Mama Had a Button Can

    Growing up, I never thought much about the uncommonness of the practical containers in my home. In the cabinet beneath the spoons and forks drawer stood two cans, one shiny silver, the other sky blue. The blue flour can was large enough to use as an extra chair at the kitchen table. The cornmeal can was not quite as large, but could hold a 25-pound sack of cornmeal. Both cans came out before meals almost every day so Mama could make cornbread or biscuits to feed the nine of us, but sometimes the occasion was more special. Mama would make a cake from scratch for one of our birthdays or just because she "felt like it." Mama was a good cook, but the dishes were never fancy or expensive, and she could stretch small amounts to feed all of us and whomever we brought to the meal with us.
     We drank gallons of sweet tea with those meals, and the container for preparing the tea was not a pitcher but a rectangular white enamel pan. Mama would boil loose tea in a small pan on the stove, then pour it through a tea strainer into the white pan whose original use may have been as an icebox drawer. While the liquid was steaming, she would add sugar and stir until it was dissolved, then water from the faucet to the brim of the pan. One of us kids would take ice trays from the freezer, break the ice into smaller pieces with an ice pick, and fill empty jelly jar glasses so Mama could use a Melmac coffee cup to dip the tea from the pan into the glasses.
     But my favorite converted container was the one that stood on the end of the sewing machine. Mama had a button can. Originally, it was a Folgers coffee can, but I never saw anything in it but buttons. Four-hole, two-hole, red, blue, white, tiny, huge, round, square, anchor-embossed, a mixture of every shape and size imaginable. Losing a button on a dress or shirt was an occasion for spreading the contents of the can onto the kitchen table and searching for just the right replacement. Or at least, for just the closest-to-right replacement we could find. Stored in that can was our family's wardrobe history. When a shirt could no longer be patched, the remaining buttons were removed and dropped into the can, and the former shirt would then become a dishrag or dust cloth. It occurs to me only now that other families may not have had jelly jar glasses, a tea pan or a button can. How sad.

Shoes

I went to buy shoes for the wedding yesterday. Mother of the bride, you know. I wanted stylish but comfortable. It was like chasing after a dream. I had the formula figured out:  low-heeled black pumps, cushioned inside, with sufficient arch supports. Not sure which of those attributes was the most difficult to find, but I expect the comfortable part was the most illusive. Bayonet-pointed toes. Now really. No one has spires on the front ends of her feet. So add six-inch heels to those pointy-toes and call on the forces of gravity to help push square feet into funnels. Don't think so, not in this way-too-short lifetime. Found an almost-agreeable pair that, if not exactly trend-setting, will at least blend into the overall mother-of-the-bride effect I want to convey. I probably won't be doing a lot of dancing anyway.

Just a Thought

We are so very haughty to think that our actions are ruining our vast, complex, bewildering planet. Polluting our air and water supplies? Yes. Destroying our rain forests. Yes. But nature has a way of taking back whatever we try to take away. We can do only so much...whether it be damage or repair. That's not to say that we shouldn't be good stewards of our resources, but we are a dynamic species. Engineering, technology, scientific research all play a part in changing the way we heat our homes, get ourselves to work each day and produce goods and services. Our methods of survival today will most certainly change, perhaps even by tomorrow. <http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/un_climate_reports_they_lie.html>

AWOL Heifers, Chapter 2

The AWOL Heifers are back home now, but I never got around to completing the saga so here it is.

When we went back to find the wandering bovines the next day, we found them in the same location where they had been when we found them the first time. They just looked at us as if to say, "Oh, you guys again? Pardon us if we don't ask you to stand and graze with us." With the gracious permission of the next door (gate?) rancher, we were able to entice/herd them one pasture closer to home. The next complication occurred, however, when they spotted another large grazing party and decided to lose themselves in the crowd. Cows can actually walk fast when they eye other cows, and they don't have hang-ups about talking to mooing strangers. Larry and I were done for that day since we had to go somewhere cool to plan the next strategy. Later that day, the wise ranch owner quarantined the intruders in a separate pen, making it possible the next morning for Larry and Ray (another kind rancher) to send the brown-eyed darlings through a chute and into Ray's cattle trailer. The rest, I understand, was without ceremony. I wasn't there for the coming-home party. 

AWOL Heifers

This afternoon, I went with Larry to find his wandering heifers. The six of them had gone to the neighbors' pastures to visit but didn't bother to leave a note telling him where they were going or, for that matter, when they planned to be back. They had left evidence of their visits and didn't bother to hide their tracks, so with the help of several individuals who had seen them, we found them. They followed Larry's little red truck across a half mile of pasture but balked at traveling on the road to return to their home. In round two, we'll try leading them to a friendly neighbor's corral, loading them into a stock trailer and chauffeuring them back to their home trough.

Following Kim's Alaskan Adventure

Alaskan Adventure is definitely named well. Every day, every event is an adventure for Kim as she begins her first public school teaching assignment in Newtok, Alaska.