communicating!

My first memory of getting my own mail was as a 10 year old, visiting my "real" mom in Wichita for 6 weeks each summer. My step-mom missed me and my brother so much that she wrote every week. But my "real" mom wouldn't hand over the letter to me...she'd sit at the kitchen table and read it out loud to me and Dennis. I was always so homesick those letters would choke me up, but I couldn't cry in front of my Mother and let her know I missed my step-mom and Dad! Horrible times those were. But I learned that personal letters in the mail stirred EMOTION! That's the part I loved! When I went to college my step-mom wrote me every week. Now that I'm doing genealogy I recall that she even wrote during my first year away from home about her first serious boyfriend. His name was Charles. Now that she's gone I have the photos of him from her album, but didn't save the letters and don't know his last name! Don't ya hate it when that happens?

I saved letters from my first serious boyfriend--but my step-mom threw them away after I was first married. Maybe that was just as well, but I'd still have them today if she hadn't. Oh man, did I love him!

As I was married and had my son, I wrote weekly to my best friend from college who only lived 45 miles away. I saved most of her letters and am so glad I did. She passed away from Melanoma at age 34 in 1981. I wrote her grown daughter last year asking if she'd like to have those letters. She never wrote me back.

Email is nice, but it's such a shame that people won't grow up anymore having the memories of opening the mail box and seeing a HANDWRITTEN, addressed and stamped personal letter! It's always lke a present when I find a letter in the mail. I loved writing tablets. First the Big Chief tablet you mentioned from grade school. Such a poor grade of paper, but I even liked to SMELL it! Like smelling Crayola crayons! Then the ruled notebook paper we moved on to in high school. Then if you were lucky you got a real writing tablet or stationary! My granduncle published a newspaper in Texas (in the 50s he published the Florence Citizen!!!!) and for my high school graduation he sent me writing tablets with my NAME on each page. Woohoo!

I could pour my heart out in the letters I wrote. I could write up a 15 page letter in one sitting. Now my hand will hardly address an envelope! My muscles have gotten so weak from using the keyboard for the last 20 years. Such a shame!

I have a particular memory of getting those letters from my step-mom while visiting my mother in Wichita. Probably because those were pretty traumatic experiences for the shy, fearful little girl that I was. I remember looking at the envelopes with the 3 cent stamp on them. I remember the very summer day of that experience. I remember the evening I had to sit down at our kitchen table beside my brother with pencil in hand, and writing what my Dad dictated to us--telling our Mother we wouldn't be visiting her ever again and would see her no more. Tears rolled down my face---I was 12 years old. After my mother died in 1990, my half-sister gave me that letter--my mother had kept it from 1960 until her death in 1990. And I treasure it now.

When my stepmom died in 1997 I found letters my brother had written home from Viet Nam...I have letters he wrote to me too. He took my full name and wrote a poem, using the letters of my name to start each line. He did that for soldiers to earn money while he was there. I treasure those AIR MAIL letters. They're in my night stand beside where I lay my head each night.

I treasure the one page letter my son Matt wrote to me on Mother's Day in 1994 telling me how much he loved me and why. It's framed and sitting in my bedroom bookcase!

And I said my step-mom wrote me every week---even after I moved to Colorado in 1987. She wrote every Sunday night before going to bed. She wrote me on Sunday night Feb. 24, 1997. She put the letter on the "buffet" in her dining room and asked Dad to mail it Monday morning. She passed away 4 hours later in bed. Dad handed me the letter when I arrived home to plan her funeral on Feb. 25th.

Yes, your letter brought back a lot of memories. Thank you for the wonderful gift, Judy! You've made my day!

