Grandma's Funeral

First you have to understand that Grandma and Grandpa were not church goers. In fact, Grandpa Hammond told everyone he was a Christian Scientist, because they were ignorant people in good old New Boston who were afraid of anything that was as strange and unusual as Christian Science. And also, he had learned that Christian Scientists didn't believe in doctors and medicine, and proclaiming he was one of them kept him from being hounded to go to the doctor. As far as I know, he never had any actual contact with a member of that faith.

You need also to know that Grandma was a musician. When she was a girl, she played the piano in a movie theater run by her mother, providing "mood" music to whatever was going on on the silent screen. She sang well and she appreciated good music of all kinds.

Grandma was raised a Baptist, but there was no Baptist church in town. When she died, my Aunt Mary came from California to take care of things. She made arrangements for burial in the New Windsor Cemetery and hired the local Baptist minister to do the grave side rites. The minister's wife played the autoharp (or was it a zither?), and she and her husband would sing "Nearer My God to Thee."

The day of the funeral arrived and it was cold and windy, but at least there was no snow on the ground. We all trooped to the cemetery where there was a tent to keep off some of the wind, just SOME of the wind. It blew through like only a prairie wind can blow.

The minister decided it was time for Grandpa to 'come to Jesus' and he set out to tell Grandpa the error of his ways for keeping Grandma away from the church all those years. At least that's how I remember it. Never a kind word was said about our wonderful, laughing, kind Grandma. I don't know if he was preaching eternal damnation or not, but that's how it seemed to me.

Then the preacher and his wife began their rendition of the old hymn. He was a pretty decent singer, and she wasn't bad as a musician, but the wind blowing so steadily apparently dried out a string...or something. Anyway about 2/3 through the first verse she hit the sourest note you ever heard. Then when they got to the same place on the next verse, she didn't avoid it. She waded right in and played that bad note again.

Joy, Corrine (Joy's mother) and I were red in the face from having to hold in our laughter. We could just imagine Grandma cringing in her casket at that awful screech. As soon as we could get behind the nearby shed, we dissolved into uncontrollable laughter. Just then Aunt Sally came around the building and thought we were sobbing. Our family not being comfortable with outward displays of emotion, she turned around and went back the way she came.

They say laughter and tears aren't far apart, and on that cold day in February, we couldn't have agreed more...and I dare say, Grandma was laughing right along with us.

Gladys Lelia McUne Hammond 1890 - 1970

New and Improved

Lots of new and wonderful things turn out to be just plain pains in the elbow.

In the 50s and 60s it was thought that Daylight Saving Time would be helpful because it would allow people more daylight time in the summer evenings for activities. Most states have adopted it, and that’s fine ---except that it means that 4^th of July fireworks have to start at about 9:30--- but then they decided that we need to go back to Standard Time in the winter so there would be more daylight in the morning --- and going to the grocery store after work means doing it after dark. I wish someone would just let us stay on Daylight Time.

 Then there’s one-way streets. In the 50s most ‘modern’ cities turned their major thoroughfares into one-way streets. I can remember when Jefferson and Adams in Peoria became one-way, and the only good thing about them as far as I was concerned is that you usually only had to watch for traffic from one direction when you were crossing the street. Hardly any city I have been in has truly grid-like street systems, and many times there’s a street going north but not a matching street going south, for example. Bloomington is a good example, and I can get lost in Bloomington’s downtown faster than you run a yellow light. One-way streets were supposed to make travel faster, easier and more efficient. Now Peoria’s city fathers are considering turning Jefferson and Adams back to two-way streets, because it would be faster, easier and more efficient.

And then there are ‘traffic circles.’ Our midwestern city planners are busy adding circles to all kinds of intersections, in spite of the fact that they are a pain to navigate, even in a downtown like Washington’s (Illinois, not D.C.). I remember all too well getting into a traffic circle in Washington, D.C. with my two kids in the car. We went around it twice because I couldn’t get over to get off on the street I needed. When I finally did get over, I was spun off onto the wrong street…in the wrong part of D.C. It was spooky! People who are familiar with the circles in their neighborhoods are comfortable with them, but for visitors they are a nightmare.

And what’s with the bike paths? Everywhere in the cities you see these 6 or 8 foot wide strips laid off on the streets, and they are supposed to be for bikes. But I never see any bicyclists on them. I suppose if you are fond of riding your bicycle in the city, you like them, but they seem like a lot of money gone to waste to me.

