Veterans Day- I Remember Pearl Harbor.

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I remember Pearl Harbor!

There are really no words to describe my feelings and probably the feelings of many veterans, spouses and widows of World War II veterans as we contemplate Veterans Day. (In the photo of the Marine Corps Platoon on the right, Charles Columbus Shaw is on the first row, second from the end going left.)

They tell me that over 1000 WWII veterans are dying daily now. Those living are in their eighties; but to me they are still young men like my grandson, Josh, who is a a Captain in the Army , serving in Germany now after over a year in Iraq.

The WWII soldiers are still, to me, those idealistic, brave, vital, young soldiers who willingly went off to war believing that they were helping to assure the safety and freedom of their families. They were willing to serve in spite of great personal sacrifice. They were certainly a part of one of the greatest generations in our country’s history.

Three of my school friends were killed in WWII, Homer Cook, Neal "Red " Cole, and Carroll Adams. God bless their memory. My brother, Tom, served in the infantry. He and his wife, Rowena, married just before he went into the Army. Rowena lived with my mother, her new mother-in-law, while Tom was away. My brother, Jack, was in the Army Air force. These and all the brave men whom we honor as we celebrate Veternas Day on Novemeber 11, 2009.


When President Roosevelt came on the radio early Sunday morning December 7, 1941 and announced that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, life in the towns and cities of America was forever changed. I was still in my teens (18 years old) and vividly remember the terror and anxiety I felt. We’d never before been in war in my lifetime. No one knew what might be next, so days were filled with fear and uncertainty. We were afraid that our mainland would be bombed next.

In the days, weeks, and months that followed, the entire population rallied around the president and our national leadership. Patriotism was strong. Citizens supported whatever the president felt should be done. The immediate response of our nation to the bombing of Pearl Harbor was somewhat like the national response to the events of September 11, 2001, when everyone pulled together and supported one another.

We were all uncertain what would happen next and wondered how our individual lives were going to be impacted. Winning the war seemed to be the only focus of the entire population.

Soon the military draft was begun. Able-bodied young men were eager to sign up. It was the right and patriotic thing to do. They felt a desire, a need, and an obligation to protect their families and their country from threat and to insure our way of life. Charles was in line early – the morning they opened the draft. Because of this he got a low draft number. However, before his number came up and he could be drafted, he, like many others, opted to volunteer instead so that he could choose his branch of service. Women were never drafted, but many volunteered to serve in the WACS and WAVES.

In 1943 Charles and three other young men from our hometown, Grover Foster, Roy Connell and Charlie Miller, were sent to Cherry Point, NC. Later they were stationed in San Diego. Charlie Miller was wounded in the battle of Iwo Jima and was never well again. These four young fathers joined countless others giving years of their lives for the good of their country.

When we learned that Charles was to be shipped to the South Pacific without a furlough, I went out to be with him in San Diego. On the way there (a four day train ride), I came down with scarlet fever. The next day after I arrived at the Marine base, I was quarantined for 21 days. The Marines gave Charles a furlough after all so he could come home with me before he was sent overseas. His first assignment in the South Pacific was in the Caroline Islands.
Back at home, food and gasoline were in short supply because the nation’s resources were going toward the war effort. The government issued ration books to citizens who then had to use the coupons to get supplies such as sugar and gasoline.

Some textile plants switched over to making strong canvas for tents instead of fabrics for civilian clothing, and some of the mills made cord which was used to reinforce tires for military vehicles. Almost all the mills switched from making goods for regular civilian use to making needed military supplies.

The focus of daily life was to keep abreast of what was happening “overseas.” I remember reading the newspapers from cover to cover every day to find out what was happening and discussing the events with other adults with whom I came into contact in the course of the day. All ears were tuned to the radio anytime a report or a speech came on. There were great, inspiring, and encouraging speeches by Roosevelt and Churchill.

Every night I sat down and wrote a letter to my Marine. Every morning I dressed my two little girls and walked to the Post Office to mail that letter and see if we had a letter from “Daddy.” We wrote as often as he could. He was a great letter writer.

