Planning to go on a trip, and use our new passports

Jim and I are set to go on a fall leaf tour of New England and on up to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and back to the Canadian side of Niagra Falls.  We are leaving on Sept 27 and will be gone 15 days.

We will travel with 51 other people from our area on a bus trip sponsored by the Coffee County Baptist Association.  They take a couple of tours a year for their Senior population.  When there's space left after they offer the tour to the Baptists, others can sign up to go.

We are going to spend 2 nights in Bergen, NJ and go to NYC for a broadway play one night, and tours during the day.  Leaving out to go to Maine, we will stop and go up in the Empire State Building.  I haven't been since 1953!  There's so much planned for us to do each day.   Will be returning via Lancaster, PA and spend a day in the Amish country and visit the Hershey Chocolate factory one day and get some samples.

Will return to Elba via Knoxville, TN.

Looking forward to seeing the pretty fall leaves in the White Mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Jim and I don't have enough clothes for 15 days!  We will be going to a meeting on Sept 13 to learn all the instructions, get itineraries, plus general info we need to know.  And yes, we will need to use our new passports when going to Canada.

We have lots of friends who take bus tours all over the US and really enjoy doing this.  I have reservations about riding a bus for 15 days....  I learned that the bus will stop every 2 hours for people to get up and walk about outside (all the travelers are our age or older).


I will have lots of photos to post when we return.

Recently I printed copies of my blog postings (Jul 2007-Jul 2010) and I had 450 pages. Printed on front and back there were 225 sheets of paper.  I needed 1-1/2" plastic combs to bind all that paper.  I made 5 copies for the granddaughters and 1 to keep.  Too expensive to print all the photos in color, so many of them are b&w.  Here is a photo of  the front cover.

(Click on photo to make it larger)

New Passports are here

Recently I read that passports were going to be much more expensive after a certain date in July so we rushed out and got our passports renewed.  Jim and I have had passports since 1954, when we went to Germany.

It was fun pulling out our bag of old passports, laughing at our passport photos, and reminiscing about all the "ports of call" recorded in the old books.  Over the last 56 years we have traveled to a lot of places outside the US and needed a passport.

Getting my first passport was quite an ordeal.  Jim had gone to Germany (US Army) and he wanted me to get my passport and join him there.  I went to the Federal Bldg. in Dothan to apply.  They sent my application to New York.  Time to sail to Germany was getting close and my passport had not arrived in the mail.  I don't remember how I found the phone number to call the passport office in NY, but I called and they said they would hold it at their office in the Rockefeller Center for me to pick it up since there wasn't enough time for them to mail it to me.  So I left Elba (Montgomery) via train to travel to NY City to get on the Holland American Ship "Maasdam" to go to Germany in March, 1954.

I arrived in NY and checked into a hotel near the train station.  Then I walked several blocks to Rockefeller Center, took the elevator up several stories (scared to death) to pick up my passport.  They had it at the desk, awaiting my arrival.  I was only 19 years old but very brave and ready for my big adventure. I walked back to the hotel and loved window shopping along the way.  When I returned to the hotel, I asked at the desk how to get to the Pier the next morning to board the ship.  I was lucky.  There were other passengers staying there and the hotel arranged for a station wagon to pick  us up and take us to the pier.

I had never seen anything larger than a big fishing boat and the size of that ship blew my mind!  As I walked up the gangplank to board, I kept wondering what kept such a big ship from sinking.  I found my stateroom and someone had already delivered my luggage to my room.  Crossing the Atlantic twice is enough "cruising" for me.  AlthoughI might  change my mind one day and get back on the water again.

I think I've already written about my voyage to Rotterdam, Holland where Jim met me, and we traveled via train to Wurzburg, Germany where we would live.

We were required to have our passport with us at all times while in Germany.  Once while visiting some friends, their little girl was playing with my purse and took my passport and dropped it behind a chest.  Later I missed my passport and was frantic.  I couldn't leave the house without it.  Our friends tore their house apart looking for it, and two days later discovered it behind a chest when something else fell behind it and they had to retrieve it.  You aren't supposed to mutilate your passport and guess what.... I knocked over a bottle of red nail polish and covered the front of my passport.  Couldn't remove it with polish remover as I was afraid it would removed the lettering or dissolve the paper.  I am probably the only person with a "pinkish green covered" passport.  Nobody in customs ever asked what happened. People as clumsy as I should never travel away from home.


