Atlanta Braves and Teacakes

What do teacakes and listening to Atlanta Braves on the radio have in common?  They are the memories of a teenage girls great-grandfather.  He was called Ducky and he lived in a downstairs apartment of our house.   He died 38 years ago today in a terrible fire at the Baptist Towers (retirement home).  He was 91 (maybe 92) years old and it was such a tragedy to live that long and be killed in a fire.  He had only been there a short time because we had moved and did not have the same kind of living quarters for him in the new house.  Ten people died in the fire that night.  They say that something good comes out of something bad and I guess that could be true in this case too since fire codes in Atlanta and throughout the country were changed for the kind of buildings he lived in because of what happened.  It is no consolation, but at least they didn't die in vain.

He and I used to listen to the Braves games on the radio.  We are talking about a time when TBS was not even around to show the Braves games.  There was a time I could have told you every Braves player and any info you wanted to know about them!  He listened religiously to the Braves and I was right there with him most of the time. He loved the Atlanta Braves.  I don't know if he ever actually went to a game or not.

My best memory of him though is the teacakes he used to make.  He ALWAYS had teacakes for us when we got home from school.  Nothing smelled better than teacakes baking and nothing tasted better than a fresh warm baked teacake.  I have never eaten teacakes as good as his were. My mother and I have tried through the years to make them, but could never duplicate them.  He didn't use measurements.  Everything just went in a bowl and then rolled out and cut. Sometimes he made them flavored.  My favorites were always the plain ones though.  I know why Mom and I can't make them as good as his were.  It's because they were made with his love.  I truly believe that he loved making those teacakes for us and we sure did love eating them.

R.I.P.  Ducky.  You live on in memory and you are still loved.

Remember what Momma and Daddy always told you!

Recently I got a phone call from an elderly friend that I met about four years ago.  When we met, we just hit it off like we had known each other all our lives.  She is 68 years old and she has been one of the most spry and sassiest women I have ever met.  Her health is starting to fail her in the last two years, but she still has more get up and go than I do most of the time!  I met her shortly after I opened my first little junk store in Jonesboro and she was a wealth of information to me about antiques and jewelry since she has been in the business for many years.  She will probably never realize how much she taught me and how I wish that I could gain so much more of her knowledge about antiques and jewelry.
When we talked the other night she was giving me the gossip about all the little stores that used to be in the area where mine was and she told me she was in one of them recently when a woman came in the store and was begging for money.  The woman asked the owner for $14.00 and stated that it was all she needed to get to South Carolina and she had to get there for an emergency.  When my friend told me this a red flag went up in my mind.  I can't tell you how many times I have heard this same story or one very similar to it from people who have come up to me while I was out shopping or they have even coming to my door.  I was cutting my grass about two months ago and a woman came up in my yard and gave me the same story.  The money amount is not necessarily the same or the location.  Sometimes I hear they need to get to Tennessee or North Carolina, and the amount is usually under $20.00.   It sometimes varies about the bus ticket.  I've been told that they ran out of gas a few streets over and their wife and kid are sitting in the car and they need money for gas because they have to get out of town for an emergency!  Anyway you get the idea and I know if you live around the Atlanta area you have heard it too.  Back to the woman at the store- The owner asked her if she needed food or clothing and she said no and the owner just turned around and walked off to help a customer.  My friend was upset that the owner just walked away like that and followed the woman out the door.  She said she was a pretty good judge of character and she thought she could tell when a person was telling the truth and she felt like this woman was telling the truth.  She called her over and asked her what was wrong and she just repeated the same story about needing $14.00 for the bus ticket and she had to get there for an emergency.  My friend is a giving person and she thinks that if you help people out when they need it then it will come back to you.  I also feel this way, but I usually know a con story when I hear it.  My friend went to her truck where she keeps her money and she did not have any one dollar bills so she gave the woman a ten and five and told her to take the extra dollar and buy herself a cola or something with it.  The woman thanked her and asked my friend to wait one minute and she went over to the vehicle she came there in and then came back and handed my friend a one dollar bill.  My friend says she didn't want the one dollar change and the woman told her that she didn't understand.  This was a special one dollar bill she was giving back to her.  It was a 1939 Silver certificate dollar bill.  She said that a long time ago a man had given it to her and told her to save it and if she ever got  in trouble and needed money she should give it to someone who helped her out. My friend was so touched by this story that she could not refuse the 1939 Silver certificate dollar bill!  After the woman left she went back in the store and told the store owner that she was wrong for not helping that woman and showed her the Silver certificate.  My friend went home and called her son and told him the touching story and he told her that she did the right thing and she came out on the good end of the deal because that Silver Certificate was worth more than the $14.00 she gave the woman. 
I am a suspicious person by nature and still thought the story was too good to be true and that something just wasn't right.  And much to my disappointment, I was right that something wasn't right.  I looked up the value of the 1939 Silver Certificate.  There were no Silver Certificates of any denomination made in 1939.  I told my friend and she did not believe that the woman would give her a phony bill and make up a story like that.  She still thinks that she has something of value.  I really hope that she thinks it is something of value and will never try to spend it.  I would hate to see her end up with legal troubles for trying to spend funny money.  This beggar woman should be ashamed of herself for taking advantage of people, and as if that is not enough, she is giving them something that could get them in trouble.  I can't help but think of what my Momma and Daddy always told me- "If it sounds too good to be true- IT IS."

