{"id":6575,"date":"2017-03-10T15:05:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T15:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=6575"},"modified":"2017-03-10T15:05:17","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T15:05:17","slug":"my-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=6575","title":{"rendered":"My Mom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is my mother’s birthday. If she were alive, she would be celebrating 102 years on this earth, but, instead, she is celebrating in heaven with my daddy and that makes me happy. I miss her. I always will until I see her again.\u00a0 The day she died, I became an orphan. I became the matriarch of my family and I didn’t know if I was up to the job.<\/p>\n

My mother grew up in the days of silent pictures, horses were still on the streets, indoor plumbing was not the norm, and clothes were hung out to dry, not put in a dryer.\u00a0 There were no takeout restaurants.\u00a0 No giant stores.\u00a0 No cellphones.\u00a0 No big screen tvs. In fact, my grandfather didn’t have a tv for a long\u00a0time and when he did get one, it was about the size of a large radio and in black and white. She lived during the days of radio shows where everyone would sit around the radio and listen to show like “The Shadow.”\u00a0 \u00a0She was born just a few years after the Victorian era and she still had a little of that Victorian aura about herself.\u00a0 She was the oldest of four sisters with\u00a0whom she stayed close all her life.\u00a0There is only one\u00a0of the sisters left now and she lives\u00a0in Michigan.\u00a0 \u00a0Life for my mother was school, church and home.\u00a0 I never heard her speak of any vacations her family took.\u00a0 They probably never\u00a0did. People didn’t have time for those kind of things back then.\u00a0 Making a living was all people had time for.\u00a0 She did go to dances and in fact, I found a copy of a letter she wrote to some band asking them to play at a school dance.\u00a0 I think she was the president of her class by what I read.\u00a0 She was a woman before her time.\u00a0\u00a0 I really wish I knew more about my mother’s early years.\u00a0 I bet I could write a book.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN4874\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is my mother’s senior picture taken in 1932.<\/p>\n

Mom was born just before WWl.\u00a0\u00a0 She grew up in a small Indiana town where she knew everyone and everyone knew her.\u00a0\u00a0 She lived in the same house until she married my daddy.\u00a0\u00a0 That is a story unto itself.\u00a0 My parents were some of the most ordinary, quiet, sensible people you would ever meet, but there was a streak of rebellion and excitement in them.\u00a0\u00a0 I am not exactly sure when they started dating each other. I found an autograph\u00a0book of my mother’s where my daddy wrote some things that made me think he was in love with her, but she wasn’t quite sure about him at the time.\u00a0 I have that book\u00a0 around my house somewhere, but I have lost it and have not been able to find it.\u00a0 Anyway, at some point, daddy won my mother’s heart and they became a couple.\u00a0 After they graduated they continued dating and then one night, when they were suppose to be going to a basketball game, they headed on down to Kentucky, found a justice of the peace and got married. They came back home, each to their own home and continued living their lives like nothing had\u00a0ever happened, But….. one day the newspaper came with wedding licenses in it and my grandpa saw that Miss Jeannette Driggs\u00a0 Ridenour\u00a0\u00a0was wed to Mr. Paul K. Pentecost and let’s just say the roof came off.\u00a0 So, parents and my parents had a meeting and it was decided that since they were married, they needed to make a home together. No more living at home with Mom and Dad.\u00a0 So they started their life together.<\/p>\n

I am not sure where all they lived, but there was one place my mother called “Tucker’s” that my mother evidently loved.\u00a0 She talked about it often.\u00a0 Then my daddy’s mom and dad wanted him to come home and farm the farm as\u00a0they were getting old and couldn’t manage any longer, so\u00a0Mom and daddy packed\u00a0 up and brought their little family to the farm where I grew up.\u00a0\u00a0 I am not sure how many of us kids were born at that time.\u00a0 But my mother and daddy lived there until they had to go into nursing homes.<\/p>\n

Life was not always easy on the farm. It was hard work, but my daddy\u00a0was never one to shy away from work nor was my mother.\u00a0I believe that is where I got my strong work ethic.\u00a0 Mom raised six children on that farm, making our clothes, canning, washing clothes in a wringer washing(worshing) machine and hanging the clothes on the line to dry. Ironing, cooking and cleaning.\u00a0\u00a0That is\u00a0about all I remember my mother doing at home. Besides reading.<\/p>\n

My mother loved to read and every two weeks she would pack me and my younger brother into the car and drive five miles to\u00a0Hagerstown where the nearest library was and we would all get armloads of books to bring home to read.\u00a0 I loved going to the library.\u00a0 I loved how it smelled. I loved the two older ladies that\u00a0checked out the books.\u00a0 I got my love of reading from my mother and I am so glad I did.\u00a0 My aunt\u00a0told me one time that when my mother was a girl she always was reading, even when she was ironing clothes.\u00a0 I believe it. She would get up early every morning and read the Bible and read her library books.\u00a0\u00a0 With six children to raise, she had very little time during the day to sit down and read.\u00a0 Early morning was her time and if one of us kids would get up at five a.m.,\u00a0Mom would tell us to go back to bed for a while longer.\u00a0\u00a0It was her reading time!<\/p>\n

