Musing of an old fart again

These past few weeks as you went searching for that perfect pumpkin to carve into a face or scene for that one night of celebration of something that I will never understand, called Halloween, you surely ran into at least one cardboard bin of "Pie Pumpkins". These are small pumpkins, really too small for carving, but may be used as part of a harvest display or maybe painted. I have talked with several ladies into their 50's who admit that they have never made a pumpkin pie from pumpkins, but always from a can, and now the instant pumpkin pie which is even less of a process.
I think I'll start this right out with my complaint rather than with the reason this issue has come to my attention. Yesterday, I went looking for "pie pumpkins". Wow!!! What a deal. I distinctly remember that for the past few years, you could get pie pumpkins right up to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving..... you remember. It's that Holiday where families gather together to eat and watch Football. We associate it with the mistake the Native Americans (at the time) made in welcoming the Europeans, but it wasn't an official holiday until the Civil War and declared by Abraham Lincoln. Thanksgiving origin Have you noticed that the most important thing about Thanksgiving today is the fact that "Black Friday" has encroached on this peaceful holiday of being thankful for being born, or assimilated into the best nation on earth so we can scratch and claw in monster stores to save a few dollars? Which brings me to my complaint, that Halloween has grown into a major holiday and as soon as it is over, it's Christmas season. Thanksgiving is just a glitch in many calendars that gets in the way of preparing for Christmas or other religious holiday of "the season". So I went out looking for pie pumpkins yesterday, just a few days after Halloween. I ran all over town and folks I asked gave me that dumb look (Like I'm dumb, not them!!!) and said, "No we don't have any right now".... Right now????  One even said, "no, once pumpkin season is over they are taken out"..... Pumpkin season is over????? Halloween is over, when people mutilate pumpkins and set them around to look at and smash in the streets, and of course, feed the squirrels, but pumpkin season includes the glory of Fall, Pumpkin Pie..... All those pie pumpkins were available before Halloween. Anyone make a nice pumpkin pie from scratch for Halloween???? But now as Thanksgiving approaches, it's time for pumpkin pie. Am I right? How many of you will eat several pieces of pumpkin pie within the next 2 months? Of course most won't make them from "pie pumpkins"... So I must wonder why in the world they label them "pie pumpkins" and then remove them before pumpkin pie eating season begins. After hitting Schnucks, County Market, IGA, Aldis, and Walmart, I was about ready to make the trek out to our local orchard Curtis Orchard and Pumpkin Patch, where I was sure I would find what I needed, but swung by Meijer as a last check. Lo and Behold, after wandering around the produce section, I stumbled onto a display of "Pie Pumpkins" Glory Be, someone is thinking. I'm sure I would have enjoyed the trip to Curtis Orchard, but would have bought much more stuff than I needed. I gathered up my pumpkins and gleefully checked out. Of course I had to stop and tell one of the "greeters" that Meijer was the only store in town with pie pumpkins. Everywhere there were a few left over "gourds" for decoration, but pumpkins were nowhere to be found.

So why was I on such a quest for pie pumpkins?
Several years ago I stumbled onto a recipe for stuffed baked pumpkins. The first one was stuffed with chili components and although it sounds strange, was really quite tasty. I found other recipes and of course concocted variations using apples, cinnamon, raisins, marshmallows, etc. Since neither Georgia or I were up to doing the whole Halloween thing this year, but wanted to enjoy the little guys, we invited family members to come out with their costumes, eat pizza, and hand out candy at our door as well as hit the neighborhood. I decided to bake a few pumpkins as a treat. The cold wind kept the number of trick or treaters down, but there were enough to make it worth while and the boys did get to warm up at the fireplace after they ventured out for a short trip up and down our street. Although Greg and Pam enjoyed the pickled eggs I had prepared, Jeff and others weren't so cracked with them, but the stuffed pumpkins were a hit, especially with a bit of vanilla ice cream and cool whip. This week we got an invitation to one of our kid's house for Thanksgiving (Actually, I think we are invited to 2 different ones on different days).. That is great considering our physical situation. So I asked, "what can we bring?"  The answer was quick and precise; "Those Pumpkins"... Thus began my search for pie pumpkins after Halloween and you know the rest of the story.

Jack and "Baby Jack" in his "outer" outfit.

Pretty amazing that both Bruno and Aaron showed up as kings/knights with swords without conferring.

