An Invisible Multicultural Age Gap…by Sheila Claydon

https://bookswelove.net/claydon-sheila/

 Hello from Singapore,

I’m writing this on a very old iPad that is refusing to post any photos so you’ll just have to take my word for it that life is very different here. It’s so hot and humid that the most energetic activities take place before nine in the morning or after five in the afternoon. In between those times the best place to be is in one of the many air conditioned malls with their myriad coffee shops and restaurants, or in a pool in the shade. Despite the heat, it is an amazing place with a very chequered and interesting history. Its parks are pristine, its roads shaded by trees and bordered by luxuriant well tended foliage, and everything works. Trains and buses arrive on time, taxis are prompt, supermarkets are stocked with more things than you’ll ever need, and the museums, art galleries and other tourist attractions are numerous, interesting and immaculately organised. The best part of this extended holiday visiting family, however, has been our trip to Indonesia. 

Although only 45 minutes away by ferry it really is a different country. Green of course and with a wonderful coastline and the clearest sea I’ve ever seen and the warmest one I’ve ever swum in. And its people are so welcoming, which is what I’m coming to. As I explained in my previous post, this trip was all about celebrating my birthday, the special one that comes along once every decade. We stayed in a truly multicultural complex where, unbeknownst to me, my son, knew the tennis coach.The result was an amazing unexpected birthday party complete with wine, candle and cake. What made it even more memorable were the people the coach brought with him. All young and yet happy to spend an evening with someone from a much older generation. He also brought his girlfriend to the party, a stunning trapeze artist from Japan. I had seen her perform so knew she was talented. That she was also beautiful, kind and very interesting as well as being one of the nicest people I have ever met made the vast age gap between us disappear in an instant. I wish we could have spent more than one evening together.

Meeting strangers who quickly become friends, yet knowing you will probably never see them again, is the upside and downside of travelling, but there are always the memories. And having my birthday celebrated by a mix of mainly young people from Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, China, Australia, South Africa, Holland,France and the UK is one of the very special ones.

Sorry about the photos!

A Gift From A Book by Eileen O'Finlan

             

 

                                     

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I grew up hearing lots of family stories from my mom about her youth in Bennington, Vermont. She often spoke fondly of a neighbor named Carleton Carpenter. She was very close friends with him when they were kids in the 1930s and '40s. After high school they went their separate ways - she to college, then a teaching career, marriage and family and he to New York and later Hollywood to act on Broadway and in movies. If you don't recognize his name, you will certainly remember his famous co-star Debbie Reynolds with whom he appeared in several movies.

About seven or eight years ago, I found out that Carleton Carpenter had written a memoir called The Absolute Joy of Work: From Vermont to Broadway, Hollywood, and Damn Near 'Round the World so I purchased a copy for my mom knowing that she would be interested in reading about the life and career of her old friend.

I got to thinking how great it would be if I could reconnect these two childhood friends now both in their nineties. It took some doing, but I finally managed to track down an address for Mr. Carpenter and wrote to him explaining who I was and why I was writing. I didn't tell my mom that I was doing this. I didn't want to disappoint her if it didn't work out.

Before long, I got a letter back. Well, two letters actually. He wrote one to me thanking me for contacting him and another letter to my mom. I'll never forget how surprised and delighted she was when I explained what I'd done and gave his letter to her. He also included his phone number. So began the renewal of an old friendship through letters and phone calls in which they caught each other up on all that had happened in each of their lives during the decades since they'd last seen each other.

Carleton Carpenter passed away on January 1, 2022. By then my mom was in a nursing home due to Alzheimer's Disease. I chose not to tell her since she spent most of her time living in her childhood and to her, he was once again her neighbor and playmate. Mom passed away in December of 2023.

Recently, while looking through my book collection, I came across the copy of The Absolute Joy of Work that I'd bought for my mom and decided to read it. The first part of the book is about his childhood in Bennington, Vermont. Mom had underlined the names of people and places that, obviously, she remembered from her own childhood there. 

Reading this part of the book was not only interesting in and of itself, but it also gave me an added connection to my mom. I love the stories she told of growing up in Vermont. I've been trying to keep them alive in my memory. My mom had a fascinating life and I would like to fictionalize her reminiscences for a future novel. She was the last of her siblings to pass so there is no one left to ask about that time and place. I must rely on only what I remember her telling me. 

