This is a work in progress, I add to it now and then.... this is a truly amazing figure in my life......
Many, many years ago I was introduced to this lady; I really didn’t get to know her until many years later…. She was older than me and was a great friend. Her skin was soft and wrinkly, she was a little lumpy and she always had a smile on her face, everything we did together was fun and if it wasn’t she would make it fun. This lady lived in the woods, well that’s what she called it. It was the most relaxing place, the air was crisp and the water came out of the tap clean and cold even in the summer, her house had an upstairs and a flood control channel (a gully, is what she told me it was called) in the backyard, this was an exciting place for a young boy, the dir was grey and rocky, like you were on the moon, I have never been to the moon, but I can imagine that’s what it is like. I hiked just about every foot of the thing, always looking for adventure, I built dams in this dirt gully with a little stream at the bottom, sometimes it had water and sometimes it was bone dry. She would even climb down in the gully and help build the dams, she would get plastic bags to help us retain the water, our goals was to make a pool and try to swim in it, sometime successful, sometimes not. Every meal was far out of the ordinary and something experimental she saw on TV. Julia Child was her favorite chef on TV, at the time she was the only chef on TV. When dinner was ready or we had to come home from playing outside, she had a big brass bell that she would ring and we would know it is time to rush home. I spent most Easters, Thanksgivings and Christmas’s with this extraordinary lady; you could say “She was the most Interesting lady in the world”, she would make cookies at Christmas, not just your everyday cookies, she would make cookies that looked like stained glass windows and at Easter she would make chocolate covered Easter eggs made of fudge and on the fourth of July our fireworks were water balloons. The news and Jonny Carson were the dominate shows on the TV that her son bought her. Her son seem to buy her everything, Mixer for baking, Microwave when they weren’t so normal, I remember one year he got her an Ice cream maker that all you had to do is add the ingredients and it did the rest, furthermore, one year he gave her $500.00 cash, all 100 dollar bills, at that time that was allot of money.
My memories are so random and scattered; this woman taught me and my whole family tid bits of wisdom, for instance “If you play with fire, you will wet your bed”. She was a perfect lady, manners were important; “Please”, “Thank you”, “Nice to meet you”, etc. Manners are important; so many people don’t use them on a regular basis anymore. This place she lived in had a little town, she called it “the village”, with one store for groceries, that was tiny, after years went by they built a bigger one, you have to understand this place was a hard place to get things to, so the groceries were expensive, so to save money, she would travel 45 minutes to a regular store “Down Below” is what she would call it and we were called “Flat Landers”. This lady took me fishing at the local lake, named “Jackson Lake”, I caught my first fish there and this lady took it home and packed it in water and froze it for safe keeping, she had that fish for about 10 years, until the freezer gave out and everything was destroyed, even my little fish. Almost every year she would make us Pajamas which was fun. She bought us Lego’s we had tons to play with and create masterpieces. She had an old player piano, you had to thread the paper rolls with holes in it, which would, with the help of a vacuum motor, play music, and my favorite was “Tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree”. My cousins would join me up in the hills for a visit in the summer or at one or more of the holidays. I do remember one time I was playing with my oldest cousin and she asked me to get her a doll, she could not reach it in the attic/closet were we kept the toys, there was a sky light in the attic/closet and sure enough I fell right thru, bouncing out of the sink below and hitting the floor of this very small kitchen. Yep, I got a big Easter egg on my eye. We would all sleep in the “Work Room”; this was a room behind the garage that all crafts were done and the laundry facilities lived, this was a mysterious place with all kinds of cast iron pots and pans hanging from the rafters, the freezer lived here, because, where this was, you had to store stuff for the winter, in case you could not leave due to snow, also to cut down the trips “Down Below” to the “flat lands”.
Who is this lady, she was my hero, my best friend and my Inspiration, she was Doris May Reynolds, my Grandmother, and I called her “MA”……..