No matter how you mess them up...... still gorgeous!! Grand-daughters.. Love the red eyes (a camera trick, right?)

Baby Jack in his "jammy" outfit.

A stuffed baked pumpkin; not mine

So that's my latest excitement. Many have asked how I'm doing at 6 weeks after bypass surgery. Walking a lot and trying to be obedient about not using my upper body and waiting for cardiac rehab to start next week. All my medical people tell me I'm doing very well. I don't feel as good as I did before this all began, but I'm thankful to be here with an outlook that a heart attack probably won't be what takes me out. Looking forward to regaining my vigor. There's to much life to be lived to lie down and quit now.... Right??????

More memories popped up

This morning on my walk, I was listening to Zydeco music on Pandora. This song came up that they were singing in Cajun French, so I didn't understand the words, but the tune brought back a flush of memories. The tune was "The Bully of the Town". I can't tell you how many times I heard that song while growing up. If it wasn't at the square dances we attended with mom and dad where dad often was the "caller", it was mom singing it. My guess is that very few people who might happen to read this have ever heard the song or have any idea of what I'm talking about, so of course, here is your education for this session. I'm writing this in my blog, but will also try to copy it to Facebook for a wider audience. For those who do know the song, enjoy the memories. The first link I'm posting is Jerry Reed from "Jerry Reed rides again".  Hard to beat Jerry Reed (in my opinion). The second is some guy singing it. Not very "professional", and he forgets some words, but it's a start. Actually the link "Guitar only" has some words. I wonder how many versions of the lyrics there are out there. Then I'll add some instrumental versions.   The only response I would really like is to get a recording of my sister singing this song while accompanying herself on mom's accordion. Enjoy.

Jerry Reed Bully of the town 

Bully of the town sung.

I forgot to mention that in this version (above) there is a "washtub bass" which is a one string "stand up" bass made of a washtub turned upside down, a fork or shovel handle tied together with a heavy string (preferably a real "bull fiddle" string) The guy (called Jerry) on the left with the Hopalong Cassidy cowboy hat is playing it. We have one of these in our basement that my dad made years ago to be played along with our many impromptu "jam sessions around the piano. Our boys used to play this when they weren't tall enough to reach the top. 

Bully of the town Don Norman

Bully of the town Guitar only

Bully of the town Goins Brothers

And here's one more site with a set of lyrics. Could preach a sermon on these alone.
Bully of the town lyrics

OK, that's enough, you get the idea. If you can remember dancing to this tune, let me know.... 

If you still do dance to this song, I would love to hear about that also.


And then another memory old song popped up the next morning.
More old song memories.
Another one of the songs that mom used to sing as well as was played at square dances, usually at the "round dance interludes" Was: "There is a tavern in the town"... SO here are a couple of sites including a version of the song being sung by Rudy Vallee.
MMM have I lost all those under 70???? 
Rudy Vallee singing Tavern in the town (laughing version)
Info on the song Tavern in the town
Sheet music Tavern in the town

Treasures

If this works it will be a blessing to me and maybe others. I posted both of these videos on Facebook recently. The first is Rod, Greg, and Jeff singing the song Treasures which Georgia and I claim they wrote for our 30th wedding anniversary. A year later they sang it as part of a church Christmas program accompanied by our dear departed brother Michael Day, one of the best musicians I've ever known. The second video was made this past May 31 at Ava's blessing celebration. The song was impromptu with Blaine helping out on lead guitar. It is 20 years after the first one, so Blaine wasn't born when the first was recorded. This second recording starts out with them horsing around with some lines from Jerry Clower, a southern "comedian" whose recordings they pretty much memorized as kids. Jerry didn't tell funny stories, he told stories funny. You will see that some of the words slipped their minds in the second recording. Gatlin Brothers, move over. Couldn't get the videos to copy here, so I tried another tact. Here are links to the locations on my Facebook timeline. June 15 and June 25. Hopefully this will get you there. IF not, guess you'll have to navigate Facebook to see them.

