Happy Birthday, Mom

December 28, would have been mom's 80th birthday. She was born to Clyde and Opal on December 28, 1928, the second born of 9 children total and the oldest daughter. She was raised on a farm, helped to raise her younger brothers and sisters, wash out canning jars, pick beans, wash alot of dishes and diapers and pretty much had to do anything her Ma didn't want to do. When mom was in her teenage years, she started having vision problems that couldn't be helped with glasses, this didn't stop her from working away from the home for neighbors and staying with families as far away as Buffalo and Phillipsburg. In her 20's mom started working for the Carter family in Phillipsburg as a waitress in their cafe on Route 66. She lived with the family and became good friends with their daughter, Marilyn. She always said that Mrs. Carter was like her mother and she always held her in a high regard, enough so that she named my brother Steven Carter for her second family. Mom made our tiny home as clean and snug as she could, I can't even imagine raising 3 kids in a house that small. My folks bought a small country store when I was about 6 years old, came as a complete surprise to us kids, we weren't told much back then. I think it was my mother's cross to bear and she came to down right hate being there 6 days a week. She was also trying to do laundry on an old wringer washer and no dryer for years, can you imagine? Also, heating with wood at both the store and home, her trying to keep heat in one place and then coming home to a deep freeze of a house in the evenings and restarting a fire, about the time it got warm, it was time to go to a cold bed. Mom was steady, truthful, patient, ruthless, quick to laugh, but could get quiet and distant at times. She was ornery and spiteful too, but loved any child that came around. I didn't want this blog to get long like my Myspace one did, but how can you sum up all those years into a few sentences? Mom didn't drink, smoke or cuss, she tried to treat everyone fairly and was really a pretty open-minded thinker at times. She loved westerns, like Lonesome Dove, which she actually wore out a VHS copy, she loved John Wayne, George Jones, white tennis shoes, cotton button front blouses, orange circus peanuts, anything chocolate, Captain D's fish, good "her" potato salad, a drive along the back roads, making a snowman, Easter Lillie's in the spring, the frogs "hollern' " a new perm, oil of olay lotion, Wanda and Betty Sue, most of the time, the color rose, her grandkids and great-grand kids. Thanks mom for the memories, I miss you everyday. Love to you all.