Autumn leaves in South Alabama

Today I drove through the countryside to Opp and all along the way I kept seeing such beautiful colored leaves on the trees and vines. Yellow poplars look like leaves of pure gold. Grape vines look like garlands of gold Christmas swags. But there are no prettier trees than this Autumn Blaze maple we planted in our yard 3 years ago. The first photo was taken just as the leaves started turning and the 2nd photo was taken 2 days ago on Nov. 11th. The Bradford trees along our street are beautiful.


In a few years - or 2 or 3, we will have to start raking leaves. It's been nice moving to a house with no landscaping and taking a break from raking leaves and pine straw. But I miss the trees in the fall when the leaves start changing.

Decorating cemeteries - customs

It's almost time to take Christmas flowers to the cemetery to put on my parents graves. This year I chose white instead of red. My mother loved pretty flowers and I do this in her memory. My sister Susan sent me money to buy these. I place flowers there seasonally, always silk flowers since it's too hot here to put fresh flowers on the graves. 


In the south it is a custom to clean the graves in the spring, cut the grass, and put flowers on the graves and it used to be called "Decoration Day" which later became 

Memorial Day. The difference was that everybody's grave was decorated on Decoration Day, not just the veterans. Families would come to the cemetery on a certain day, clean the cemeteries, bring flowers for the graves, and stay for lunch. They don't do this anymore. They buy silk or plastic flowers and leave them all year and hire someone to keep the cemetery clean.


My  parents, Lawrence and Ruth Wilson, are buried in a cemetery beside New Ebenezer Baptist Church, between Elba and Opp, AL (grave with white flowers in photo). My paternal great grandfather, James Shorter Grimes, was the first person buried in this cemetery in 1903. Many of my Grimes relatives are buried here, including my paternal grandparents. They are buried along the front rows of the cemetery.

This is an older cemetery (Grimes-Holland)  a few miles away where my great-great grandparents are buried (John William and Julia Garrett Grimes). This photo was taken about 1950. It is located about 5 miles west of Elba. A few years ago my cousin Linda helped me clean the cemetery of vines and brush and we cleaned the tombstones, and had a sign printed . A caretaker has been hired to keep the cemetery clean. I like to take our grandchildren there to show they where their ancestors are buried and to tell them something about them. My maternal grandparents and great grandparents are buried at Liberty cemetery, about 5 miles northeast of New Ebenezer, with another set of great grandparents buried in the Elba City Cemetery. All of my grandparents and great-grandparents  are near me!

On the row behind my parents graves is the grave of the last confederate widow, Alberta Martin, who died in 2004. She was buried the same day in June as President Reagan. I remember it was so very hot that day and the mourners attending in Civil War attire almost collapsed from the heat.

How's your Handwriting? Maybe it's the pen you use.

Do these pens look familiar? Most young people probably have never used a “fountain pen” and certainly wouldn’t know how to put ink in them. (NOTE: These are not my pens. This photo came from a website on the internet.)

When I was in the 6th grade, our teacher Miss Fuller, decided to have penmanship classes to help us improve our handwriting. She had beautiful cursive handwriting and used a fountain pen. I admired her pen so much and one day she let me try it. I was hooked. I went home and told my parents about the fountain pen and that I wanted one. I didn’t know that my mother had one that she kept put away from us kids. She showed it to me and let we write with it. I started writing letters to family members who lived away from home just so I could use the fountain pen.

My parents knew how I longed to have my own fountain pen but they were expensive. WWII was still going on and it was hard to obtain pens with the steel or gold tip (nib). The ink reservoir was rubber, and rubber was almost non existant during the war years.

One warm spring day I came home from school and there was a package on the dining table with my name on it. It wasn’t my birthday so I was very surprised and wanted to open it right away. Mother wanted me to wait until supper so daddy would be present when I opened it. It was a long wait that afternoon, especially since I had no idea what was in the package with my name written on it. Later I learned that he got it at Button Grimes' General Merchandise Store at Danley's Cross Roads. You could find almost anything at this big store near where we lived.

Finally I got to open the package and I can still feel the excitement and remember how thrilled I was when I saw what was inside; the most beautiful ivory-colored fountain pen with a flag printed on the cap of the pen, and the work Schaeffer written on the clip of the cap. Inside the package was also a bottle of royal blue, fast drying, Sheaffer’s ink. I wouldn't have to use an ink blotter.