Seeing the places in the book that my mom had marked have added to my cache of knowledge about the time and place of their childhoods. It was an unexpected gift as I felt as though Mom was speaking to me again, telling me more about her stories, sharing more details of her past, and letting me know that she's never truly gone from my life.

I consider books among the greatest gifts in life. Sometimes, they bestow their treasures in the most unexpected ways.

 

St. Patrick's Day - Irish Memories by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #St. Patrick's Day #Memories #Books "Choices #Medical romance

 

This story has an Irish hero -

Johanna Gordon devotes her time and energy to her job as Director of Nursing at Hudson Community Hospital. With budget cuts hanging over her head, Johanna suspects the CEO of scheming a plan that threatens her job as well as the hospital, and she’s determined to find out why.

The choices she’s made for herself and her career leave her with no social life until she meets Dylan Connelly. He’s everything she’s always wanted, loving, devoted to his kids and everything she’s never had. Just when she finds love with the new man, an old flame returns with promises of a life together. Johanna has to decide between security and companionship, while trying to recapture the past, or moving forward with her new life.

A fun book to write but my Irish memories are ones of a years ago trip to Ireland when I was able to visit the town where one of my relatives came from. I also remember Ireland for the greens. Seemed as though there were hundreds shades of greens.

Another memory was during our exploring trip of watching a black and white collie performing herding tricks. The shepherd of the flock gave us  a look at how the dog obeyed commands and how it herded the sheep. Was a wonderful stop beside the roam just to rest our legs but also to watch the dog and the shepherd. No words were taken, just hand signals to the dog.

Weaving memories is what I do these days. mostly along with weaving stories.

St. Patrick's Day - A bit late

 

This is my one book with a real Irishman in the story. The hero is based on a neighbor who always charmed me with his accent. I miss seeing him and his wife and being charmed by their accents.

St. Patrick's Day is well celebrated in Rockland County with a parade and many activities. Dance competitions and of course food, singing, too.

While I can claim an Irish heritage, it's not a green one but an orange one. Never bothered me when I was younger but often received comments, some not so nice. I had an orange jumper I wore on St. Patrick's Day. Wore it to Duquesne U located on a hill over looking Pittsburgh. Mt English class contained most of the basketball tea,, a powerhouse in those day. I recieved laughter and the shaking of heads but also an invite for coffee. With seven escorts the day was great.

I also had the chance to visit the town where my Irish ancestor left to come to the un Bellenahinch. I'm sure I've spelled this worng. A town built on a hill but pretty.

Christmas Memories by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #Memories #Hershey's Kisses # Tree buying

 

 The cover is for my latest release and there is a Christmas short story in the collection. For me Christmas is always about memories. I remember about 85 of them or maybe 84 for my then I would have turned three.

Today as I was working on making peanut blossom cookies with the Hershey's Kisses on each one, my thoughts turned to missing my husband very deeply. The reason. He always took the foil off the Kisses and for the past three years, my granddaughter who took over the chore is living around the corner now. That's one memory. But another seems so vivid. I was about eight years old and I was sent to buy the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, My father was a steelworker and as happened frequently, the stieelworkers were on strike so money was tight. My fahter worked for a friend's store and took his pay in presents for his children.

I had five dollars. My friend went with me and with his wagon so we could bring the tree back. Now to get to the place where the VFW sold trees, we had to either cross the railroad tracks or go the long way. We managed to carry the wagon down the steps and off we walked the ten blovks to the slot whre the trees were sold.

Most of the trees had been sold but there was one my friend's uncle had held back. The tree was beautiful and between eight and nine feet tall. They did saw off the end and removed a few branches but our trip home was a horror story. The wagon was maybe four feet long and the tree hung over front and back. When we reached the house, my father and uncle came to carry the tree inside.

My father looked at me. "Couldn't you find a smaller one."

"They were ugly." I didn't know then about Charlie Brown Christmas trees. He hadn't appeared yet. With struggles they put the tree in the stand and set ii in acorner. My dad laughed. "We're only decorating the front. There aren't snough lights and decorations for the whole tree."

That's this year's Christmas memories. The tree one came about when my granddaughter felt sad because we're now using an artificial one.

May every one have great memories of Christmas and build new ones for next year.