Citizens spent whatever “free time” they had doing whatever they could to help with the war effort. Some worked for the Red Cross. Patriotic and Christian groups frequently had rallies and services to support the troops and to encourage each other.

Children’s lives were very different with few male influences in their lives, and the constant talk of war made many of them fearful. A whole generation of children lived without the benefit of their fathers. And those fathers gave up precious early years of their children’s lives in order to preserve freedom for our country.

Finally the war was over. There were community and church celebrations throughout the country. I clearly remember the celebration service our community held. The entire community gathered at the Baptist church in Milstead to thank the Lord for the end of the war. It was quite a celebration!

Charles often said in the years after the war that “Buddies” in the service are not just buddies – they are brothers. They all seemed to feel a strong sense of brotherhood and connection with each other, realizing that their very lives were in each other’s hands.

This is what Memorial Day and Veterans Day and Independance Day and every day means to me. It means recognition of the sacrifices made – and still being made by soldiers, their families, their children, and the nation as a whole. It means appreciation for what thousands of our fellow citizens have done for me – for all of us – for their country – not just in WWII but in other wars our country has fought to preserve our freedoms and the freedoms of people throughout the world. I pray that they shall not have lived and fought and died in vain.

Semper fidelis:Always faithful

The United States Marine Corps Birthday has been celebrated every year since the 10th of November 1775! My husband, Charles Shaw, like most Marines, as the Marine hymn states, was “proud to be member of the Unted States Marines.”

He served in the Marine Corps, Semper fidelis in World War II. “Always faithful“ was more than a motto to him and to his buddies and also to the wives and widows of these men, who do not question that they were indeed the “greatest generation.”

But my grandson, Captian Joshua Hearn who recently was stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia after serving over a year in the U.S. Army in Iraq and anotehr year in German. He and his generation are also “the greatest generation."

They are struggling daily and honorably with new enemies as we saw clearly on September 11, 2001 after years of more minor attacks on Americans.

Then the vicious killing of thirteen and the injuring of over thiry more at Fort Hood in Texas a few days ago is another wake-up call.

In my house there is one room I call my “study.” It has my desk, and two walls lined with bookcases filled to overflow with books.

My granddaughter, Amanda, when she was small liked to come in here, fill our cards for her younger cousins and called this room “the library.” I spend a great deal of my time in here reading as well as writing.

Family members, including children when they visit are welcome and usually make a least one stop in here to check email or just “putter around” looking at pictures when they visit. The young children usually ask for and receive a supply of paper and pencil to write or draw and make themselves at home in “the library.”
On my hallway wall just outside my study is a gallery of family pictures that fascinate the younger children when they are here. They love to find pictures of themselves on Grandma Ruth’s wall.

The large bookcase near the doorway inside my study has a group of pictures above it. This one wall contains almost exclusively, photos of my husband Charles or the two of us together.

Shortly before Charles died in 1986, he had framed a Semper fidelis emblem. It now hangs in my study.

Unlike the Abu Ghrabb case with it's 24 hour a days news broadcasts, most of us were slow about hearing that Dellon Tyler Ward finally pleaded guilty to two counts of "knowingly and willfully making false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to federal agents last year… allegeding members of the Marine Corps committing murder on Iraqi soil.” The investigation of these false charges ended up costing $193,000 and involved pulling U.S. Marines out of combat zones in the spring of 2007.

Dellon Tyler received only 15 months for this kind of treason against the United States of America and false changes against our Marine Corps ?

The Civil War Parade.

I love a parade, as I mentioned in a web post written during Lent about the first “Palm Sunday Parade.”
The Palm Sunday Parade, tells about Jesus entering the city of Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem, people began to gather and they began wave branches of willow, and myrtle and palm. These people hoped Jesus would save their generation from the heavy yoke Rome had placed on them.

But Jesus came to save all people, Jews as well as Gentiles. He came to save, not just that generation but every generation from the heavy yoke of sin. So the cry of "Hosanna" became "Crucify Him" a few days later!

