Thursday, April 3, 2014.
Recently, I discovered many letters that Grandma S had sent to us. She was really very good to us, writing so often, and sometimes she wrote to our six little kids. One thing only, that disturbs me: she almost never dated the letter. She always had in the upper right-hand corner of the paper, "Sunday" "Tuesday evening" Monday morning" "Saturday afternoon", but rarely a date. Once in a while there was "Monday June 4th" or something similar. If I really need to know the year, I would have to look up time and date or something like it, on CALENDAR. The computer sometimes bewilders me, but it does help me many times.
Gram B usually dated her letters, and I am so thrilled about that. The big folder of letters that I am going through must remain all together, because we can usually figure out what month and year they were received, from the dates on other letters from friends and relatives.
On one of Gram B's letters, April 20, 1970, she opened with "Dear Shiverhillians, hope you don't shiver too much now. You will probably get what we are having out here in Michigan: cold, cold rain." I'm glad she didn't name us as a Bunch of Shiverhellions! It wouldn't have been true, though, if she had thought of us that way. "A hellion is: a rowdy, mischievous, or troublemaking person, especially a child." Our children were almost always wonderful, cheerful, helpful, non-fighting, caring, and lovable kids! There was almost never any bad things about them. Those were the Good Old Days for me, you can be sure! They loved playing together, and playing with friends; and they were all bright, good children.
The time that the younger boys 'painted' the outside wall of the connecting woodshed (as it was called) was so much fun for them. I must not forget to mention that they painted it with MUD. Yes, MUD. It was an excellent job, they were very proud of it, and I liked the color quite a lot. They produced the MUD by adding some water to their enlarged sandbox adjacent to the woodshed. Originally there were some boards around the sandbox, but it grew so large that the boards disappeared one day. They often played there in the sand and the natural soil (these two soils became a concoction), making cabins, holes, bridges, rivers, creeks, ditches, and many other creations. Their best fun was to dig big holes that they would sit in or lie in and get covered up almost completely with the sandbox material. We have some photos as proof of these experiments.
That one day that they 'painted' the woodshed surely stands out in our memories. By the way, they did have to wash down all the MUD, after they proudly admired for several hours their good job of 'painting'.
I'll see you at the Corner Post ...
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