Friday Night Fever!

Small towns still turn out for high school football games every Friday night in the fall. I don't recall it being so hot at our football games when I was in high school over 55 years ago. I graduated in 1952. What I do remember is how cold it was sometimes and the fog that hung over the football field when the stadium was downtown by the levee. People often refer to the old stadium as "Foggy Bottom". It is still being used by the Elba Recreation Department. Tonight was the 4th game of the year for Elba and they have won all 4.


The year I graduated our football team was great and won every game that year.


I was in the band my junior and senior year and played a clarinet. Travelling to the ball games in the big yellow school bus was so much fun. I remember that we travelled in a Greyhound bus to the National Peanut Festival in Dothan and Mrs. Dorsey rented a suite of rooms at a hotel downtown Dothan so we could rest and get ready to march in the parade.


Another time our band marched in icy cold weather (January I think) at the governor's inauguration in Montgomery (don't remember which Gov.!!) It was so cold I remember my fingers sticking to the metal clarinet.


The band got new uniforms the year before I started playing in the band. I have a photo of our band in 1951 that I will post here when I locate the picture.


What is different at ball games now is the bands don't just play Sousa marches anymore. They do Broadway music and dance on the field. They have color guards and dancers (?) on the field at half time. They have a big truck to haul their instruments, etc. to ball games. We had to load ours on the school bus and walk around them or hold them in your lap.


Oh well, time marches on and there's a vast improvement in the bands of today as compared to those 50 years ago. But I bet we had just as much fun and I know we sounded just as good or better.


The new Elba High School stadium is so nice. The seating is on the side of a hill and the playing field in the center of the "bowl".


You know what I like about the current stadium? There's no smoking allowed so you can breathe nice fresh air. And it's so much fun to greet your friends at the ball game. Many of our friends have grandchildren playing for the Elba team, or cheer leaders or in the band.

Up, Up and Away!

The Unveiling of the Marker at Tiger Town Park was a great success today. The children had fun releasing the colorful balloons at the end of the ceremony.


The two big tents were lifesavers, shielding us from the hot sun. And everybody enjoyed cold bottled water and colorful fans that had the program printed on one side and a photo of the playground on the other side.


Channel 4 from Dothan covered the event and we are looking forward to seeing ourselves on TV tomorrow (Monday).

I'll post some more pictures later this week.

Planning for an event in Tiger Town Park

It seems like I have been planning for over a month for the "Unveiling of a granite monument" at Tiger Town. I have rescheduled the event for this Sunday, Sept 7 at 2 pm at the playground.

When we were doing our fundraising for the playground, we had a category called "Title Sponsors" for anyone or any group or business that donated $10,000 or more. They were told that a permanent marker would be engraved with their names and place near the entrance to the park. The owner of a local monument company and his wife donated a large light gray granite monument and had it engraved on the slanted top side. In front they printed the name of the park "Tiger Town" and dedicated the park to the children of Elba.


This Sunday we will have a "ceremony" and unveil the marker and honor those whose names appear on the marker. We will also be celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the playground.


I will write more about this on Sunday following the event, and include some photos.


Today I'm just writing about "getting ready". You wouldn't think so much preparation has to be made for a ceremony that will only last for about 10-15 minutes. Much of the preparation was made before Aug. 24th when our event was right in the middle of Hurricane Fay and we had so much rain dumped on us for several days. The next Sunday was Labor Day weekend, and it was also bad weather. Our new date is Sept. 7 and there is 30% chance of rain. We will have 2 tents in place and the ceremony will take place even in the rain.


First of all, I wrote letters to the families, businesses, clubs, etc. to be honored to see if they could all have someone present for the event. Sept. 7 is the date of the first Univ of AL home football game; and one of our ardent supporters of the playground will be away. His father was one of the Title Sponsors and he died before we built the playground. His wife will be attending the ceremony along with other family members of the Jack R. Brunson family.

Some members of the Kelley Foods family will be present but they couldn't all be present since two of them are away on Sunday.


Others include National Security Insurance Group, Kiwanis International and Elba Kiwanis Club. Governmental officals include our Mayor, State Senator Jimmy Holley and State Representative Terry Spicer. Our senator and representative were so helping in securing money from the State of AL for our project.