Mattthew's story of the Palm Sunday parade is more vivid than my memories of the first parade I ever saw.

The first parade I ever saw was a Civil War parade! I, as a granddaughter of the Confederacy was a small child watching as the parade passed down the streets in our small town!

I remember it as a small parade...nothing like the Civil War Parade in the picture above. The Civil War Parade in my small Southern hometown seemed to feature the soldiers who had answered the call to arms and the few who survived to come home to Georgia.

In those 1920- 1930 days we referred to that tragic "Civil War " as “The War between the States." Today when we watch Congressional hearings on television, we think we are still at "war between the states." Sometimes when we hear the south patronizingly dismissed as "the Bible Belt" we are reminded we are still engage in a "war between the states."

The American Civil War (1861-1865) was seen by many as a "states rights" issue. Less than 10 percent of the people in America's southland were slave owners. Most of the slave owners were Caucasion, but records reveal also a few African Americans and a few Native Americans also were slave owners.

The main thing I remember about the Civil War parade of my childhood was that it moved slowly as it passed our house .

Two elderly Civil War veterans with long grey hair were sitting on chairs in the back of a slow moving vehickle.

Those two elderly Civil War soldiers were not waving and smiling ( in the late 1920's) but looking rather serious as the parade went past our house. (Hopefuly they has been waving earlier! )

I asked Mama, "who are those poor old men?" "Those elderly men", I was told, were among the last of the disappearing Civil War soldiers. They and their comrades had “lost the war” that had ended in 1865.

These men had probably seen many of their brothers maimed and killed in an "uncivil " war of "brothers fighting brothers." General Sherman is quoted as saying, "war is hell ." After Sherman's march through Georgia, who could deny the truth of Sherman's words.

Most of the Confederate soldiers had never owned nor probably even seen a slave. My grandfather, Col William Baird, a Methodist and a Christian , like most people in the South never owned slaves.

They had been called to arms and returned home to see their countryside devastated. Many of their schools, church buildings and homes had been destroyed.

At age 86, I am the youngest and the only living granddaughter of Colonel William Baird, an Army Officer in the tragic "War Between the States."

My father, Benjamin Wilson Baird was the youngest son of Col. William Baird and his wife, Mary Marks Baird. I am the youngest of the 11 children (nine of whom lived to adulthood) born to Wilson and and Ieula Ann Dick Baird. My father, Benjamin Wilson Baird was 63 when I was born. Col, William Baird was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness in North Carolina.

Most of my contemporaries are three generations removed from the Civil War. My husband had two great-grandfathers in the Confederate Army. However, although I was four years younger than my husband, I was only two generations removed from the tragic toll of that war. So I am perhaps among the few living granddaughters of those " disappeared " Civil War soldier.

I thought of that Civil War Parade of my early childhood with it's few surviving elderly Civil War soldiers this week while reading about the fading away of our American World War II (1941-1943 ) generation.

My generation! My husband , Charles Shaw and my brothers Jackson Irvin Baird and John Thomas Baird, my childhood playmates we off to war. Three of my classmates and school friends were killed in WW II; Homer Cook, Carroll Adams and Neal "Red" Cole. God bless their memory!

These World War II soldiers, part of what is said to now be the "Greatest Generation." They (we) are now said to be "the disappearing generation."

The Giles's Girls and Quilt Making.

When I think of quilts, I always think of the Giles sisters.

My mother had cousins she and her siblings called the "Giles girls." Three of the girls never married. One of their specialties was quilt making. In one of the bedrooms in their country home (near Fayetteville) there was a stack of beautiful quilts that reached all the way to the ceiling. Not just an eight foot ceiling, but a country ceiling! And the platform that held the quilts was just a few inches off the floor.

When I went with my family to visit as a child, we were always awestruck to see such a mountainous stack of quilts. And they were folded only once, and the corners matched perfectly

Whenever anyone mentioned the Giles sister, someone would say, "I wonder whatever happened to all those quilts." I do not know. With no children nor grandchildren to wear the quilts out sleeping on the floor, they may be heirlooms in some home.
Hopefully some of the neices or nephews have them.