Our latest passports are really different.  So much security now to prevent fraud.  The clerk at the passport office asked where we were going - our destination.  We said we don't have one in mind right now -- we just want to be prepared.  We figured that by the time our passports become invalid this time (10 years), we will be too old to travel.  Surely we will find a place to go and use them so our money won't be "wasted".

With a Song in My Heart

I love the old church hymns.  We are fortunate that Elba United Methodist church has not switched to other types of music for our Sunday morning worship time.  In fact we still have just an organist and pianist - no orchestra.  And no movie screen to drop down with words of praise songs printed on the screen.  I guess I'm a bit (lot) old fashioned in that I love the old hymns better than the modern ones.  They speak to me and offer comfort, or make me feel good.

Our music leaders come and go since they are students at Troy University, majoring in music.  I think they would prefer the modern, contemporary music, and occasionally slip one in for the choir anthem.  Mostly we sing the old hymns and I never have to use a hymnal since I've heard these hymns all of my 75 years.  When I was young, we used to laugh at the titles of the songs, i.e., Whiter than Snow, Washed in the Blood of the Lamb, and others that had weird titles.  I remember asking my mother what a sheave was when we sang "Bringing in the Sheaves".  Or what kind of uniform Christian soldiers wear (Onward Christian Soldiers).

At church last Wednesday night, we had a guest speaker, Rev. Ed Shirley, from Clanton UMC, who presented a great program on the life of John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace.  Mr. Shirley, dressed in an 18th century costume,  presented his dramatic monologue and with an English accent.  He recalled his life as a sea captain and the brutal slave trade to become an ordained clergyman in the Church of England.  He was also a great song writer and had many of them published.

I always enjoy reading the background of music and who wrote it and what it represents.  When I was in Jr. High School and taking piano lessons at Curtis School, our music teacher taught us about the composers of classical music.  My favorite was Mozart and one day when in Salzburg, Germany, I went to his birthplace.  How exciting to see where he was born and grew up.

Sometimes I listen to the Gaither homecoming group, and I especially enjoying hearing Daniel O'Donnel sing those old hymns with his beautiful Irish tenor voice on PBS.  I really don't care for Southern Gospel music as they sing it today, usually with guitars, banjos, etc. and loud.  A piano is all they need.  This kind of music brings back memories of "singing schools" I attended when a teen ager.

I love big pipe organs and could sit for hours  and listen to concerts played on those beautiful instruments.

What precious memories I have of visiting my maternal grandparents as a child and listening to "Papa Smith" as he would sing with his heart those old hymns.  He would read the Bible after dinner and then lead us in some of his favorite songs.  I can close my eyes and hear him singing with a loud tenor voice, "In the Sweet, By and By" or "When the Roll is Called up Yonder", and that great song, "Amazing Grace".

Nell playing the piano

Music is a great part of my life.  I'm so glad our mother insisted we all take piano lessons and at least have a knowledge of music, even though none of her 7 children ever became musicians.  Most of us played in the school band.  I have the family piano in our living room and our son James used to ask me to play for him to sing.  His favorites were Star Spangled Banner and Christmas music.  I actually played the piano at our country church when I was in high school.  That was the end of my career in music!       Click photo to enlarge 

Raising Chickens - the latest Urban thing to do

Today my Cooperative Farming News monthly newspaper arrived and I got myself a glass of iced tea and settled down to read all 48 pages.  Jim just doesn't understand what I find of interest in this farm news.  Plenty I tell him, but mostly nostalgia and recalling memories of my early days on a working farm.

On the front cover was an article about a resident in the Birmingham area of Homewood who was trying to save her "yard birds" from code restrictions.  First of all, when did chickens become "yard birds"?  She keeps her 7 "girls" in a portable coop that she can move about in her back yard, among the herbs and flowers.  Her American Dominques all have names and they are specialty chickens, not just ordinary birds.  I wonder if these fashionable chicks are what we raised in the 1940s and we call them "dom-i-neckers".  They were good layers.  We also had Rhode Island Reds and Plymouth Rocks.  See, I know all about yard birds!