My dad said he got the pen for me for graduation from the 6th grade. What was even more special is that my dad actually bought the gift instead of my mother. I learned to master the art of filling the rubber vacuum tube inside the pen, adding just the right amount of ink by lifting a lever up and down on the barrel of the pen, being careful not to overfill. You could write for a long time with just one “fill up”.

I was the oldest of 7 children and I’m sure the pen was misused by some of my younger siblings and after awhile the point became “scratchy”. You could buy replacement points and I probably bought a few. Then the rubber ink tube inside the pen deteroriated and began to leak. I finally retired the pen when I started to high school, and got a new Parker 51. It had ink cartridges that you put inside the pen and didn’t have to fill it. But cartridges were expensive so I got a used syringe from my aunt who was a nurse and filled the syringe with ink and refilled my ink cartridges. I used this fountain pen throughout high school and took it to college with me. I think I kept it around for many years after I got married and finally one day disposed of it, or did I put it in a drawer with some other keepsakes? I must check that out one day soon. It would be a miracle if I still have it!

I have always wanted to try writing with the "cadillac" of fountain pens: the Monteblanc. I looked at prices on eBay and here is one example: Montblanc - Meisterstuck - Gold Trim - Black with Gold Trim(#13661) LeGrand Fountain Pen #146-Bottle Fill Only List Price: $570.00 - Our Price: $456.00. Think I'll wait awhile to buy one of these!

Honoring our Veterans

HONORING OUR VETERANS
Remembering the Big Red One
Wurzburg, Germany and Fort Riley, Kansas





This is my husband, James (Jim) Emory Gilmer, Sr.


He served in the US Army for over 5 years, 1952-1957.
He had basic training at Ft. Jackson, SC and was sent to Ft. Rucker in 1953. I met him while he was stationed at Ft. Rucker which was near Troy State College where I was
a sophomore and attending summer school in July 1953 when I met Jim on a blind date. The rest is history.....


A few years ago I wrote to the army headquarters and applied for replacement bars and medals and framed these to give to Jim for Christmas, along with his photo when he was promoted to Sgt. while in Germany.


Jim re-enlisted for more overseas duty and we had planned to travel throughout Europe. A month later he learned that all military personnel in the 1st Infantry Division would be sent back to the US in Operation Gyroscope" and nobody could transfer out of the Big Red One! There went our plans; we went to Ft Riley, Kansas instead, to the great plains. We were not too happy about these orders.



In July 1955 we were on the first ship coming back to the US (USS Upshur) and were welcomed to the NY docks on a hot, humid morning. We couldn't get off the ship until a ceremony took place and I remember standing there for what seemed like hours waiting to get off the ship, along with our 6 month old son Ronnie who was born in Germany. We are in this photo standing over the "The" in "The Fighting First Returns". Link to see story of arrival of the Upshur in NY in July 1955: ttp://www.army.mil/CMH/documents/gyroscope/gyro-1.htm


Because Jim could type, he was taken off orders to go to Korea in 1953. They needed him at Ft Rucker to type the morning report (this was before computers of course). We decided to get married that October because he knew he would be going overseas soon, but didn't know where.  In December he got orders to go to Germany, instead of Korea. I followed him in March, going as a tourist since wives could not accompany soldiers below the rank of Sgt.


This was the period of the Cold War and there were many restrictions. He had to always wear his uniform off duty. There were frequent maneuvers called on the spur of the moment when they would have to go out into the field and live in a tent, etc. Our passports were checked often to make sure we always had them with us. Despite all of these inconveniences, we enjoyed living in Germany. I guess because we were 20 years old and young and fearless!


I have a great respect for all veterans and their families. My uncle was in the Seabees and had to go to Pearl Harbor and "clean up" the damage in the harbor after the Japanese bombed us there on December7, 1941. When I was 13, I went to my first military funeral for a cousin who didn't make it back from the Pacific alive.


Tomorrow when we honor our veterans at Elba United Methodist Church, I will stand tall and say the Pledge to the Flag and applaud when the veterans stand to the sounds of their respective service songs. We have several WWII veterans in our church membership. Just last week, people in Elba welcomed family members back home from Iraq. Tomorrow will be a special day for many folks in Elba. First Baptist Church will be welcoming my cousin's husband back from a year of duty in Kuwait. His wife teaches school at Elba High School and took care of their 3 kids for a year while he was gone. I really admire her.