Mama loved and respected her Giles cousins and had played with them as a child so we visited as often as possible even though we lived some distance apart.
I remember them in our home a few times. The family lore is full of stories of the perculiarity of the "Giles girls." On one of their visits to our house, we were all sitting around at bedtime in the "sitting room - bedroom."

The slop jar had already been brought in. I do not remember all the circumstances but my four year old nephew was asleep on one of the beds. Lula said to Mama, in her slow speech typical of the Hollywood stereotype of the Southern drawl, "Eula do you think it would be alright for me to use the slop jar with that little boy in the room."

But life goes on. God bless the memory of these quaint Giles sisters who so facinated us in my childhood.

The Giles sisters were perfect housekeepers. Their country house was said to be so so clean one could "eat off the floor." I am sure no one ever did!

Annie (1985-1975) and Lula (1882-1956)were in charge of the cooking and Pearl (1888-1978)did much of the work in the large garden. They raised their own vegetables for year round use. They canned vegetables and dried fruits for winter use. I remember sitting at their table one time as a child with bowls of vegetables and a huge platter of fresh sliced country tomotoes. I do not remember much about the rest of the menu, but no doubt they also had fried chicken and perhaps another meat dish as a typical "company" dinner in the rural South.

Their mother, Aunt Elmira (Elmira Mask Giles 1854_1940)) was a sister
to Mama's mother, Elizabeth Mask Dick. Elmira and Elizabeth were the daughters of the properous (for the times) farmer and Methodist preacher Bogan Mask. They could (and did ) trace their family history back to the Revolution. Family history was important as "Class" was valued in the South with so many other things "gone with the wind" after the Civil War. It is strange and of little importance to me now but my mother told us on more than one ocassion we "came from good stock."

One of the Giles daughters, Odell, had married, and their only brother had married; but Annie, Pearl, and Lula never married. When Mama and her sisters, Aunt Molly, Aunt Cora and Aunt Fannie visited together, they sometimes remarked about how "pitiful" it was that the Giles girls had never married. Marriage for women was considered of utmost inportance then. So it follows that many of the Women's liberation generation rebelled in the oposite direction.

Aunt Cora pointed out that the reason the Giles girls did not marry was because their papa, Uncle William Giles )1859-1826) was so "peculiar." They said Uncle Bill Giles was "curious".

This did not mean the dictionary reference for the word as eager to learn or inquisitive.
Uncle Bill, they reported was " flat out cure-rus" which meant strange.. He would never let his daughters date. It was said that he "ran off" every man who showed an interest in courting one of his daughters.

It seems that the youngest daughter, Odell had "run off and got married."

Random Thoughts about Courtship in The 1930"s

What do you think about the quote, "the Poet looks at the world like a man looks at a woman" ? One man responded to this quote in the "Word A Day" column by saying "Does that mean poets are afraid of the world?"

One day, when the first of our five daughters was a teenager, my husband watched the smiles and excitement as she talked on the phone with a young male school friend. He remarked, "I wish I had known when I was a teen that girls were waiting at the phone for boys to call."

When he was a kid, he told me, he thought he had to persuade girls to go out with him. He said he had no idea girls were waiting close by the phone for boys to call.

I am told that these days girls do not wait by the phone but initiate the calls themselves. They tell me further, boys do not call a girl that does not call them first. Does this mean males are afraid of females?

Recently I wrote a post about a time when my mother was a fatherless child in the stricken South during reconstruction after The Civil War. Before the South recovered from the terrible destruction of war, it was also faced with the Boll Weevil's destruction of cotton fields at a time when cotton was a major money crop in the South. Then the Great Depression.

But men and women loved and respected one another. Life seemed good in our little corner of the world in spite of all the deprivation. The Christian gospel of Grace brought the beauty of much "graciousness" into our community. The Christian gospel preached by Methodist Circuit Riders and others, in spite of any flaws they may have had, brought about enough "civility" that we could build civilization in our communities. We worked hard and played hard.