My mother was the best cook for miles around.\u00a0 She fried the best chicken I\u00a0 have ever tasted. Just last week I fried some chicken\u00a0and for some reason, it tasted just like Mom’s and I was so excited.\u00a0 I hadn’t\u00a0done anything differently.\u00a0 Maybe it was the chicken itself. I do know the chicken my\u00a0mother fried was killed one day, dressed and prepared the next, so it was nice and fresh.\u00a0\u00a0 Saturday was baking day and all kinds of cakes, cookies and pies came out of\u00a0Mom’s kitchen.\u00a0\u00a0 I was often in the kitchen with her baking something for a 4-H project.\u00a0 One summer my family grew sick of yellow cake because that is the kind I had to show at the fair.\u00a0 And one year it was orange breakfast rolls that we had every single week until I showed some at the fair.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u00a0love to bake and it all began in my mother’s kitchen.\u00a0 I don’t like\u00a0cooking so much. I think because it is something\u00a0one has to do every single day if one wants to eat unless you go out to eat every day, which we don’t.\u00a0 My mother was cooking all the time when she wasn’t cleaning or gardening.\u00a0 She loved to garden.\u00a0 I have some of her perennials in my own garden today.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I remember an old fashion rose bush that smelled heavenly growing on a fence by our vegetable garden gate. Every year it was loaded with pink roses.\u00a0 She grew African violets and my daddy built her a window hothouse in which to grow them. She became quite an expert at raising them and had many beautiful violets growing all year round in the window.<\/p>\n

My mother was terrified of storms. When one would come up, she would tell us to stay away from windows and she would huddle somewhere in the house far\u00a0from any window.\u00a0 One year lightning struck our house and blew the telephone clear off the wall.\u00a0\u00a0That kind of reinforced Mom’s fear of storms.\u00a0 And yet, she\u00a0liked\u00a0to watch\u00a0rain come over the hill and down to our little farm. I\u00a0loved storms until this year lightning struck an electric poll near our house and took out several of our electrical appliances and the internet. Now,\u00a0when I hear thunder, I start unplugging things.\u00a0 I understand now to be fearful of lightning.<\/p>\n

Mom wasn’t a hugger or kisser except when Daddy would grab her and spin her around and hug and kiss her. She\u00a0would act all embarrassed and we kids would go, “Ewwww!” but we really loved it.\u00a0\u00a0With her strong German heritage, she didn’t demonstrate her love that way and\u00a0even though I got few hugs from her, I knew she loved me.\u00a0 There was no doubt in my mind.\u00a0\u00a0 She would do anything for her children, but she did expect us to mind her.<\/p>\n

My mother told us interesting stories like when Pearl Harbor was attacked and about\u00a0all the airplanes that flew overhead for hours heading west.\u00a0\u00a0 She lived through the Great Depression and told about men who would come to their door asking for food and Grandma would give them some. My Grandpa worked in a grocery so they were never without food and shared what they had.\u00a0 Back then they called those men hobos although they were men out of work traveling across the country looking for a job.\u00a0 She told about a little boy who went missing in her town when she was a girl and that the last time he was seen he was walking with a woman with long, dark hair.\u00a0 I don’t know if she told me that story in order that I would be wary of strangers, but it sure did make me so.\u00a0 She told about the days when she would go home for lunch from school, crossing the rail road track and then when she was going back to school a train would be on the track and how some kids crawled underneath it to get back\u00a0to school on time. I asked her if she ever did and she told me, no.\u00a0 I wish I could talk to her again and hear her stories. I know I would listen more closely and ask a whole lot more questions.\u00a0 She told me about walking to church and the library just a few blocks from her home. I thought\u00a0it was wonderful\u00a0to live so close to a library.\u00a0\u00a0 One of her best friends was Dr. Dubois’s daughter. He was the town doctor.\u00a0 He lived just a couple of blocks from my mother’s house.\u00a0 Her friend moved to California and she never heard from her again. I am glad I still hear from my best friends from school.\u00a0 Not often, but we do keep in touch.\u00a0 I think my mother always missed her best friend.\u00a0 She told me about her Aunt Emmie and Aunt Idy whom she loved and visited quite often. They, of course, lived in the same town not far from my mother and she could visit them any time she wanted. All my aunts and uncles lived far away from me most of my life so I didn’t get to experience that closeness with them.\u00a0 I wish I could have.<\/p>\n

If you still have your mother with you, ask about her history.\u00a0\u00a0 Have her write it down.\u00a0\u00a0 One day you will wish you had.<\/p>\n

Happy Birthday, Mom.\u00a0 I miss you.\u00a0 \u00a0Say hello to daddy for me. Bye.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is my mother’s birthday. If she were alive, she would be celebrating 102 years on this earth, but, instead, she is celebrating in heaven with my daddy and that makes me happy. I miss her. I always will until I see her again.\u00a0 The day she died, I became an orphan. I became the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-memories","category-things-on-my-mind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6575"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6581,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions\/6581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}