I am getting programs printed on the back of fans, and some other handouts. All of this took time to put together and send to the printer, who just happens to be one of the playground coordinators. She was the one who suggested printing the program on a fan, so people could use them to keep cool.

I needed a cover for the monument and instead of a dark color, I chose bright royal blue with balloons on the front of the cover. I had a hard time making them look like balloons and not lollipops! Two teen-aged children of one of our playground committee members will remove the cover. They have grown up since we started working on the playground in 2005.

I wanted to release balloons at the end of the ceremony as the Carpenters sing that popular Sesame Street song, "Sing a Song". We hope to have a lot of children present to release the helium filled balloons. I bought two helium tanks today. No, I'm not blowing up 60 balloons. I called the high school and asked for some school Ambassadors to come early and blow up the balloons and take care that part of the program. I hope they all show up! They need service hours.


I had a hard time locating the song to use for the balloon release and someone downloaded it for me and I made a CD to use. Now I have to locate a CD player with loud speakers to play the CD.

My brother loaned me a large Coca Cola container to use to put ice in it to cool bottles of water.
I have been looking for water to be on sale and found 24 bottles for $3.50 today at WalMart. I bought 2 cases. There's water fountains at the playground in case we don't have enough bottled water.


The entire cost of this event will be less than $65, which includes 2 Blue Juniper shrubs to place on either side of the monument.


I went to City Hall today to borrow the portable microphone. It's charged and ready to use. I tried it when I got home and didn't know the volume was on high and I almost blasted my family out of the house! Outdoors it won't be that loud I'm sure.


Another friend will take a large table to the site Sunday for us to use to display the architect's drawing of the new additions to the park. These buildings will be built from grant money we recently received and this announcement will be made public by the Mayor at the ceremony.


I just checked off most of the things I had listed to get done before Sunday - except for one thing. I had planned to get some curly ribbon at WalMart to use to tie to the balloons. But they didn't have large rolls. Their small rolls only had enough to wrap a small present, it was shiny, and cost $1.29. I would need a lot of these rolls. I look at other party places and they didn't have any at all. I came home and looked through my Christmas wrapping box, and there was no curly ribbon. I don't know what I will do. My last resort is to visit a florist tomorrow to see if they will sell me some, like they use when they fill helium balloons.


So you see, planning even a simple event takes a lot of time if you want it to be special.


Our local newspaper will be covering the event, and I invited someone to come from Channel 4 in Dothan, our local news station for this area.


Check back Sunday night for more on this important event for the people of Elba.

Searching for My Roots

This week the Today show on NBC is featuring programs on finding your ancestors. Meredith Vieira traveled to the Azores to visit relatives and see the places her grandparents grew up before they came to America to live. Matt Lauer's family escaped from Romania when the Jewish people were being tortured, and came to America. The most touching story was when Ann Curry went to Japan to visit her ancestoral home and some of her mother's family. And Al Roker will visit his roots in the Bahamas where his ancestors were slaves.


This has prompted me to finish working on my "Smith Family Genealogy" which I started typing in 2003! I have an old Smith family genealogy book written in 1903 and I have retyped it on the computer so I can make copies. The old book is small and the paper is crumbling and falling apart. I typed the book on a typewriter in 1980, including more information on my mother's grandfather, William Cole Smith and his big family of 12 children. I plan to put some photos of William Cole's family at the end of the book. The book will contain over 100 single-spaced pages. Creating an index was a big part of doing the book. There is a listing of all the names in the book, and the page numbers where their name appears.

I learned that my Smith ancestors were Quakers from NC. They migrated there from PA, settling near Reidsville, NC on land that John Smith received for his bravery in the French and Indian War. I have a copy of the deed for the land which came from the NC Archives. When we lived in Winston-Salem, NC, we spent several week-ends in the Reidsville area searching for the Smith family cemetery. One day in Feb. we were looking in an area underneath some power lines, and we found the graves of John Smith, his son Samuel, and some others.


The 1903 Smith Family Genealogy was written by J. Fletcher Smith (see photo) a descendant of John and Samuel Smith and he described where the cemetery was located. Eighty years had passed when my sister Chris and I started searching for the graves and some of the landmarks described in the book were still there, which helped us pinpoint the area of the cemetery. I like the passage from the book which J. Fletcher Smith wrote in the early 1900's: "In our hurried life we scarcely realize the conditions as they existed at that time. The log cabins in the midst of vast forests, the constant fear of the Indians, the simple home life with white sanded floors, the spinning wheel, the homespun clothing all pass before our minds as something quaint and beautiful."