We didn't keep our chickens in a coop during the day.  They were "free range" and roamed all over the yard and garden, picking insects off the vegetables, eating berries, etc. on the ground and of course the cracked corn we would throw on the ground for them to eat.  At dusk, they would head to the chicken house for the evening and would get up off the ground to roost, tucking their heads under their wings and going to sleep.
We would fasten the gate of the fenced area around the coop to keep wild animals and dogs from getting to the chickens at night.

There's nothing more exciting for a child, when hearing a hen cackling, than to rush out to see that she has layed an egg in her nest of straw.  When they are younger, they lay an egg every day.  When they get 2 or 3 years old and stop producing an egg every day, mother would isolate that chicken and we would have a meal with chicken for Sunday dinner.  They were too tough to fry after they get adult size.

We have some friends who have a little girl 8 who has her own chickens.  A sign on the gate says "Grace's Girls".  She has 12 red hens.  We watched her approach the pen recently and they heard her coming and all gathered near the fence, clucking excitedly.  She knelt down and talked to them and they were all "answering" her.  What a sight!  Her dad built small doors on the outside of the chicken house so she can lift the door and get the eggs without going into the pen.  Since they don't eat a dozen eggs every day, she has customers that she sells the eggs to and saves her money.  What a great lesson for this little girl.  She also has some pheasants in another area.  Fortunately they live in the country and have a few acres to do all of  this.


Last Feb. we were in Sarasota, FL visiting my sister and family, and went to the County Fair.  I had to go see the prize-winning animals and my favorite part of course was the chickens and roosters.  I'm posting a photo of an exotic hen that I would love to have for a pet???  Jim just looked at me and rolled his eyes. At least chickens don't bark, or crow like roosters and only make a noise when they lay an egg.  You use the "droppings" for fertilizer for the yard or garden.  And when one quits producing eggs, you make a meal (or two) out of the old biddy!!

What was I trying to Remember??

I saw this chart today and it fits me except for the sleeping and working part.  I don't need much sleep and I'm usually busy until 10 or 11 pm at night and wake up every morning around 6 or earlier.  So my "sleeping" is much less than my "working".  But.... I do spend a lot of time looking for things, or helping Jim look for things he loses.


I blame the problem because I have so much info in my brain that it short circuits and makes me forget things.  If I would just take time to put things where they belong instead of laying them down to come back for them later, half of my problems would be solved.


Just when I have a permanent home for things and know where to look, we move!  That has happened 4 times since 1990.  We had a very big house in Albany, GA and I think that's worse than having a small space.
Too many places to put things.  Just when I had "permanent" homes for things and could remember where I stored things, we sold our house and moved to the farm near Elba.  For about 4 months we lived in a very small, 2 bedroom mobile home (our guest house) while we remodeled the lake house to live in.  Most of our things were in storage.  I just went out and bought things I couldn't locate if I needed something I couldn't find.
Then in the fall we moved into our 2 bedroom lake house.  We just left most everything in the guest house when we got our things out of storage.


At this stage, I had 2 or 3 of almost everything in the kitchen.  There was no excuse for not finding things I needed.   Not so.   We didn't have enough storage in the small lake house and had to store a lot of things and what I needed was always in a box someplace.


Six years later we decided to sell the farm and move to town.  Again we had to store a lot of things until our house in town was completely remodeled.  Not only did we have a guest house to move things out of but we had the lake house contents and things from storage.  All I can say is I'm glad it was Nov. and not income tax time!


We got settled in our new home in town and I immediately started putting things away where we could find them.  We now have one kitchen, very small, without much storage space.  I know where everything is in the kitchen.  If I can't find what I need, I look in a box on the shelf in the laundry room where the overflow is stored.


Our problem now is mostly with locating things we carry around in our hands (coffee cup, etc) and especially Jim's pipe.  We find them in the most unlikely places, usually several hours later.  We have to laugh at ourselves and chalk it all up to "getting older".   Maybe others don't have this problem.


I spend a lot of time reading on ways to improve your memory and what foods to eat to have a sharper mind.
Those things I can change, but getting older just happens and you can't stop it!


P.S.  I will be 76 on Thanksgiving Day, and entering the last quarter of my life. I have a lot of things left to do so I must get busy while I can still see, hear and walk.  Two weeks ago I renewed my passport for another 10 years - just in case I need it.

Gathering grapes to make jelly

Our concord grapes are ready to pick.  I wait until most of the bunch ripens to pick them.  The early summer drought kept the grapes from getting large.  But they are juicy, and very tart - just right for making good grape jelly.