I have written about cooking from scratch and how clothes were made at home with long hours of sewing with needle and thread and/or a foot operated Singer sewing machine. No fast foods. No washing machines. Clothes were rubbed by cold chapped hands on a "rub" board and hung to freeze sometimes before they would dry on an outdoor clothes line.

But it seems relationships between male and female was not so complicated.

My husband, Charles, and I were teen agers in the thirties. I can testify that the thirties were not a time when boys were afraid of girls. If they were afraid, they were brave enough to call anyway.

The teen aged boy I married tells me that when he looked across his school gym and saw me, he said to his buddy nearby, "I am going to ask that girl for a date." A good line? He said he and his friends were taking a look at all the girls on my side of the large gymnasium. The basketball game was in his school's gym playing my school's team. We lived sixteen miles apart.

Are some couples just "meant for each other"? It so happened that Charles had relatives living in my town. I was a school friend of his cousin, Clara. Clara and I were not close friends but did visit back and forth occasionaly. One day, a close friend and I happened to be visiting with Clara when Charles and his family came for a Sunday afternoon visit.

Charles was still a teenager and did not have a car but managed to get back to my town on occasion. It was a time when hitchhiking was common, When Charles was unable to hitch a ride one time he actually walked the 16 miles.

His friend, Bill, finally owned a car (with a rumble seat) and the problem was solved. Charles brought Bill down to my town and introduced Bill to my best friend, Julia. Problem again. Bill and Julia got married two months later. So Charles was back to hitching a ride when he could not borrow his Dad's car. Was Julia and Bills marriage so soon after meeting a bad mistake? Not in this case. The marriage lasted over 50 years until Bill's death.

One late afternoon, Charles came down to a pound party. What is a pound party? During these "depression years," the hostess would invite all the kids to her home for a party. Everyone who came, pitched in with refreshments by bringing a "pound of cookies" or fruit or part of a cake or whatever they had on hand. The hostess made a large pitcher of something to drink...punch or cool-aid or ice tea. We played games that would be called "mixers" today, These games would have the boys and girls talking to one another. Parents were nearby but basically out of sight.

It so happened that it was at a pound party when Charles asked me to marry him. One of the games that early evening, had couples to take a walk together. The walk was along a well lighted street with modest frame houses close together and people all along the short walk. Not a great deal of privacy.

While we were walking, he suddenly turned to me and asked, "Will you marry me?" My reply was, "Oh, I am too young to even think about marriage." Charles said, "I do not mean, marriage right now. Could we be engaged? " In retrospect, I suppose it is laughable to think of our innocence and ignorance. But as young we were, we talked quite seriously about what we expected in marriage.

As they say, the "the rest is history."

A LETTER FROM CAMP

A Letter from Camp

Finally it was our youngest son, David's turn to go to CAMP GLISSON, a Methodist Church Camp in the North Georgia Mountains.

David reached age 11 and was excited to take his place for a week at Summer Camp in Dahlonega, the family tradiiton his six siblings before him had enjoyed.

As his mother, I helped him pack for the trip. I had bought him new inderwear so included the new package of underwear in his luggage and also added a self addressed card to send to us from camp as a good exercise in writing.

Fortunately David was back home with his head still attached and still "filling good" before the card arrived.

P.S. Also... his new underwear was still new in the unopened package.

The Boll Weevil and Peanut Butter.

THE BOLL WEEVIL AND PEANUT BUTTER

Mama always said that the boll weevil ran us off the farm. The farm was in the community of Oak Hill. (Oak Hill is in Newton County near the Henry County line and also near Rockdale County.(about 30 miles Southeast of Atlanta).

Cotton was king in the South, and most farmers made their living by raising cotton. When the boll weevil infested the cotton plants, it wiped out the cotton farmers’ profits. Many farmers lost their whole year's wages. My father got a job in one of the textile mills in Newton County and moved our family into Porterdale,a “model mill town” in the fall of 1922. I was born the next year

My older cousin, Aubrey Simms told me a few years ago that he remembered as a boy of about six, the very night, my father told his father about his decision to sell his farm and get a job in one of the textile mills at Porterdale.