I remember many years ago that I acquired a dread of the words “New and Improved.” Whenever I saw them appear on the packaging of a favorite product, I groaned. Never did I find the product improved. Usually it meant that whatever I liked about the product was now gone. “New Blue Cheer” didn’t whiten as well; new Crest didn’t clean teeth as well; new wrinkle-free fabrics were the worst at wrinkling, etc.

But no matter how much I grouse about it, people who design things are going to continue to make them ‘new and improved,’ and I’ll just have to switch routes or products or schedules with everyone else.

Bug Collecting Is Not for Sissies

Sissies don't like insects. They especially don't like June bugs that bumble and scrabble around lights in the early summer. When I was about 10 years old, I didn't want to be a sissy, so I decided to LIKE June bugs. Come evening, I'd get hold of a bug by his middle and hold him up so his legs were working in mid air, or I'd let his pincer pinch my finger and he'd be stranded there. In case no one ever told you, June bugs are very stupid. Like the proverbial teen-aged boys, they only think of one thing. I wasn't what the beetles were looking for, so they caused me no harm. [When I went looking for an image of a June bug, I discovered that the beetle with the pincers was a stag beetle. Wicked looking beast, isn't it?]

Getting acquainted with June bugs led to my bug collection. Somewhere I must have seen how real etymologists mount their collections, and I got together some sort of frame with a glass and some cotton to pin the dead bugs to. It was pretty interesting, until nature took it's course. No one told me that dead things, no matter their size, are prey to smaller things. When all those little, icky white worms appeared, I suddenly lost interest in that hobby and the whole kit and kaboodle went into the trash.

I still like bugs, but I now insist that most of them stay outside my house.

I have watched for hours as an ant carried a bit of potato chip from my patio toward his hole. So far I have never had enough patience to follow an ant all the way home though, but I'm young enough that I might manage it some day. I taught all my kids to enjoy pill-bugs that roll up into a nice little gray ball when you disturb them. And I got my husband and brother-in-law to watching the paper wasps as they came to my flower bed, gathered up a ball of mud and flew off. After awhile they had the wasps named. There was the efficient one, and the workmanlike one, and the idiot one who never seemed to get a decent ball of mud collected. Wasps are interesting to watch...as long as you stay far enough away from them.

Now, I'm not a sissy, but I do have to admit that two kinds of bugs send chills up my spine: centipedes and earwigs. Just thinking of them makes me cringe. And you can't kill a centipede with your garden trowel,  because if you hack it in two, it just grows a new whatever-you-cut-off. I wonder if scientists have studied this trait to see if it could help in regrowing limbs or fingers or nerves.

Spiders aren't bugs, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be. I can't say that I want a spider crawling around on me, and I give them plenty of space, but I don't let anyone kill the spider by the back door that kills untold hundreds of bugs and leaves their carcasses for me to clean up.

One summer I had a jumping spider as a pet in the window over my kitchen sink. I had noticed that there weren't any fruit flies around the ripening tomatoes that I set there. Then one day as I was doing dishes, I saw the little striped guy come out of the corner, whirl around until he sighted in on a fruit fly, and with a mighty leap, jump and catch the fly. After that experience, I have treasured jumping spiders and have passed the tolerance on to my children. There was a dime-sized one in the sunroom last fall. I hope he is just hibernating and will be back when the weather warms up.

And everyone has marveled at the web of the orb-web spider, like Charlotte. The precision engineering that goes on within that little creature that allows her to construct her web is truly astounding.

One of our kids had a pet praying mantis one summer. We named him Manfred and kept him in an aquarium with a glass lid. I never realized how hard it was to stun a fly instead of killing it until I tried to get living flies for Manfred to eat.

I can never tell the story of Noah and the Ark without wondering why he let two mosquitoes on the boat. ...or two fleas....or two flies. I suppose they serve a good purpose, but I'm glad no child has ever asked me that question.

As a hobby, bug collecting has been interesting and informative and harmless. But I must admit that it's much better to collect them by picture and memory than by mounting them in cases. And now adays I am much more of a sissy than I was at 10.

Sewing - First, Last and Always

My favorite hobby:

My first experience with a needle, thread and fabric was with my Aunt Corrine's rag bag and darning needles. She must have been desperate to find something to keep the three of us busy (Joe was too little then to join in the project.) I don't suppose we made anything recognizable, but we really had fun. I think Joy and I were about five or six and Herman would have been three or four.