Goodbye but not forgotten...by Sheila Claydon

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When Many a Moon, the final book of my Mapleby Memories trilogy is published on 1 June, I will definitely be celebrating. Writing it has been a challenge but along the way I've learned a lot - about how to manage writer's block, about the thirteenth century in England, about working in an hotel, about the housekeeping duties at a country club, and most of all about how we all carry some of the past with us in our genes and hidden deep within our our ancestral memories.

How did this all start? How did this picture of a derelict building become Many a Moon?

It started with a holiday, sleepy companions, a dog, and an early morning walk. Anyone who has a dog knows that a morning walk, or at least a trip outside, is a necessity. On holiday with friends and a husband who all voted for more sleep and a late breakfast, the dog and I decided we would do our own early morning thing and go exploring. The dog, naturally, opted for somewhere he could be off lead, so we set off for the patch of woodland we could see from our holiday cottage. 

Unbeknownst to me and the dog, the far side of the long strip of woodland marched along the perimeter of a golf course, and the view was spectacular. On that particular morning, however, the only other thing we saw was a large iron statue of a stag. It was a startling find in the middle of a deserted wood and the dog felt obliged to bark at it. Long and loudly! Fortunately the cottages were out of earshot so only the birds and hidden woodland creatures heard him. That walk set a pattern for the rest of our holiday, however. Each morning we would leave the rest of the household sleeping and climb the hill to what, early in the morning, felt like our very own piece of woodland. 

We ventured further each day and then, when we had explored every path and glade we climbed down some rough wooden steps to the golf course below and began to walk around the edge of the nearest green. And that's when we saw it. The old mill!  Except that we didn't know it was a mill then. To us it just looked like a derelict cottage. However, several years later when we returned for another holiday, someone had fixed a blue plaque next to the gaping doorway that stated it had been a functioning grain mill in the thirteenth century. Of course I took a photo, several in fact. Then I stored them away with the rest of my numerous holiday and travel snaps and almost forgot about them. 

Almost but not quite. It was too intriguing. How was it still standing? Who had worked there? Why was it at the edge of a wood, far away from any useful road? And if it was a grain mill, where was the mill pond and the river that fed it? There was a muddy ditch, narrow enough to step across but nothing else, and surely the building wasn't big enough to store grain. Hadn't I read somewhere that mills were often next to bake houses? The questions never ended but I had nowhere to put the answers until I needed a final story for Mapleby Memories. Then everything fell into place because the curtain between the past and the present is gossamer thin in Mapleby as anyone who has read the first two books, Remembering Rose and Loving Ellen, will know.

This was all I needed to be able to travel back to the thirteenth century and immerse myself in its history and culture, and what a journey it has been, for me, and for Ellie and Will the main protagonists of the story. And for all my other characters who live in Mapleby as well because that's the thing when writing a series about a particular place. The characters intertwine, children grow older, jobs develop, friendship circles widen and it all has to be woven together in the story. So most of the characters in the first two books have walk on parts in Many a Moon.

Now the book is finished and about to be published, saying goodbye to them is almost like saying goodbye to old friends. Or children growing up and leaving the nest! I do know one thing though. When I next visit the old mill at the edge of the wood, and I will, the memory of the story will still be there. I will still be able to look out across the golf course and imagine modern day Will riding across it on his red tractor mower, the same as I will be able to imagine thirteenth century Ellen laughing and throwing sticks for her dog. They will always be with me the same as all the characters in my other books. 

And here's a taster:

......Before I could answer her I heard somebody call my name. The voice floated up from below. “Ellen, it’s ready now. Drat the girl, where…” The rest of the sentence was swallowed by a sudden gust of wind as a slim figure with two long brown plaits bouncing on her shoulders ran into a stone building at the foot of the hill.

Telling myself I really must remember that there were a lot of other women called Ellen in the world, I pointed. “Is that another chalet?”

She laughed. “No, it’s not. Come on, I’ll show you.”

We clambered down steep wooden steps built into a wooded slope and the closer we got to the bottom of the hill the louder the noise became. At first I couldn’t think what it was, then I realized it was a fast flowing river. There was another noise too. A creaking sound that I couldn’t identify. As the only way to make it to the bottom of the hill was in single file clinging onto a knobbly wooden handrail, Joanne didn’t elaborate further until we were on the grass at the edge of the golf course. Then she beckoned me to follow her along a narrow path, pushing some spindly saplings out the way until we reached a sun dappled clearing. I looked at the scene in front of me in confusion. Where was the river? Where was the building? I was too busy being confused to hear what Joanne was saying. Her concern brought me to my senses. 