His father Jason Simms's reply was, "Uncle Wilson I will go to share cropping before I will move my family into a mill town."

However, Porterdale became "home sweet home" to my family. It was a great place to grow up with dedicated school teachers, as well as many church and community activities. My brothers, Tom and Jack who served in the Armed Forces during World War II, talked with such nostalgia about Porterdale, all their buddies declared they were looking forward to one day visiting Porterdale.

But Mama said she first thought of Porterdale as "the jumping off place,"a place where she would never have lived had it not been for the pesty, destructive Boll Weevil.

Mama loved the farm and she sure had a "green thumb" in growing flowers in our small plot of ground as well as pots of flowers growing on the front porch. Aunt Cora, Mama's older sister visited from Atlanta a week or so every year in her old age. After breakfasrt every morning she would say to Mama, "Lets go out and sit in the garden awhile." She and Mama would walk the few feet out the front door, and sit on the porch swing or in one of the comfortable rocking chairs amid the pots of flowers Mama had blooming.

We are told boll weevils first came to the United States from Mexico eating through Texas all the way East into the cotton fields in Alabama and Georgia. I grew up hearing the boll weevil blamed for much of the continued povety in the South following the War Between The States.

When the Cotton Factory Owners moved South looking for cheap labor, they apparently found plenty of hungry people, both Black and White looking for work. Early on, even children were hired for some of the jobs. It took people out of cotton fields into cotton mills.

So I was amazed to learn that someone actually built a monument to the boll weevil in Enterprise Alabama in 1919.

The 13- and- a -half feet tall Boll Weevil Monument consists of a statue of a lady in a flowing white gown, with arms stretch high above her heard to display a big black boll weevil. It is surrounded by a lighted fountain.

It seems that two enterprising business men (H.H. Sessions, C.W. Baston) in Enterprise Alabama determined that peanuts would make a good crop to plant where cotton had been grown.
Dr. George Carver of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute also did research to find as many products as possible using peanuts. .
Carver did not invent peanut butter but did popularize the use of peanut butter and found hundreds of industrial uses for the peanut plant. It is hard to believe that when cotton was king there was "no such thing" as peanut butter?

I like the story Gregg Lewis , my son-in-law tells about George Washington Carver's conversation with God. In Carver's words: "I said to God, Mr. Creator, I would like to know all about the creation of the world." And God answered, "Little man, your mind is too small to understand creation, ask something more your size.

Then I said, Mr. Creator, I would like to know all about the little peanut."

Big men like Dr. George Washington Carver are brilliant enough to understand human limitations. Little men like whats-his-name in California who brag about their atheism are too small to ever see more than an inch beyond their nose anything they cannot fully comprehend.

Albert Einstein said, “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious . It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead.”

Einstein’s view is shared by other great scientists like Niels and Bohr, who concluded there is room in a rational universe for incomprehensible wonders.

Ann Southern and Me

When I was about 12 or 13 someone told me that I looked like Ann Southern, a current movie star! I had never seen Ann Southern in the Movies but had seen a picture of her in our Newspaper.

WOW! I went home and stood in front of the large dresser mirror in the bedroom I shared with my mother and sister. For a time I combed my hair in several styles, smiling and turning back and forth at I primped in front of the mirrow trying to see if I really did look like a famous movie queen.

Suddenly I was brought back to reality by laughter coming from across the hall! Laughter! I was one mortified little girl to realize that some boarders from across the hallway had been watching my antics in front of the mirror.

The photos of Ann Southern are from the web. In the photos I remember of her when I was 12, her hair was pulled back in a sophisticated bun and no pouty lips.

Weeding out Leukemia in Lily's Garden!

My great -granddaughter, eight year old Lily was diagnosed with Pre-B ALL (Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia) on December 1, 2008.