A SUNDAY DRIVE

I can remember a time in my life when it was as though I had to be in a hurry to get everywhere.  To go somewhere on a Sunday was to hope that you didn't get behind a Grandpa and Grandma on the road.  You know what I'm talking about.  They crawl along at the speed limit or slower,  and you are pounding on the steering wheel or the dash and hollering 'Get out of the way Grandpa.'  Okay, maybe a few others words got thrown in depending on how much of a hurry I was in.  As I grow older I find myself doing old people things, like taking Sunday drives!  I don't want to get in a hurry taking Sunday drives either.  I want to be going slow enough to look at houses and cows and horses and whatever there is to see.  It might be things I pass by all the time, but I want to take the time to see them.  Fred and I took one of those Sunday drives today to a community close by that I have never seen before.  It is called Serenbe, and it is a beautiful place.  I recommend all my local friends to go and see it on a Sunday drive! 
As most of you know, my grandbabies live in Florida and I really wish they were not so far away, and that I could take a Sunday drive every week to see them. I haven't been to see them since May and my heart aches at times because I miss them.  I often see things on Sunday drives that I know they would enjoy doing.  I want to take Joel and Ethan fishing on Sunday afternoons.  I want to take Kavya shopping on Sunday afternoons.  I want to bake cookies and make homemade ice cream for them on Sunday afternoons.  You get the idea. I am a grandmother and that's what grandmothers do! 
In about 6 years my oldest grandson Joel will be able to get a drivers license.  I need to teach him that if he goes somewhere on a Sunday afternoon and gets behind a Grandpa and Grandma creeping down the road, that he should creep along behind them and just enjoy the scenery.  Hopefully he will. 
Since I can't make that 320 mile drive on this Sunday, I will close this blog and make that drive through 320 miles of telephone line.  I need to at least hear my sweet babies voices. 

Mason jars, fig preserves and grenades! Who knew?