“Yes. Sorry. I’m fine. I guess the climb down made me lightheaded. After years working in a city I’m not used to real fresh air the same as I’m not used to quiet.”

“A week or two living here will soon sort you out. In the meantime let me introduce you to the old mill. It’s not, as you can see, exactly suitable for a chalet.”

She was right, and I joined in with her laughter. Inside though, my stomach churned. What had just happened? Why had I seen someone called Ellen run into this derelict and almost roofless building? And why had I heard the rush of a fast flowing river when there was just a shallow ditch, dry now but probably muddy when it rained?

Joanne was too busy telling me about the mill to notice my confusion. “It was built sometime in the twelfth or thirteenth century when Mapleby was very different from the sleepy village it is today. I’m not even sure why the country club is named after it because nobody knows  anything at all about its history.” 

As we retraced our steps, I saw we were standing on the very edge of one of the greens. “What was here before the golf course?” I asked her. 

She shook her head. “I’ve no idea. Probably fields or maybe a farm. 

A Fond Memory #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #Memories #Indian reservation

 

A bit of the past

 

 

Many years ago, my husband was a doctor in the Public Health Service. His first assignment was to an Indian Reservation. Not your usual one. On the grounds were the hospital, a meeting place and the houses for the two doctors. I was thinking about this the other day and had to laugh at one of my experiences.

 

Several young men helped us move in. At that time I had long dark hair, and I do mean long. One of the young men said when you hear the drums at night, they’ll come for your hair. I laughed.

 

Two nights later, the drums began. The young man came to the house and asked us to come. I knew they weren’t going to take my hair but I was curious as to what they wanted. We took our small son in his little seat and followed. Part of this was a welcome ceremony for my husband. The other was to give gifts to a young man leaving for the army.  My son loved the drums and rocked his seat in time to the beating. The women clustered around him. This presented problems later when I would put him outside for some fresh air and sunshine. He tanned easily and the sun bleached his hair blonde. I had to keep a close eye on his because he would be stolen. :The “Blonde Indian,” the pwople called him.

 

But back to the gift giving. The gifts weren’t given directly to the young amn but made their way through the gift being given to someone who then gave the gift to someone else. Always as a thank you. Finally all ended up with the young man who was leaving. This really impressed em, and I saw how close the community was to each other. I will never forget my time in the small town and the friends I made there and the stories I heard.

 

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Honoring Fathers on Father's Day by J.Q.Rose

Deadly Undertaking by J.Q. Rose

Cozy mystery

A handsome detective, a shadow man, 

and a murder victim kill Lauren’s plan for a simple life.
Click here to find more mysteries by J.Q. Rose at BWL Publishing

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Hello and welcome to the BWL Publishing Authors Insider Blog!

My Dad
oxoxoxox

This Sunday, in the US, we honor fathers during Father's Day. I would like to take this opportunity to honor my father, Gordon.

My dad is up in Heaven tapping the piano keys playing for the angel choir or jazz band. He was a talented musician as well as a very special person, not only to me and my brothers but also to our community. He was a funeral director.

Yes, I am a funeral director's daughter, hence the premise of my romantic suspense novel, Deadly Undertaking. I used my life experiences in writing the novel. Some of the quirky characters in the story actually are people I knew!!

I am now writing a memoir and that demands that my dad is in the story. I am including an excerpt about my father in this post from the book, Arranging a Dream, to be released in January 2021.

Arranging a Dream by J.Q. Rose, Excerpt from Chapter 13

The best way to keep my dad’s memory alive and to honor him is to remember all he had instilled in me while growing up and to practice those lessons. He always pointed out the beautiful things surrounding us in nature like a wide-open prairie sunset, the glitter of the sun on a spider web, and the way the leaves on the trees flipped over before a storm. He never gossiped about anyone or badmouthed a person. He never swore, well, except the time when my brother’s class ring was not correct and the shopkeeper would not do anything to make it right.

A sense of mischief popped out in his odd sense of humor. He’d go for coffee at Turner’s, the local greasy spoon located on Route 66, where they called him Digger. He carried a measuring tape in his pocket to measure up anyone who gave him a hard time, being sure he would order the right sized casket for the jokester. 

He cared about people and appreciated the simple things in life. I wanted to be just like him as a businessperson, friend and parent. But most of all, I wanted to teach our baby daughter, Sara, the same lessons by example.