Her doctor explained leukemia by telling her that the leukemia cells were like weeds that crowd out the good flowers in a garden. Lily is still undergoing a regimen of chemotherapy and other treatments in order to kill all the weeds so that only healthy and beautiful flowers will grow in "Lily's Garden." Lily and her mother, daddy, sister and grand parents are reaching out and working to find a cure to childhood cancers that attack children in frightening numbers.

(Lily, pictured running a few years ago with little sister Sophie)
Did you know that cancer is the #1 disease killer of kids? That is more deaths each year than Cystic Fibrosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Asthma, and AIDS COMBINED!!!!! I know you have all heard of those diseases but have you heard of the names Neuroblastoma, Burkitts’ Leukemia, or Rhabdomyosarcoma?? I had not till recently- yet they are affecting lives of new friends of mine and killing kids each day.

You can read more on Lily's CaringBridge website.

If you would like a Lily's Garden wristband,or wish to donate, checks can be written to "Lily's Garden" and mailed to Lily's Garden, 1885 Gen. George Patton Drive, Franklin, TN 37067. 100% of all check donations go to fund childhood cancer research. Please contact the family via the above address or email through the contact information at http://lilysgarden.org/. All we ask is that you wear the wristband, and each time you look at it you think of Lily and pray for her health as she goes through the chemotherapy. In only two months the chemotherapy (not the leukemia, but the chemo!) has changed her from a child able to run and play and turn cartwheels to a child who may need leg braces soon in order to simply walk.
Those interested are also invited to join the “Lily’s Garden” cause on Facebook -

September 10, 2009 articles in The Tennessean, "At just 8 years old, the third-grader endures regular chemotherapy treatments that can make her sick. The cancer is in remission, but she'll have another year and a half of debilitating treatments to try to prevent a relapse. She gets ill often and must be vigilant against infection because of her compromised immune system, said Lily's mother, Larisa Hensiek.

But Lily is not going down her tough path alone. Since she was diagnosed with the illness around Thanksgiving, neighbors and friends as well as her classmates and teacher at Walnut Grove Elementary School have eased her way. "People have been so nice to us," Hensiek said.
At the school, Lily's second-grade teacher, Karen Wight, recently moved up a grade to be with the same students. And Lily's classmates continue to be protective and concerned for her, worried when their friend doesn't show up to school.
In addition, a parent, who happens to be an old neighbor, has created a special nook for Lily at the end of the hall where her third-grade class is located. A painted mural of an English garden covers the walls of "Lily's Garden," complete with a fountain and bridge. Created by faux painter Brooks Tucker, who has a son in Lily's class, the garden is always in bloom with not a single weed in sight. It's designed to give Lily a place to rest when the chemo takes its toll and also to be a place where her fellow classmates can visit and read a book, Wight said.
It took Tucker about four or five weeks to complete the mural, and it came from the heart, said his wife, Dana.

The result is a lush garden scene that's inviting and serene, complete with green shag carpet and oversize cushy pillows. "It's special for two reasons," Dana Tucker said. "We are friends of the family, and Lily is friends with both of my children."

It's hard to imagine a child going from cartwheels one day to excruciating pain the next, but that's what happened to Lily, her mother said. The experience has made Lily and her family advocates of childhood cancer research, which they believe is under funded.

There's not a single risk factor that would signal that the illness might arise, Hensiek said. Because of Lily's experience, she has started raising money for childhood cancer research. So far, the third-grader has raised $33,000.

Lily and her grandmother make and sell soap on their Web site, and the family has initiated other fundraisers such as the Franklin 4 the Cure, set for Sept. 19.