I love to work crossword puzzles.  I usually try to work at least one a day and sometimes more if I take the time to do them.  I was working on one today and the clue was -kind of jar.  5 letters, and of course it was mason.  It got me to wondering why they are called mason jars and since I like to learn things, I put the puzzle down and came and looked it up on the internet.  I know that the odds are that nobody will ever ask me how the name of a mason jar came about, but just in case they do I will be ready to let them know!  The mason jar was invented and patented by Mr. John Mason in 1858.  It is made of soda-lime glass.  The most common use of a mason jar is for home canning of course.  Here is something I had never heard about them though.  They have been used in warfare and they were called the Mason jar grenade.  The safety pin of a hand grenade would be pulled and the grenade would be put in a mason jar which would hold back the safety lever. The safety lever would release when the jar shattered and that would detonate the grenade. This was supposedly popular with the chopper crews in Vietnam and they would use them as cluster bombs during raids. They were easy to dump out of the flight door over a target and the thickness of the mason glass was resistant to premature shattering in the air.  Wow!  We sure have come a long ways since they did this! Now I have really learned something in researching a simple thing as to how a jar became known as a mason jar!  Needless to say I will never use a mason jar in such a manner, but I used to use them a lot to put up strawberry fig preserves, and for different jellies that I would make when I was playing Suzy Homemaker in my younger days.  I would love to have a fig tree again to make these preserves.  I bought one a few years ago and got it planted and I never saw it again!  A well meaning neighbor cut the grass and cut it down with the lawnmower before it ever had a chance.  I never bothered to get another one.  I will share my recipe with anyone who would like to try and make them.  They are so much better than regular fig preserves.   I'm glad I learned something new today and I hope you did too!

STRAWBERRY FIG PRESERVES

3 cups mashed ripe figs
3 cups sugar
2 (3oz.) packages strawberry flavored gelatin or 1 (6oz.) package

Mix all ingredients well.  Bring to a boil.  Cook 4 minutes at a rolling boil, stirring frequently.  Skim and pour into sterilized jars and seal.  Do not double this recipe.  

You can sterilize your jars in a dishwasher on a hot cycle.  This should be done shortly before you fill them, but they should be fully dry before you add the preserves, but not cooled down much. 

Fat and Fifty Four years old!

Yesterday morning I woke up and it was one of those OMG, how can a person hurt so bad when they wake up kind of mornings.  Ever have one of those?  I have too many of them.  I lay there and thought about it and said to myself- "Peggy, you hurt because you are Fat and Fifty Four.... Now get up off that thang and do something about it'!  So twelve hours later I am standing in my living room with a Wii Fit Plus game and a Wii Balance board.  I'm telling myself that this will be better than a treadmill and it sure will take up a lot less space.  So let the games begin.... First you start with a setup of your avatar or whatever they call it and you go thru a process of telling it how tall you are, and then it asks you to stand on the board and it weighs you.  I think it had four categories you would fall into, but the only two I saw were overweight and obese.  I broke out in a sweat without even doing anything when I thought it wasn't going to stop at overweight.  But it did. Whew! Some consolation huh?  Anyway, when everything was processed I started playing around with some of the workouts.  It was fun to do but I didn't want to overdo things my first time out.  Today I got a little more serious with it and actually did a 10 minute run and I didn't pass out! I only went a mile in 10 minutes, but you gotta start somewhere right?  I did a bike ride, I went flying, I went boxing, I went thru obstacles courses, and on and on.  It finally told me not to do too much in one day.  I have a feeling that I may have already overdone it because I am a Fat and Fifty Four year old overweight woman!  But it was fun and my energy level has been up today, and tomorrow I will probably wake up crying from pain in a different way than I usually do.  Even if I do I am going to stay the course.  I have set a goal with the game to lose 10 pounds in one month.  Wish me luck my friends.  I'm sure I will need it! 

I Have No Clue!

I really don't have a clue about setting up a blog, but I am going out on a limb and doing something I have thought about for a long time.  I used to think when I was a young girl that I would grow up to be a writer and I would write a novel greater than any that had been written!  How funny is that? Just the dreams of a young girl. When I was young though I would write some great short stories for class and I would love to read them out loud to the class and I would get the biggest thrill when the class would clap for my stories.  As I grew older I did not like to get in front of the class and speak and I would get physically sick if I had to.  I managed to get through the years of terror of doing that in school and somewhere along the way I lost my dream of being a writer.  It had nothing to do with the terror of public speaking, but just growing up and life going in different directions.  Anyway, I have decided to try putting my thoughts and ideas and musings into writing a blog.  It will be a blog for me and hopefully something that others might enjoy reading from time to time.  With that being said, I will not be striving for perfect punctuation, spelling, etc., so all you English teachers and Spelling police just try to enjoy the reading and don't worry about grading me! How many have already said-Oh, she spelled that wrong or she should have put a comma there, or whatever?   LOL!!!