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Arranging a Dream: A Memoir
by J.Q. Rose

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HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!

J.Q. Rose, author

Click here to visit J.Q. Rose online.

The earth laughs in flowers (quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson) ...by Sheila Claydon

Click here for my books at Books We Love

I haven't had much time to write this year. Instead, sadly, I have been helping friends whose loved ones were very sick, and who have now passed away. It's been a time of sadness and several funerals but, as is always the way when someone dies, the tears have been intermingled with laughter as the good times are remembered. This was especially the case yesterday.

It was the first secular funeral I had attended so I didn't know what to expect. What I got was a day of joy. The music, which was special to the family and the deceased, was joyful, as were the very personal speeches. Nobody wore black. Instead the women were in bright dresses and the men relaxed and tieless, in shirtsleeves. The sun was warm, birds sang and it wasn't at all difficult to imagine the deceased nodding his approval, his wonderful smile wide as he saw all his family and friends together, laughing as they remembered.

And the lovely display of yellow and red family flowers, glowing like a pile of jewels on top of the coffin, made me think of the language of flowers. Red roses for passion,  red tulips for true love,  lilies and poppies for sympathy in death, pink roses and hydrangea for gratitude, iris for faith and hope, lily-of-the-valley for sweetness and purity, they carry so much symbolism. Cultures differ so much too. What might be right for one country can be wrong for another. And it's not just countries, it can even be local. In some places in the UK it is thought to be unlucky to bring bluebells into a house, whereas it is fine in other areas. Tree blossom is a no no too, as is giving anyone a single daffodil. They must always be given in bunches.  Flower lore is endless, as is the pleasure flowers bring.

My mother was a florist, so I grew up with flowers, and although by the time I was a teenager we lived in an apartment, the balcony was still full of flowers from spring through to winter, and her enthusiasm has not only rubbed off onto me, it increases with every year.  Nothing gives me more pleasure than walking around my own garden checking every new shoot, or deadheading blooms past their prime so that others can replace them. And I love the difference the seasons bring. In the early spring everything is either primrose yellow or white, then comes the blue and purple season followed by  shades of pink from the palest rose to the deepest cerise. Later the yellows return, but now mixed with orange and scarlet, then it's the evergreens and a tracery of bare branches as winter takes over...not for long though. In January the first snowdrops appear, as do the hellebores, better known as Christmas roses, and then the pink camellias start to bud.

















Loving flowers as I do is one of the reasons I wrote Bouquet of Thorns. To me, it was like going back in time to when my mother was alive and I sometimes used to help her when she had to build displays or decorate an hotel. One of my fondest and most exciting memories is helping carry boxes and pots of flowers aboard the  ocean liners that used to dock in the port city of Southampton where I was born. It was long before the days of the modern cruise ship and ocean voyages took weeks instead of days. It  was a real event for many travellers and those with wealthy friends were sent off with huge bouquets. Once my job was done I was sent down to the galley where chefs would pile a plate high with food,  and then later sent me home with boxes of chocolates or a special desert which I had to sneak out.

Now, so many years older, I have been a passenger on cruise liners to many parts of the world, but none of them, however grand, have had that old fashioned elegance and grandeur of the ships of my distant past. Happy memories, whether they are of people or of events are so precious, and if they are garlanded with the memory of flowers, then they are even more so.

One War Bride Memory

Left-Behind Bride

What about the War Brides?

Maggie Bension in the book shown was a (fictional) war bride/widow from Canada. Many other war brides came from overseas with their soldier husbands.





 

After WW1 54,000 civilians came to Canada with their soldier husbands and fathers. Although some War Brides and their children came from France and the Netherlands, most came from the UK. 

Not all War Brides were welcomed by their husband's families or communities. Many Canadian young women were anticipating finding husbands among the returning men and weren't pleased the men been "snapped up" by British women. Husbands were is short supply as 3 to 4 milliion ben were killed during the war years. (All countries.) @ 61,000 of those men were Canadians.

The young women shipped from overseas had no idea what Canada was like. They were unprepared for the open, vacant, unpopulated spaces of the Western Prairies and the crudities of life on a homestead. Many ended up in small villages so unlike home and with no other “bride” in town. Strangers alone in a strange land.

