Sorted by date Results 26 - 47 of 47
When I was in college, I had to take a course in computer programming as a requirement for my major. This would have been fine if the course was in “Basic” language, but the preferred language for mathematics was “Fortran IV.” Back then, computers had a “main frame” that took up a whole building and programs were written on “punch cards” that were produced on special machines. The first day of class, I knew I was in trouble. The teacher talked gibberish and the textbook seemed to be written in a foreign language. As hard as I tried, I had no...
Our house in Pennsylvania was in a valley at the foot of three large hills (probably considered mountains out here on the prairie.) The one to the east had a gentle slope with several rolling hills. Behind the house, facing south, was a hill with several fields. From the back of the house to the top of this hill was about half a mile straight up but longer if you went through the fields. Across the street from the house was another hill facing north that was about the same height as the south hill. The north hill, however, was tree covered and...
When I lived in Pennsylvania, the hardwood trees put on quite a show in autumn. Along with the cool weather, harvest and start of many holidays, my drive home from work was full of exciting sights. Starting as I entered a valley, there was a farm with a vegetable stand. While all their produce was grown on their property, they had also planted a corn field in a maze pattern instead of the usual neat rows. There were two observation towers built in the field. Once the corn reached around six feet tall, the maze was offered for adventure with...
One of my side ventures when I was traveling was a trip to a Mother Earth News Fair in Wisconsin. I saw it advertised in the magazine and decided to check it out. When I called to purchase tickets, I asked about camping spots. They told me they had sites on the grounds, so I booked one for Thursday through Monday. That gave me plenty of time to explore the area before attending the fair Saturday and Sunday. As usual, I got lost several times and arrived at the fair grounds around five or six in the evening. Expecting a park-like campground, I d...
When I was young, our gardens were “iffy” at best. While it is impossible to beat a tomato, freshly picked from the vine and eaten while still standing beside the plant, one tomato does not make a salad. Luckily for us, there was a roadside stand next to the road my father traversed to and from work each weekday. He would stop on his way home and purchase fresh picked seasonal vegetables. Back then you had to wait for the growing season in your area to purchase different vegetables. Tomatoes in December were unheard of unless you bought “ho...
I use shredded paper as bedding for my livestock in particular my pig. It takes quite a lot of paper to keep a pig happy; much more than an average household can produce. To have enough paper to shred I get the old newspapers and magazines from convenience stores and a newspaper office. Often, I like to read the old newspapers from other towns but sometimes my stack of my want-to-reads gets quite large and I find myself reading “news” that is over a year old. Reading a year old, Kansas paper I found a front page article talking about that pap...
My father was born in Rhode Island in 1915. Like most youth of his time, he was always tinkering with automobiles alongside his father, brother and friends. These vehicles were somewhat different from today’s vehicles. If you have ever watched Walt Disney’s movies “The Shaggy Dog,” “The Absentminded Professor” or “Flubber,” you are familiar with the cars of my father’s childhood. These cars needed to be driven to be acceptable. My father and a friend even took a camping trip from Rhode Island to Yellowstone National Park in a Model T Ford they...
When I was working at the stable at the Honeymoon Resort, our trail passed a small lake at the top of a steep hill. It then wound down the hill to a marshy area with a pond in the middle of the marsh. Every year large snapping turtles would travel from the lake, down the trail, to the pond to lay their eggs and back to the lake. One year, as I was descending the hill with a group of riders behind me, I came upon a turtle “blocking” the trail. By “blocking” I mean it was so large it completely covered the trail. There was no way the horses...
As a teenager, summertime meant firemen’s carnivals. Almost every town had a volunteer fire department and one of their main fund raisers was a carnival. Starting after Memorial Day and ending around Labor Day there were few weeks a carnival was unavailable for an evening’s entertainment. There were professional “carnies” with their rides, fun houses, and games of chance as well as local clubs sponsoring food stands, bingo, raffles and other such activities. Most nights there would be live entertainment where you could dance, sing or just en...
Living in the country, laundromats required major effort to ready. You had to gather all the laundry together and haul it several miles. For this reason, we always had our own washers and dryers when I was growing up. When I went off to college, there were washers and dryers in the basement of my dorm. The main difference from doing laundry at home was having enough change to feed the machines. Linen was provided in the room and board contract, so I only had to strip the bed, round up my towels and take the pile down to stand in the laundry...
When we first moved to Pennsylvania, my mother discovered in the spring the fields were alive with wild strawberries. These strawberries were small but packed with flavor. Although it was time consuming, my mother would go out with a bucket and pick these berries. Sometimes by brother and I would help, but more luscious strawberries would go into our mouths than in our buckets. Once the berries were picked and washed, they needed to be hulled. My mother had a utensil for this job. It was metal, folded in half, and worked like tweezers. It was...