Chris and I joined the DAR, using Samuel Smith as our Revolutionary Soldier ancestor. Our DAR chapters helped us put a DAR marker on the graves. A few years we went back to the area for a special gathering of Smith ancestors and the cemetery was still intact. Someone had cleared the area before we came.


Genealogy is fun and you learn a lot about your ancestors. I haven't discovered any famous (or infamous) ancestors yet. Jim learned that one of his cousins, Ben Fortson, was Secretary of State in GA. He is still searching for some Gilmer and Tyner ancestors and has learned a lot about his mother's family, the Carnes. He is also working on my Grimes ancestry.


My maternal and paternal grandparents, grandparents, and great grandparents are all buried in Coffee County. Two great grandparents, William Cole Smith, and John William Grimes were in the Civil War. We are putting a CSA military marker on John William Grimes gravesite when we have the Grimes reunion on October 4th, 2008.


I have 10 American Revolutionary War soldiers as ancestors. My sister Christine researched these and shared the info with me so I could add these to my list of ancestors for the DAR: Samuel Smith, NC; Felix Frederick, NC; James Grimes, Sr., NC; Nathaniel Allen, VA; John Garrett, VA; James Spratling, VA; James Wilson, GA; John Byers, VA; William Cole, VA; Stephen Darden, VA.

Warning! Hurricane coming!

This week-end the news is all about Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Hanna. Last week we were recovering from all the rain tropical storm Fay dropped on us.  Already we are under flash flood watch. We always get the outer bands of rain, wind and sometimes tornados that spin off the hurricanes.


When Ivan came through in 2004, we stood at the back door watching our roofing shingles sail into the air like frisbees when the strong wind and rain blew came through. We had a "blue roof" for 4 months while we waited for the roofing to arrive and then waited for someone to install the roofing.


Until we had weather channels on TV, we didn't hear much about hurricanes or tornadoes. When I was growing up on the farm, I remember that every September we would have "gale winds" and lots of rain. Sometimes it would ruin the cotton crop or rain so much the farmers would lose their peanut crops. When I was a sophomore at Troy University, I remember one September week-end on campus when I thought we would be blown away by the strong wind. We had no warnings that the bad weather was coming. We just stayed inside on Sat. and Sun. and I remember that we walked to classes on Monday in the heavy rain. Classes were not canceled in those days.


There were tornadoes when we lived in Manhattan, Kansas and in other states, but the one I really remember is Hurricane Hugo, in Florence, SC, on Sept 21, 1989. I was teaching school that year and we were told to put things away in our classroom, move the desks against the wall, and prepare the room to be used for shelter from the hurricane. We were at least 70 miles from the ocean and didn't figure we'd have any damage from Hugo, just take care of those who had to leave the beach and come inland and stay a couple of days. The sun was shining that Friday afternoon and not a cloud in the sky when school let out early and we all went home to wait for the storm. It was like sitting around waiting for someone to die!



We went to bed on Sat. night after the storm struck Charleston, SC, thinking we wouldn't have any bad weather. The storm blew inland and high winds traveled all the way to Charlotte, NC doing a lot of damage. It arrived in Florence, SC around 2 a.m. We brought mattresses downstairs to the hallway in the middle of the house to sleep that night. Jim and James went to bed and were sleeping when the howling winds were blowing through the big trees all around us. Some people didn't anchor their chairs, trash cans, and other outdoor things and they went sailing through the air. I kept looking out the window and was so scared. It didn't last too long but did a lot of damage. We were without electricity and water for several days. I learned why they told us to fill the bathtubs with water. We ate cold canned veggies and drank evaporated milk. Ice was scarce and everything in our freezer had to be thrown away. There were so many trees and electric lines down that we couldn't get out of our driveway to get to a store.


We had to have some roofing shingles replaced and the house pressure cleaned. Leaves were plastered to our two-story yellow house and it looked like it had been camoflauged. We were lucky as many of our neighbors had trees fall on their homes.