This is Jim, 55 years later! He is retired and is shown here working on the new playground for children in Elba. He is active in so many organizations including Rotary Club, webmaster for Elba UMC http://www.elbaumc.org/ , Sons of the American Revolution, Pea River Historical and Genealogical Society, and an active volunteer for many worthwhile causes in our little town.  

Pecan Picker Upper - a neat gadget to have

This is the most remarkable invention! It's a "pecan picker upper" - no kidding, that's the name of this weird looking gadget that my friend was using to pick up pecans when I visited her earlier this week. I was absolutely amazed at the ease of picking up pecans with this "thing". You just roll it over the ground and the pecans hop inside the circle of metal coils until you have about 2 quarts of nuts. Then you hold the metal expanded circle over a bucket and pull the bottom rings apart and the nuts come tumbling out. I was in a hurry that day so my friend suggested I come back later and use the pecan picker up to pick up some pecans for my use.

Today I called to see if she was at home and asked if Jim and I could come pick up some pecans. I could hardly wait to show him this remarkable "machine". I told him I'd love to have one for my birthday coming up on Nov. 25, but he reminded me that we don't have any pecan trees. Oh, well .... I could gather mushrooms from the lawn or pick up practice golf balls. I'm sure I could find a use for it.

We should eat some nuts every day for good health. Just don't add too much butter when you toast them, or cover them in chocolate--yummm. I like to put pecans in salads, casseroles, on top of desserts, etc. You have to keep pecans in the freezer. They become rancid in a short time due to the fat content. If left in the shells for a long time, they dry out.

And of course you need lots of pecans for the Christmas cakes. It is fruit cake weather right now - freezing temperatures but warm in the afternoons. I enjoyed an article a fellow AARP member put in our Christmas Memory book a couple of years ago. Her mother's friends baked fruit cakes every Christmas and competed with each other to see who had the "heaviest" cake. They all used large dishpans with a glass in the center to bake their cakes in. Then they would take them to the country store to have them weighed. That was a "first" for me. My mother and grandmothers made fruit cakes and wrapped them in clean white cotton flour sacks, put an apple in the center of the cake and then soaked the cloth with homemade wine (my aunt used brandy or whiskey and her cakes were the best!). The cakes were stored in the old ice box to age for Christmas day feast. We peeled oranges and grapefruit and boil the peelings in sugar water to "candy" them. Dried figs were used for dates. There were other cakes, including fresh coconut and lane cakes, but the fruit cake was "Top Dog". I think I will make one this year just for old times sake. It probably won't taste anything like I remember, but I bet the aroma of one soaking in wine will refresh my memories.

This is a photo of the famous Corcicana's fruitcake. They are almost as good as my mother's, but a big chewy and too sweet. A Texas friend usually sends us one of these every Christmas. I share it with friends who come by to visit during the holidays.

You can just imagine how much I enjoyed Truman Capote's "Christmas memories" on TV several years ago (the TV movie Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, with Patty Duke and Piper Laurie, was a 1997 remake, directed by Glenn Jordan) when he (Buddy) helped his

Aunt Sook gather things for her many fruitcakes she made to give away every Christmas. Then there was the play (Capote narrated his The Thanksgiving Visitor (1967), a sequel to A Christmas Memory, filmed by Frank Perry in Pike Road, Alabama. Geraldine Page again won an Emmy for her performance in this hour-long teleplay. I catch these re-runs whenever I can. I connected to these stories so much. I really would like to own these two TV plays someday. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Memory 

On becoming a Master Gardener

The Master Gardener program, conducted throughout the United States and Canada, is a two-part educational effort, in which avid gardeners are provided many hours of intense home horticulture training, and in return they "pay back" local university extension agents through volunteerism. Master Gardeners assist with garden lectures, exhibits, demonstrations, school and community gardening, phone diagnostic service, research, and many other projects.

Purpose of the Alabama Master Gardener Volunteer program- To increase the availability of horticultural information to Alabama- To improve quality of life with community projects related to our mission.


We learned that weeds are just plants out of place! These weeds were beautiful at our lake where we used to live in the country.

Today was my final Master Gardener Class, #12. The classes were taught at the Coffee County Extension Systems office building. I have learned so much in the past 12 weeks. And I have a stack of handouts about 7" tall. I need to buy a file crate to hold all the folders and books. We had 22 people in our class, with only 2 attending from Elba. Most were from Enterprise. Today they honored us with a nice luncheon the last hour. The classes were 4 hours every Wednesday. We had outstanding lecturers and specialists in their fields of horticulture.