So today I got up early and went out to pick the grapes.  They hang in big bunches and are easy to pull off the vine.  We only have one Concord Grape vine and this produces all the grapes we need for making jelly, most of which I give away for gifts, etc.


I use the low sugar recipe and put the jelly in pint jars.  It's quite a process and I allot an entire day to making jelly.   Sometimes I just get the juice from the grapes and freeze it to make jelly in the winter.  That's probably what I will do today as I have some other things I have to do that would get in the way of jelly making.


I will wash the grapes after I pick them off the stems.  This time I'm going to try crushing them in my food processor before I put them in water and boil them to get the juice out of the hulls.  I let the juice cool and put it in freezer bags, just the right amount for one batch of jelly.  You have to make jelly in single batches or it won't jell properly and you have grape syrup!  I usually end up with one batch of syrup every year.  Good on pancakes, so I don't discard it.


Just behind me in the first photo you can see other vines; dark red or wine-colored muscadines/scuppernongs.
They also make good jelly but usually we just eat them.  And next to that vine is my favorite - the sweet, bronze scuppernongs.  Beginning mid August, we can go to the "vineyard" throughout the day and pick and eat.  We can usually find these little gems hidden among the leaves until late September.


There's nothing better than "going to the scupperlin' vine" for a good snack.  I have memories of doing this in my childhood also.  When we lived with Mama and Papa Wilson (until I was 11), the scuppernong vine
was on a trellis and they didn't prune it and the vine reached the ground on all sides.  My sisters and I made an opening to get inside the "cave" and this was where we would go to play.  It was dark inside, and usually much cooler than outside.


I learned in my Master Gardening class that you trim the vines back to the "mother vine" in early spring and you will get grapes on the new growth, and not have tangled vines that make it hard to get to the grapes.  I did this and it works!  Jim thought I was destroying the vines and couldn't bear to watch me prune the limbs away in February.  Now he's a believer in what I did!


I design and print labels to put on my jars of jelly. Sometimes I pack some of my homemade jellies, jams and preserves (especially pear and fig) and use as a door prize for various occasions, and my gift is always popular.

Last day of vacation

We arrived at the north central Alabama Welcome Center late Sunday evening and spent the night at Athens. The AL Welcome Center is beautiful and recently won a beautification award. A large rocket sits on the grounds, welcoming people to AL and nearby "Rocket City" at Huntsville.


Near the rocket are two large war memorials; Vietnam and Korea. I read the names on each memorial and found a former high school classmate on the Vietnam memorial, from Coffee County, Joseph M. (Mack) Moore.



The Korean memorial has the name of another classmate's brother, Roy Hattaway from Coffee County. His sister Nadine Fuller (a classmate of mine) did not know about the memorial. I'm glad we took pictures for her.



We decided to get off I-65 on the way home and go to the Space Center in Huntsville. The last time were were there was in 1986. You can only imagine the advances made in space during the past 25 years. Things that seemed like yesterday were displayed as obsolete now!

We were shocked that it cost $30 each to go to the Space Museum! And that didn't include the IMAX theater and some other attractions. It did include the Star Wars travelling exhibit which was great. I really enjoyed seeing the characters and learning how they operated. Here I am standing with one of my favorite characters, Chewbaca. We saw a model of him without his fur covering and all the millions of little wars and transistors inside that made him appear as a real live person (thing?). There were so many young kids touring the exhibit and watching them as they interacted with all the exhibits was so much fun. I was shocked to learn that the first Star Wars movie was made 33 years ago!


We spent about 1/2 day touring the space center but it was worth it. I'm glad we made a "spur of the moment" decision to go by and check it out. Star Wars was definitely the drawing card.


We left Huntsville and headed home to Elba, arriving home around 5 p.m. It was so good to be back home after having been gone for almost a week.


Yesterday we called Jim's cousin in KY to tell her we had such a good time, only to learn that on Tuesday, July 22, they had 6" of rain that night and flash flooding took homes, bridges, roads, etc. in the area we had visited. Just 4 days after we were there for the family reunion. It was so sad to look at the places we had just visited and the roads we had traveled.


Enjoy the present, forget about the past, and don't worry about the future because we don't know what the future holds. (Nobody said this; I just made it up!!)