Love, Becky
"We live as long as we're remembered."
My genealogy blog (Grace and Glory) is at http://beckysgraceandglory.blogspot.com/
My personal family blog (Gramma's House) is at http://beckyjamison.blogspot.com/
My Google Profile is at http://www.google.com/profiles/becky.jamison5

Turn, Turn, Turn

To every thing there is a season. . .  how I love those words. They are so true.  I had a season for being a child, a season for being a young wife and then mother to four beautiful girls.  A season to enjoy the births of 12 grandchildren.  I have just ended my season of the most challenging service I ever did for the church.  I leave it with a great sense of relief, but also wishing I could have served under different circumstances.  The circumstances were such that I was unable to do what I would have liked to do, but then again, if I were programmed different, I could have changed those circumstances!  I have no doubt the calling as Relief Society President was not FOR me, but rather to benefit another one, and help them understand their role.

 

Now, after almost two years of being consumed by “Church”, I find my self wondering just what to even think about!  Sounds odd I know, but this will pass.  I am going into my second day following my release, and know when I am going into my second week or month, this will look and feel a lot different!

 

We now find our daily lives being somewhat guided by the fear of the H1N1 (Swine) Flu.  Most are taking extra precautions in their daily lives, washing hands more frequently, using hand sanitizer and in general, just being more aware of their surroundings and others around them.  As long as I was president, I felt this type of event was the number one thing to prepare for.  I know we have – for years – been “warned” to have food storage and water.  But I think we, as people living where we do, have this to fear about more than anything.  We are not prone to earthquakes, hurricanes, or even tornadoes. But the weather, such as snow, floods and the event of a pandemic is certainly something to fear.  Interesting, a month ago, this was not something on anyone’s radar, the flu – it’s almost summer, who would worry about the flu.  And I doubt if we will have to worry about this perhaps until about September.  This could very well be just a warning of what’s to come.  I try to preach to my kids about being prepared for isolation, not being able to leave their homes for week, weeks, maybe month or more.  We are all so used to running down for a gallon of milk, loaf of bread.  Could we go without this??  Might be a good learning curve to just go two weeks without stopping in a store!  I know we buy milk and bread on a regular basis.  I could make bread, but do I have enough yeast??  Don’t know when I have checked my yeast supply!

 

My health is good, and now I think it’s time to spend some time on me.  Sunday, Becky Jamison gave a testimony about the joy found in service. That is so true, for all those people in this world who are struggling with depression, if somehow they could believe that and do it, it would sure cure a lot of depression!  God gives us each other to serve, in serving them, we serve Him.  It is so true.  She was given a precious gift, that knowledge of the joy of service.  It’s a gift few ever glimpse. But for me, I think I will see where I can serve my family now, and myself.  Doing some walking is high on my priority list. Getting back into some semblance of shape!!  Renewing some friendships. . .  In many ways, I think serving as RS President is much like serving a mission, many things of life are put on hold.  I can only imagine what it must be like to be released as a Bishop – wow.  Like I told Bishop Tedrow many times, I am so glad I am NOT a man, I will never be called to serve as a Bishop!!

 

Till later!

March Events

Our daughter, Beth and her husband Mark Lenz, competed in the NM State BBQ competition in Rio Rancho this weekend. They won Grand Champion out of 67 teams. What an incredible win! This gives them an invite to the World Championship in Lynchburg, Tennessee this fall. At the competition in Rio Rancho, several former World Champions were there. Many of who you would know from the Food Network if you were a “cooking show” junkie! These teams come from all over the United States to compete in this event. I won’t go into their winnings, but it made it all worthwhile (and some!!). The kids compete in several categories, including pulled pork, chicken, beans, beef brisket, ribs. Sometimes they do oddball things like desserts, soups – all at the discretion of the host. This event is not something that is widely known, so few understand the effort, time and money it takes to do this. But many people have gained fame from this start. Many great BBQ sauces got their start here!

We may have to attend the World Championships, take motorhome and all! Beth and Mark – we are proud of you!! Congratulations.

In other bragging about this daughter, she works for the Council of Governments (Upper Arkansas Area) and was recently named program manager. Huge promotion! Yea Beth.