I think we played with that rag bag more than once, and probably progressed to smaller-eyed needles. What we all remember most though is the time one of us carelessly 'lost' a needle in the easy chair. Joy's dad, my Uncle Eldon, plopped down in that chair to read the paper, and popped up just as fast. He was MAD! That was the only time he spanked us, and I think he spanked us all....including our friend Marchia who had the misfortune of playing with us that day.

The only person who could always find a needle in an easy chair was my husband. To this day I am VERY careful that I don't lose a needle, because it will ALWAYS be he who finds it.

My first real sewing project was a little dresser scarf to embroider. My Grandma Hammond was always embroidering pillow cases and scarves and she must have got this project for me. I still have it around somewhere. The sewing is bad, but I'm sure it looked good to me. I never finished it.

Through my youth I was always designing clothing for my dolls. There was a variety store across the street from my house, and calicos were about $.29 a yard. I would buy a quarter yard of several of them and then try to make pretty dresses. It was about then that I discovered that pants were not that easy to make!

At that time (early 50s) we girls all took home ec. My teacher was Elsie McCluggage at Woodruff High School, and she had us all make a card-table sized cloth out of Indian head fabric trimmed with hemstitching. For some odd reason, I chose to use yellow cloth with brown thread for the hemstitching. Those have never been my favorite colors, and I've always wished I had chosen something prettier. I got a B on the project because my knots were too big. It's been 51 years and I'm still using the table cloth.

My mother was the managing type, and always wanted everything done right. I would never let her teach me to sew, because I didn't want her to tell me what to do. I eventually decided to make myself a housecoat WITHOUT HER HELP. I'm sure she thought I was crazy, but I did it. I got a pattern that included piping and buttonholes, and I got the whole thing finished. I used that housecoat for years. It was some kind of symbol of triumphing over my mother.

For my graduation from Bradley University, my gift was a new portable Slant-Needle Singer Sewing machine. It was and is wonderful. I would be using it today as my major machine if it weren't for the fact that it didn't have the zigzag feature. No machine ever made better buttonholes.

I made all my maternity clothes and clothes for all the kids as they came along. Eventually I made daughter Robin's wedding gown, which taught me that I didn't know diddly squat about sewing a hem in chiffon.

Over the years I have made innumerable quilts. I like the hand piecing, but doing the actual quilting is too big a job, and I get it done by others. I've also made many large banners and such for our church, as well as a banner for the Sewing Guild, and I'm always surprised to see they still use it.

My most recent projects are purses made from silk ties, snuggly slippers, aprons, and girls' skirts made from old jeans with a ruffle of pretty cotton to make them flirty. Oh yes, I also finally made a sock monkey and have taught several sock monkey making classes. Several of my students had never sewn a lick, and it it's always 'interesting' to teach someone to knot a thread and how to make a running stitch without poking the needle down one side, pulling the threat taut, and poking the needle back up the other side. I never knew how much my left hand does when I'm sewing until I tried to teach someone the basics.

Today I have an awesome fabric stash. A year ago I thinned the herd by one third, but you'd never know it. I love those tubs and boxes of fabric! Going through one is like a trip down or up memory lane, and I'm sure the mental exercise has staved off Alzheimer's for me.

As any sewer can tell you, there is nothing as rewarding as completing a project that is so well done that everyone thinks you bought it. And it's so easy to forget all the projects that didn't turn out that way.

I Love Cribbage

Cribbage is kind of a simple-minded card game, but it has several distinct advantages.

1. It is usually played with two people, so you don't have to wait until you get a foursome together,

2. It takes about 45 minutes for a game (unless you're playing with a pro who can "skunk" you in about 20 minutes).

3. Just about everyone has a cribbage board, and if the official pegs are missing, you can use matchsticks --which everyone eventually does because the pegs get lost after a short time.

4. Even kids can play it as soon as they can count up points, and

5. I grew up thinking it was an adult game, and therefore I really wanted to learn how to play it.

When my folks visited my cousin's folks, Father and Aunt Corrine invariably got into a game of cribbage. They always ended up playing three games to make sure they had a winner and not just a lucky fool. We kids would go in and out the back door and see them sitting there playing, and we just knew they were having a good time. Sometimes the neighbor lady, Phyllis, would come over and she and Father would duke it out.

When my cousin Joy and I were about 7 we started playing cribbage, but I'm sure we didn't know any of the finer points of the game. Still we counted up our points, "Fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six and a pair is 8." We pegged around the board just like the big people did....and we had fun!

