Incidental Stuff

My husband's mother went grocery shopping with two of our children. In the car, before arriving at the grocery store, they began bickering.

                     Grandma said, "If you don't stop, I'll never take you with me to the store again."

Our son put his arm around his little sister and said, "Don't worry, grandmas forget."

Poor Mr. Flibertyjib

        I'm remembering the song "Poor Mr. Flibertyjib." I'm not sure if that's the spelling, because when I learned the song, I hadn't yet learned to read. I was on one of several yellow vinyl records that had my brother and I singing every day!

        I vividly remember he and I sitting on the floor in front of a massive piece of furniture that was a radio/record player - my parents must have paid a fortune for it. We would open the pull-out door, insert a record, move the needle arm to the outside edge of the recording, and sit and sing, giggle, listen and sing some more. It must have been a lifesaver for my mother, because it was one of those times when we didn't bicker and fight. There were strict rules for getting to listen to our records, and one of the rules was that we had to be good friends during our "record time."

        My brother still has the records - there were many songs, one about a tuba, I think, and other silly rhymes.

        Boy, am I old! It occurs to me that over half the population in our country have no idea of the experience I'm recalling.

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The Baby Chick

       I was in a store the other day and saw baby chicks! They are so cute. My mother taught in a country school, and almost every year she would put eggs under a light until they hatched in school! She would leave them at school for about a week and then take them to our house. When we lived in town, we would have to find homes for them.

        One year she bought already hatched baby chicks. They were pink, green, blue and yellow (and of course the yellow wasn't necessary. These chicks were bright colors because people at the hatchery would use a nurse's needle and squirt a drop of food coloring into the egg a couple of days before the chicks hatched.

        When I was in 6th grade, my mother brought 5 baby chicks home from school. They were cute and fun. The next morning was a cold day, so my brother sat by the furnace vent to play with the chicks. When I was a little girl, furnace vents were almost the size of a muffin pan, and had holes in them the size of muffins.

        My brother was having fun holding the chickens until one of them jumped from his hand and into the furnace vent. Poor baby chick. My brother, my parents and I all thought it was a very sad tragedy. We were sure that the baby chick died and would soon be cooked in the furnace.

        When we all got home late in the afternoon, we heard "peep, peep, peeeep!" My father found out that the big pipe from the furnace had another big pipe connected to it, and that other pipe was for allowing cold air into the furnace. For a while, the chick would be safe, but it was locked in a pipe. We listened to the chick peep all through our evening meal. Finally, my dad said he'd have to do something about it, because he couldn't stand to listen to the chick die from lack of food or water.

        Getting to the baby chick wasn't that easy, it had fallen as far down as it could go, which was almost under the basement floor. My dad worked and worked, and finally, way past bedtime, he rescued the baby chick. It was very thirsty and hungry.

        While I'm not sure what happened to the baby chick, I am fairly certain that chickens get rescued only once, if at all.

I Had a Grandma Too

My father's mother was about 4' 10" tall - not unusual for someone born about 120 years ago. My mother was about 6' 1" tall - quite unusual for someone born about 100 years ago. One day when my brother was 4 years old, he was observing our grandmother struggling to make the bed. When she was finished, he said, "Grandma, when mommy is as old as you, will she be as dinky?"