Treasures 1994

Treasures revisited

More Chairs

While I'm on a roll (and putting off income taxes), I took stock of our family situation. Many of our grandkids are moving into and through the teen years and we have grafted 2 members in via marriage. So when we have family functions, we need more chairs.
As long as I can remember, our mom and dad had these 2 straight chairs. I'm thinking at least one of them occupied the bedroom I shared with Uncle Joe and his wintergreen liniment until we built onto the house which included separate upstairs bedrooms for my sister and I. Seems in addition to the chair(s) and our bunk beds, I had a dresser and Joe had this fantastic huge dresser (that of course wreaked of wintergreen) Oh, did I mention that wintergreen is one of the few flavors I don't care for? That dresser sold in the auction. Hopefully a relative got it. I really don't know. It really was a gorgeous piece of furniture. Back to the chairs. We did get these 2 chairs at the time of the auction. Dad set up an interesting clause in his will. Anything that either my sister or I wanted, we could have, with the idea that we should work out some kind of equality. Anything that both of us wanted, would be put in the auction and we would then each have the opportunity to buy it, leaving the other person with the "profit" from it. I thought that was pretty equitable. However, I think we worked things out so well that we didn't need to take it to the degree of the auction. So anyway, we got these chairs. The cane seats had rotted out, probably back when mom and dad got them, so they put these fabricated seats on them. The seats were actually made of fiber, but looked like leather. They are still available. Here is a site from Rockler to show you a new one. A picture of the old one will come later. http://www.rockler.com/fiber-seat   I have some sort of memory of when those seats were put on the chairs, but that could be conjured rather than reality now which is probably 60 years later. We used them in our East Main Street house for some gatherings, but when we moved to this more "modern" house they didn't seem to fit. Georgia and some of the girls were into "Shabby Chic", so after I removed the fabric seats and recaned them, we set out to modernize them by painting them. That project never really got finished. So while I was in the "restoration" mode, I went ahead and stripped them and refinished them. So here they are, ready for a family Easter gathering. Oh, I also got Georgia's grandpa's rocker out and dusted it off in case anyone needs to rock that precious new great grandson.

The 2 reclaimed chairs

One of the chairs so you can get a better look.

Fabric seat removed before recaning. Yes, somehow, I still had it.

And another!!!

I think this finally finishes off the projects from our Crafting Camp (See my most recent post.)
Another project we worked on that weekend was to take steps to restore a chair that had been "on the shelf" for a long time. In the 50's there was a "fad" called "antiquing" which was probably a forerunner of shabby chic. You can go look it up if you're interested. The game was to take a nice piece of furniture you were tired of looking at and through a process of several layers of paint, create a "faux" finish that might resemble a wood grain to some, but in some other color. This chair was antiqued in blue tones by Georgia's mom. Sometime, maybe 20 years ago she didn't have room for the chair so it came to our house. It needed some repair and didn't really fit our country decor at the time so it went to the basement in our house on Main Street; Urbana where it was victim to a couple of basement floods. That cause some of the parts to disappear. So in our Crafting Camp, we made some of those parts and the chair went back to the basement (this basement is dry) until this past week.

We are needing a chair in our bedroom. Our bedroom furniture is cherry. So I did my best to match the cherry color and I picked out a couple of seat fabrics for Georgia to choose from. I think we came up with a very elegant and nice looking chair, restoring the chair's dignity and making a nice seat in our bedroom. You'll have to go back to the Crafting Camp post to see some  "before" pictures.

One loose end nearly knotted.

You need to go back to the post, crafting-camp-09 from Thursday, September 17, 2009 to make sense from this one. Before that date I had talked our son Jeff out of an oak wood chunk sitting by his driveway because I wanted to carve a goose or swan or such and saw that bird in that log. He gave it to me and it sat drying in our garage for more than a year before all the stars aligned to begin the project. That post describes the beginning...... and near end of the project. For obvious reasons, I put the project aside for a while after that day. In the meantime, Jude had become quite adept at carving and I gave him the job of finishing the head. This year for Christmas, the carved head was presented to me. Before this nasty weather hit, we had enough nice days that I got the head mounted. So now awaiting a decision for finish coating, he/she/it sits by our fireplace. Is it a goose?   Is it a swan?  It is apparently not quite what some folks had in mind, but it is what it is. Now, do we paint it white or try to simulate a Canadian goose, or whitewash it, stain it, or simply give it a clear coat, or even leave it raw as it is? Decisions, decisions. I wonder how many years it will take to actually "finish" this project.... and where it will eventually reside. Whatever remains, it represents a fantastic day with 2 of our grandsons along with a great lesson in safety.