One such British bride ended up in my mother's home village of Sherbrook, Nova Scotia. My grandmother (Lena Harriet (Marshal) Ross) befriended her and they were the BFF's of the time. Unfortunately, I don't know the woman's name. But at some point, the English gal gave my mother one of the prize possessions she'd brought from England--a china tea cup and saucer made in the 1800's.

The delicate teacup came down through the family with the story and now is displayed my home. It is a reminder of the importance of friendships and reaching out to those around us. A memento of a difficult time in our history.

What family mementos do you have? And what is the story behind them?

Ever changing times—Tricia McGill

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 I often wonder what my mother would think if she were to return to the world as it is today. She was born over 130 years ago, so when she was a child there were horse driven buses on the roads of London. A horse drawn vehicle was still delivering the milk, bread and coal, even when I was a child. To her last days, our mother was scared of a telephone and didn’t understand how it could possibly work. It was a struggle for her to get used to her first refrigerator. She reared a huge family and kept them all as clean as she was able without a washing machine. No wonder her hands were wrinkled and her fingers bent with arthritis in her later years. I can recall when I was small that she sat in the armchair some afternoons and said, “I will just close my eyes for five minutes.” And, that was what she did, within minutes she was up and being busy again.

All these thoughts were brought to mind again because of writing my latest book; Crying is for Babies, as the story begins in 1931 when one of my sisters had just begun at school at the age of three. They started early in those days and finished usually at fourteen, when they went straight out into the workforce. There were no kindergartens or creches. If a mum had to work then a neighbour or relative would look after her baby.

My older sisters all worked in the clothing industry as I did eventually, where there would be dozens of machinists slogging away over their sewing machines. How times have changed in that department, you’d be hard-pressed to find a factory in Australia and I guess England, that produces clothing, as every item we buy nowadays is made in China, Bangladesh, or similar.

Our coal was delivered by a coal-man who hoisted a huge bag of coal onto his broad back and then opened the coal-hole in our front step, and shot the contents of the bag down into our cellar. I loved the smell of that little room. The coal had to be then brought up in the coal-scuttle to keep the fire going in the living room. Our mother would bank it up every night before going to bed with coal dust so that it was still smouldering next morning and we had at least one warm room. We could bake potatoes in the ashes, or chestnuts (Mm, I haven’t tasted a roasted chestnut in years) or sit there holding our bread to toast it by the fire.

The younger generation with their spotless homes and gadgets that

perform every task under the sun for them at the touch of a button, or the sound of their voice, don’t know what they are missing. Our whole family would get together around the fire in winter and talk about everything and anything. I’ll bet most families these days do not even spend more than a few minutes just sitting and discussing what is going on in their lives. I know of families who do not even sit together at mealtimes. I’m glad I have these memories to cherish, but what memories will they have—they are mostly staring at their mobile phones and overworking their thumbs. Even in the doctor’s waiting rooms, nobody chats to their neighbour any more as they are all too busy on their phones.

I guess as a writer I shouldn’t condemn computerised gadgets, as I could not live without my PC, but think of how the writers of years ago sat with inkpot and quill and yet managed to pen masterpieces. Even I began by scribbling my stories using a pencil on paper. When graduating to a typewriter, we had no spell-check or in-built thesaurus, which meant we had to ensure our spelling was correct the first time round, especially if we were typing carbon copies, or spend precious time going back over our work to correct any mistakes. There is no doubt the computer makes us lazy, as I tend to rely on it at times to correct me as it saves me time. One thing I have no arguments with is Google—the best thing since sliced-bread was invented. I do not have to leave the PC, get in the car, drive to the library (even though I love the place) and spend hours swatting over research manuals. I do not even have to leave the page I am working on and can have any answer I am searching for within minutes.

One thing my mother would have loved would have been a vacuum

cleaner. Imagine having to take the rugs outside to bash the dust out of them. Later she had one of those carpet sweepers that you push along, but even they did not collect all the dust left behind by many feet. Floors were scrubbed by hand—no electric mops or carpet shampooers back then. The chimney had to be swept by a professional chimney-sweep, unless you had a brother like one of ours who decided one day that he could do a better job. Imagine my mother having to clean up an inch of soot that covered everything in the whole room, including furniture, with no vac!

We certainly have it easy these days, and I love my washing machine, microwave oven, and computer, but not in that order, but there are times when I hanker for the simpler life I knew as a child growing up in the forties and fifties.

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