My husband never grew to like the game. I guess that's because there isn't much strategy to it...unless you were Father, Aunt Corrine or Phyllis. Then it was cut-throat.

I tried to teach the game to my grandson Alex when he was having trouble with math. He never got the hang of it, and was bored with having to go around the board twice. He only played it to please Grandma, I think.

Maybe if I live long enough to live in a "senior citizen's home," I'll find someone there to play cribbage with me. I'll hang onto my two cribbage boards, just in case.

Try It, You'll like it!

The most noteworthy person in our family for many, many years was my mother, “Grandma Bug.” Actually she had a perfectly good name, Elanore, that no one but her non-family friends used. She got the nickname “Bug” as a small child when someone said she looked as cute as a bug in a rug. For the rest of her life she was Bug, Aunt Bug, or Grandma Bug.

One of her more annoying traits was to ask you to do something for her without telling you in advance what she wanted. She’d say, “Karen, I want you to do something for me.” I’d naturally respond, “What?” and she’d say something like, “It’s just something I need done.” When she finally told me what it was she wanted, more often than not I knew why she was so secretive, because it was almost always something I did not want to do.

Along with this trait was her incessant trying of new recipes. She got started when Father (otherwise known as Grandpa Bob) had to go on a no-salt, no-sugar diet for his heart (before dieticians told us that you actually need some salt in your diet for your heart to work). She’d search through magazines and newspapers for ways to fix this or that without salt, or without fat, or with some new no-calorie sugar substitute. She bought cookbooks put out by the American Heart Association and any other group or individual that promised “tasty meals to better your health.”

Poor Father. He was the guinea pig. He ate the stuff without complaint, but not without a quiet comment or two. Nothing deterred Grandma Bug from her crusade to convince him to give up his German heritage foods, most of them sweet and lots of them “loaded with fat,” as she often said.

If things didn’t turn out just right, she’d say, “It’s o.k. I’ll just feed it to Bob.”

Eventually I had a family and household of my own, and I didn’t have to contend with her crusade much. But my kids often spent weekends with their grandparents, and they often got rooked into eating strange things. Susan remembers coming into the house and having Grandma Bug say, “Here, Susan. Try some of this!” Susan would naturally ask, “What is it?” And Grandma would respond, “Try it, you’ll like it!” As often as not it would be passable, something with artificial sugar but otherwise a cookie, for example. But sometimes it would be something a kid would consider gross, like smelt (disguised in some way, of course), or beef tongue, or squash.

This all came to mind this evening when Susan came over to borrow some Cream of Tartar to make some playdoh. I had made a new recipe called “Taffy Bars” that used molasses. They’re really pretty--intensely brown, soft like a good brownie, and shiny on top. At first when I offered her one, Susan thought I was giving her a brownie, and she said, “I made brownies tonight.” And I responded, “But this isn’t a brownie. Try it.” At which Susan said, “I get the awful feeling I’m in the presence of Grandma Bug.” She’s a good daughter, and she tried the bar. Her evaluation was, “I don’t think I’m going to eat any more of it. I don’t think I like it.” And being a kind mother, I told her to just pitch it in the garbage.

But after she left, I realized that I’d better mend my ways, or I would become that grandma who would be conning my younguns with, “Try it. You’ll like it!”

Elanore Hammond Ludwig (Grandma Bug) died in May of 2007.

About Coffee

My cousin Gwen was musing about what coffee is best. She had tried Starbucks and wasn’t too impressed. Then she asked what kind of coffee our grandma used. I remember those colorful one pound cans with the key you used to twist off a strip around the top of the can.

If I remember rightly, Grandma Hammond used Hills Brothers a lot, but she also used Folgers. Mother and Father used Rejoice coffee in Peoria, but that's a local brand. Jim's family used Kroger's Eight-O'Clock which turns out to be pretty good coffee and still available.

My daughter Robin and her husband Chris are coffee connoisseurs and swear by the Sam's Member’s Mark 100% Arabica which they grind themselves. I find it a chore to grind my own beans, but they grind enough for a whole week at one time. If I could ever figure out how much that would be, I could do it, too.

Personally, I just stick to Sam's Great Value decaf and Folgers Vanilla. In a 12-cup pot (which is not really 12 measuring cups worth), I put 1/3 cup of decaf and 1/6 cup of the vanilla. Ahhh. It's good. Even tastes good the next day heated in the microwave.

Our favorite coffee "on the go" is McDonalds. I don't think it can be beat. I just wish I could buy the grounds so I could make it at home.