When I was about 11 years old, I came home from school to find my mother sitting at the dining room table with an outdated calendar and three picture frames in front of her. The pictures on the calendar were watercolors of birds, probably done by a famous artist. I asked Mom what she was doing and she said she was trying to decided which three pictures she liked best. She planned to frame them and hang them in the stairwell, possibly adding more if frames became available. This was the first time I had paid much attention to a calendar, let...
I have always viewed myself as coordinated and at least somewhat graceful. According to my daughter, I am about as graceful as a “bull in a China shop.” I must be somewhat coordinated, however, because I have stayed on bucking horses, and I played the snare drum in the high school band. As for a graceful, I was never chosen for any sports, and I was a straight “C” student in a gym class. I remember walking across the balance beam but still getting a “C.” I suppose it is because I walked across the beam with the same grace as I cross a roa...
When I started my trek, I tried to find actual destinations. Often events were weeks or months apart, so I ended up with many side trips. My first planned stop was in northwestern Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Equine Council has a division dedicated to equestrian trails. They hold one- and three-day clinics on trail mitigation and maintenance. They also aid Pennsylvanian equestrian clubs. I took their three-day clinic where we installed three bridges and a ford on a trail in a state park that was doomed to be closed because of the stream damag...
When I was very young my brother and I colored a few hard-boiled eggs for Easter. Sometime in the night the Easter Bunny hid our eggs plus many more around the living room. Of course, the ones the bunny brought were prettier than ours, but little ones barely notice that. On Easter morning my brother and I were sent into the living-room to hunt for the brightly colored eggs while my parents watched and kept count of our finds. We always had dogs and cats in the house. After the bunny hid the eggs, the cats determined they were put there for...
My original plan when I left Pennsylvania to travel was to follow Route 6 from there to California. After I bought my camper, I headed to AAA for a “trip tick” of the proposed route with accompanying paper maps and travel books. I knew I would take side trips along the way but I could always return to Route 6. I spent a month at my cousin’s estate in Maryland to get my “sea legs” for camping before heading out. I had been several weeks on the road and had several side trips when I crossed the state line from Pennsylvania into Ohio. I came to a...
February 12 is Lincoln’s birthday and February 22 is Washington’s. When I was in school, these two days were celebrated separately on the days of their birth. The school halls and classrooms were decorated with silhouettes of the two honorees. We made or colored top hats for Lincoln and it was not unusual to see them sported in the halls. For Washington there was a cherry pie or cobbler for dessert in remembrance of the “I will not tell a lie” tale. Speeches were made starting with “The Gettysburg Address.” There was a recounting of Washingt...
One year my husband and I decided to sell Christmas trees in Connecticut with a friend, Rick. We bought an old truck with a tool body on it. After buying two wheels with tires from two different junk yards, we traveled to Pennsylvania to buy 100 trees. We bought another wheel with better tread and took off the tool body, replacing it with a plywood flat bed. When we returned to Connecticut with the trees, we proudly put up a “trees for sale” sign and put six trees in the sale spot we had picked under a three-way bridge. The next morning we fou...
When we first moved from Rhode Island to Pennsylvania, my parents were excited because our 110 acres had many pine trees. They envisioned treks to find the perfect Christmas tree, plucked from their own property. So began the annual Christmas tree hunt. There was a large learning curve along with this hunt over the years. The first being the first day of rifle hunting season begins the first Monday after Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania. This event is so popular the schools are closed that day because everyone is out hunting and nobody, including t...
Where I formerly lived in Pennsylvania, most of the fields were fairly small because of the mountains and forests. The fields were wedged between hills and trees and aerial spraying or crop dusting as it is sometimes called, was not a common farming practice. As time went by, farming the small fields became less profitable and many farms were sold to developers. The developers broke the farms into one, two or three acre lots. The lots were sold to people from the cities and houses sprang up everywhere like mushrooms. One such farm had fields...
During my many travels across the country, I attended several Mother Earth News Fairs. The first one I went to was in Wisconsin. While there, I decided I might be able to work for the fairs and offset my travel expenses. I was told...thanks but most of the work is done by volunteers at each venue. I left my name and number in case there was a job opening. The next fair I planned on attending was in Pennsylvania. A few weeks ahead of the fair, I called the Mother Earth News magazine office to check on a job. After some checking they said that...
My mother had gone to her mother’s for a month-long visit, leaving my father, brother and myself alone to fend for ourselves. I was in charge of the kitchen and all the meal preparation, well at least dinner. I had recently started dating the man (really a boy) who would become my husband, I decided it was a good time to showcase my cooking skills. I invited him and planned the meal. It was nothing fancy, just a meat and potato supper but I knew from our dates that my guest liked desserts, apple pie in particular. We had an old apple tree in t...