When school started back a couple of weeks later, we had to have counselors for the children who lost everything and homes were flooded. I really sympathized with people from Miss. and LA when Katrina destroyed their homes.


When we go back to Florence to visit, you can't see any remnants of Hugo. People came from everywhere to help restore the city and remove the tree limbs, restore electricity, etc.


There was great rejoicing after the storm when people gathered at churches to thank God for sparing their lives. You can always rebuild homes, schools and businesses, but you can't replace lives lost during storms.

Help! I need Cooking Lessons

Cooking is not one of my better qualities. I just never got started off right. Being the oldest of 7, and living in the house with my grandparents until I was 11, I didn't get any cooking lessons when I was growing up. My grandmother Wilson was an excellent cook and did much of the cooking. Everything she cooked was just perfect! Her biscuits were light and fluffy, her rice never stuck together, she seasoned her vegetables with bits of pork, and her cakes were supreme. My mother helped in the kitchen but Mama was the chief cook. I should have been in there getting lessons. Instead I was the "nanny" and helped take care of my younger siblings while mother was in the kitchen.

When Jim and I got married, was he in for a suprise! I had to buy a cookbook and start learning to cook. I didn't even know how to make coffee because we didn't drink coffee in our house. We had to drink milk (although I never did master the art of milking a cow). In the summer we drank iced tea, even for breakfast sometimes. Jim had never heard of anyone drinking ice tea for breakfast, or in the winter.


I bought a Better Homes and Garden cookbook when we were living in Germany the first 2 years we were married. The only problem was I couldn't find a lot of ingredients called for in the recipes, in the German marketplace where I went to shop. I baked my first turkey while living in Germany and didn't know there was a package inside the turkey that needed to be removed. I found the giblets inside when we carved the turkey. I tried to make dressing for the turkey but they don't eat cornbread in Bavaria and the only cornmeal I could find looked like grits. So much for my Southern Thanksgiving meal.


I got my B.S. degree in Home Economics and I'm so glad I didn't get graded on individual cooking. We usually cooked in teams. My interest was more in the interior design, arts and crafts and sewing than in foods.


Over the years, our family has eaten a lot of frozen entrees and convenience foods. When we retired, I started making things from scratch and using as many fresh vegetables and fruits as possible. Food tastes so much better when it doesn't come from a can or loaded with preservatives if bought packaged, ready to heat and eat.


I still have one big problem. I cannot bake. There's just something I do wrong when I mix things to put in the oven. A recent pound cake was a disaster. It didn't rise, with the crusty, split crack on top like my friend's cakes. Another friend told me to cut it in cubes and freeze it until I need a dessert, and then turn the disaster cake into a trifle. Yesterday I made a key lime icebox pie; except it was more like a pudding than a pie. To make it firm enough to cut and serve, I got creative and dissolved 2 envelopes of gelatin and added to the pudding and it became firm like a pie should be. One problem; I added too much green food coloring and it looked more like a Christmas dessert than pale green key lime. But it was good and we ate it and the graham cracker crust which I bought already prepared.



A few years ago I made our son Bill a 7 layer chocolate cake for his birthday and the icing was better than the cake. The granddaughters loved it and keep asking for another one. I didn't tell them how many thin layers I made before I got enough of the same size and thickness to make the cake! And I had to keep making more cooked icing to have enough to spread over 7 layers. I have no plans to make another one any time soon. They have good ones already made at our grocery store.


I don't think my biscuits have ever tasted the same or looked the same each time I make them. I admit to buying frozen, uncooked biscuits from Kelley Foods (not the kind that come in a rolled can). We don't have biscuits very often - too many calories. Once at a family gathering, my nephew Andrew asked if Aunt Judy could make biscuits. He said Aunt Nell's were more like cannon balls. I didn't even get angry because he was telling the truth!



My granddaughters fortunately think I'm a good cook and I usually try to cook their favorite dishes when they visit. Katie loves to cook and when she visits us, she likes to make chocolate chip cookies (so she can lick the spoon and bowl). This photo was taken at the farm house a few years ago when she was about 11. She was standing on a stool to reach the counter. She wanted to make the cookies all by herself. She kept sampling the raw cookie dough and I was afraid she wasn't going to have any left to bake! I remember they were very good.


I cut out recipes from magazines and maybe try them once or twice and my family always say things like, this is good, but we like chicken better fried! Why bother to try new recipes!