Each week was a different topic, ending with an interesting session on Fire Ant Control today. Only a few southern states have these pests. They make big mounds in the yard and if you are bitten by them, they inject poison into your system and leave little "boils" that itch and make sores. We are always trying to kill them and I think I might have learned what we need to do to better control them in our yard - using fire ant bait. You have to isolate and kill the "queen" to get rid of the ants. She lives 5-7 years and lays about 1,000 eggs a day!!


I have to volunteer for 40 hours before I receive my badge and certification. I hope to complete that by next summer.

Today was "graduation" of a different sort. Wonder what I can find to sign up for next, that will be of benefit to me of course. Here is a photo of my "classmates".

Going to the Fair - Peanut Festival in Dothan

James Gilmer and his favorite ride at the fair

Do you remember going to the fair when you were a kid? I guess the first really big fair I every attended was the Peanut Festival in Dothan. When I was in high school (early 1950's) our band was invited to march in the Peanut Festival parade each year. The first time I went was in 1950 and I remember it was a very hot day. Mrs. Gladys Dorsey (wife of Claude Dorsey, one of the founders of Dorsey Trailers) rented a suite of rooms in the hotel downtown for the band to assemble and get ready for the parade, after traveling the 50 miles by bus from Elba that morning. We were probably the only band afforded this luxury, and maybe she did this since her grandson Pete was in the band.


The grand marshal of the parade was none other than the cowboy movie star, Johnny Mack Brown, who was from Dothan. He led the parade, riding on his horse (and I don't remember the name of his horse). I don't remember much else about the parade but do remember the good time we had. We didn't go to the midway since it was located away from downtown.


My first time to go to the midway was in the 1980's when we moved to N. Alabama and would spend week-ends at our cabin on our farm near Elba. Our son James loves to go to fairs and we have attended the Texas State Fair at Dallas for many years when we lived in Paris, TX, the Minnesota State Fair in St Paul, MN when we lived in MN, and the NC State Fair in Raleigh and Dixie Classic Fair in Winston-Salem, NC. Then in Albany, GA I participated in the Dougherty Co. Fair since I worked part-time with the GA Cooperative Extension Service. It was always late November and most of the time the weather was very cold. James wanted to go every day since I usually had to be there most every day.


All these years, James would ride only one thing - the merry-go-round. He likes to climb up on one of the fancy decorated horses and pretend he is riding a horse. For two weeks he has been talking about going to the fair and check out the rides. Today we went to the fair and he got his wish - riding a horse on the Carosel. 


One of us always has to ride with him to help him get on the horse and then to get off. We went to the fair at 2 pm today. It was senior day and the gates opened at 12 for senior citizens to go - free. Not much going on before 4 pm; exhibit buildings were open and a few of the food vendors were cooking hot dogs, elephant 
ears, roasted corn, etc.


We walked around until James got tired and we hopped on a wagon being pulled by a tractor that was escorting elderly people around. We told them James was tired and they let us ride to the arena where there was a program going on for seniors. We walked inside and looked around and listened as they called out numbers for door prizes. We soon left there and headed for the midway at 3:30 pm. The rides didn't start up until 4 pm. We checked them all out and bought tickets for James to ride the Carosel. He was at the head of the line (only person in line at 4) and got his wish - to ride a horse on the carosel. Then he was ready to go home after that. Jim commented that it was an expensive ride! Driving 50 miles to Dothan and spending $3 for about a 3 minute ride. But James was so happy and will talk about this for a long time. It takes so little to make him happy.


 Somehow the thrill of going to the fair just isn't the same as when you are young. And it's much more exciting to go at night when all the lights and music are on. I got my wish - some good peanuts to snack on. I guess this is the next best thing for James. His greatest wish is to go to Macy's Christmas Parade but we just can't work out the logistics for him to go due to his kidney failure and problems he has walking, having to go to the bathroom, fear of loud noises and he doesn't like crowds. So he is somewhat content to watch it on TV, but every year he says "I'm going to see the parade in person next year." Oh yes, the Peanut Festival Parade is coming up this Saturday and you can probably find us sitting along the sidewalk near First Baptist Church, downtown Dothan. He has his favorite place to watch the parade. We can talk him out of going only if it's bad weather.