Good Ole Days,,,Or Maybe Not,,,,

Conversations take many twists and turns around this house so that you'd never know, in advance, what subject might crop up in the run of an hour or two. This evening, as I was thumbing through one, of 'bout a hundred (it seems like), farm contraption catalogs before tossing it into the trash along with it's brothers, a rain water catcher caught my eye. I mentioned to James that it was a good idea for those who might need to conserve water, he said, "Uh, Yeah, what is it, a 55 gallon barrel?" I looked a little closer and read on a bit and said, "Uh huh, except it's only a 35 gallon barrel and it's plastic, but it has a top on it to keep it clear of bird poop and other trash, I reckon." Then I looked at the $85 askin price and decided that if we ever needed to conserve water we could make our own using stuff from the county dump for nothing. (Recycle ya know.)

Anyway, this led to a conversation about how our grandmother's used to have a barrel at the eave of the house to catch rain water. My grandmother's, and I'm sure his also, would use that water for baths, hair washes, and for puttin in the rinse tubs on wash day because it was much softer than the regular old water that was pumped from the well. It just made the soap suds up so much nicer in a tub full of rain water.

We also reminenced about how nice it was when we got electric pumps and didn't have to pump all the water from that old pitcher pump out back. Toting a couple of galvanized buckets full of water back to the house wasn't so bad, but it was hell on the hands when you had to pump and tote enough for bath water or wash day. I remember many outdoorsy baths in the summer time. It was much easier to tote that empty, old #3 tub from the back porch to a spot near the pump than it was to tote all that water into the house to fill the tub. I was much tougher then so those mosquitos that buzzed and bit during those baths didn't bother me near 'bout as bad as they do now that I've gotten more delicate.

Another conversation took a turn to a discussion about the good ole days when James told me about a nice oak tree he and his hunting buddy took a rest under today. James said the told his buddy that I used to be able to handle an oak tree about that size back when we would cut our own fire wood.

We'd go to the woods and he'd down a tree or two with the chainsaw and cut it up into nearly manageable logs and the kids and I would load it onto a trailer (Trish and I did the heaviest of the work cause Bubbie and Jami were still little tykes). After we'd cut a load, we'd take it back to the house and split and stack it. We had a splitter that was belt driven by the tractor pto thank goodness, cause I've never been handy with an axe. Every time I've ever tried to split fire wood I'd end up hurting myself.

Now that I think on it, just doing that chore is probably another one of the hundred or so reasons that my back is in such sorry shape now.

Well, those are my Thursday thoughts. It's been a long, busy, day of doing tax returns so I'm gonna hit the hay so I'll be able to rise for another busy one tomorrow. I hope everyone had a great Thursday! I'll be around to blog visit soon!