I have a basket of recipes on all types of paper, backs of envelopes, torn out of newspapers, etc. and one of my "to do" things for 2008 is to put these recipes in a computer file, coding them as favorites, holiday, pot-luck, etc. I still use my old Auburn and Montevallo home economics cookbooks from high school in the 1950's. They have the kinds of foods and recipes we ate when we were growing up.

My goal is to get all of my "tried and true" recipes in a recipe file on the computer and when I need one, I'll just print it out without having to search through my basket or cookbooks. But I'll miss the dirty,worn, greasy pages of the old cookbooks or cards with icing on them. Maybe I'll save those valuable recipes in a lock box after I enter them in the computer.

Dog Days of Summer are over ???

Dog days of summer are supposed to be over but not so here in Elba. The phrase Dog Days or "the dog days of summer", refers to the hottest, most sultry days of summer. They are still with us and it's only about 30 days until the first day of fall.


This past month has been unusually hot and humid, in the 90's every day, and lots of showers. It's almost like living in a jungle. I'm so thankful for modern conveniences, but most of all for air conditioning in weather such as we are having. I go walking around 6:30 A.M. before the sun comes up and by the time I get back home the sun is shining on my back and my hair is wet, and I've only been gone for 30 minutes.


Because of the heat and humidity, I sometimes feel very tired and no energy. In fact, I have to take a nap after lunch because my energy level drops way down. Jim remarked recently that I haven't "pulled weeds" in the flower beds in quite awhile. I just can't get motivated to get out in the heat. I even forget to water my plants in the potting shed sometimes.


Now I know part of the problem with my lack of energy, etc. Recently I mentioned to the nurse at the Dr.'s office when I went for a shot for an inflamed sciatic nerve, that my blood pressure was normal and my pulse was 47. I thought the lower the pulse reading the healthier I was. Jim's pulse is always in the 60's and 70's. Little did I know that mine was way too low! She said I needed to contact my primary doctor right way and let him see why my heart was beating so slow. Later that day I did go to visit the Dr. and learned that I need to have a pacemaker "installed" to take care of my slow heart, a condition called bradycardia. An EKG showed that I have a right bundle branch block!! Now I'm waiting to get an appointment with a cardiologist who is also an electrophysiology cardilogist (only 2 in Dothan) who will check me out and arrange for the pacemaker.


Other than fatigue and being sleepy, I am having a hard time concentrating. Actually I thought perhaps I might have symptoms of Alzheimer's. But I'm glad to learn that this is also a symptom of bradycardia.


At certain times of the year, I sometimes wake up with vertigo usually caused by sinus problems. But last Sunday morning I work up early and went outside to get the newspaper, and was so lightheaded and weak, I was wondering if I would make it back inside. Again, feeling lightheaded is a symptom of bradycardia.


It's amazing how we have all these things wrong with us, and assume they are part of aging or the hot sultry dog days of summer pulling us down.


I have been reading about pacemakers and learned that they don't put you to sleep to install them. So maybe I'll get to watch and see how they do it?? I want the most modern, up-to-date version with energizer batteries that will last a long time. I wonder if I will be able to hear it sending out the electrical signals to my hear muscles?

Caroline, Grandmother Gilmer, Grandma Nell
Nerissa, Katie, Liz, Ally 

I'm fast becoming a bionic person. First the artifical knee which I got in 1997 and it was supposed to last 10-12 years. It's now on its 11th year and recently it was x-rayed and the Dr. said it looks fine. Now I'll have a power pack installed in my chest. My knee set off the alarm in Boston airport last summer and now I will tell the airport screeners that I have a pacemaker and they must not touch it with the screening wand. Maybe I'll just stay out of airports. Most of the places I want to visit are within driving distance anyway. Besides we have to drive 4 hours to get to the Atlanta airport to catch a plane. By then we're usually half way to where we are going.


I can't wait to get my energy renewed. There's so many things I've been putting off doing because I just didn't "have the energy". I need to be "rewired" for a trip to the NC mountains in October and seeing 3 granddaughters (on the left side of photo) and Jim's mother in Harrisburg, near Charlotte. We hope to see the other two granddaughters when they come from Texas to Alabama to spend Thanksgiving with us.