Cooking From Scratch in the 1930's

When one "cooked from scratch" in the thirties, it was from the first "scratch" of a match. We had a large iron cookstove in our kitchen when I was a child. The iron cookstove burned wood. (The picture to the left looks much like the stove in our kitchen in the late 1920's and early 30'except our stove had white metal on the oven door and warming closet doors)

Wood had to be cut in "stove wood" lengths, brought from the backyard into the house and stacked in wood boxes behind the stove. A fire had to be started with crumpled up newspaper and kindling wood. Then the fire was kept burning by the constant additon of larger pieces of "stove wood."
The stove had , what we called "a warming closet" near the top. It had two decorative iron doors to open and place cooked food to keep warm until time to set on the table. A large reservoir was built in on the side to heat water. I remember one of my jobs was to keep water in the reservoir. The "eyes" on top of the stove could be removed to build the fire. There was a little iron utensil to fit into a hole in the stove eye to lift it and then put back in place so large pots of beans or potatoes or meat could be cooked on top of the stove. I remember my mother cooking beef roast, pork roast, and chickens on top of the stove in water. We called them "roasts", but they were sometimes boiled or simmered on top of the stove. This was used possibly for tougher cuts of meat than the roasts we cook today.

Chicken, pork chops, and cubed steak was fried in a large iron skillet. I have seen my mother take a hammer to pound steak to tenderize it. She would then flour and fry it in serving size pieces. Meat was not served every day.

Some kind of dried beans (a wonderful sourse of protein) were cooked almost every day - large butter beans, small limas, pinto beans, navy beans, or black-eyed peas. Salt pork was plentiful and added to the dried vegetables for seasoning. Potatoes were boiled with butter and sometimes dumplings...probably bits of leftover dough from the biscuits that were cooked at every meal. The term "low-fat" had never been spoken!

Large pans of sweet potatoes were baked often. Sweet potatoes seemed plentiful and were sometimes fried or made into pies or puddings. In the summer fresh vegetables were cooked in place of or in addition to the dried beans which were a staple and inexpensive proten food nearly every day, Fresh vegetables were seasoned with fat meat (uncured bacon). Thankfully my mother did not add the fat meat to fresh vegetables as lavishly as some cooks did.

My favorite summer vegetable plate was fresh crowder peas with a few tiny pods of okra boiled on top of the peas, corn freshly cut fine off the cob, and sliced tomatoes. On a cold winter day nothing was better than chicken and dumplings, one of Mama's really great dishes. What kind of bread? Cornbread, of course and hot buttered biscuits.

Mama made great vegetable soup from fresh tomatoes and an assortment of vegetables from summer gardens. She also made soup in the winter using canned tomatoes and canned corned beef with potatoes, rice, or macaroni and any vegetables she had. We had canned salmon made into patties fairly often and sometimes fried fish. The fish meal was often fish that Mama caught from the nearby Yellow River. ( My father died when I was nine after being bedridden for a years, so I was reared by a widowed mother. My two older brothers , Grice and William Bogan...whom we called "Willie B "and two older sisters Louise and Vera were already married when my father died. I was nine and my younest brother Jack was 14.)

Cheese and macaroni, rice, and rice pudding were common dishes in the 30's. Grits and eggs were often served for breakfast with fried salt pork or streak-o-lean. Sometimes we had ham to go along with biscuits and butter and jelly or jam that had been prepared and put away in jars in quantity during the summer. It was not uncommon to have pork chops or fried chicken for breakfast along with the regular homemade buttered biscuits. Real butter.

The first margarine I saw looked like a hunk of lard, and, for a long time, tasted like lard to me - as it did to anyone who had been raised on country buttered biscuits. The margarine of the late thirties was white and came with a vial of yellow coloring. To make it look more like butter, the margarine had to be left out of the refrigerator to soften at room temperature. The yellow coloring had to be worked in. I suppose the butter lobbyists mandated this. In a few years the margarine people prevailed and they were allowed to make margarine that looked as yellow as butter.

An after dinner speaker named Baldy White was popular when I was young. He was a big man and used to keep his audience laughing with such comments as, "We were so poor when I was a boy, all we had for breakfast was ham, eggs, buttered grits and hot biscuits with an asortment of homemade jellies and perserves. We didn't know there was such a thing as Post Toasties!"

I remember Aunt Cora bringing her two granddaughters my age, Mildred and Allene, down from their home in Atlanta one week-end and how excited they were to have homemade biscuits for breakfast. I was amazed. I would have been more excited to have cereal and milk or toast made with "store bought" bread. Rare!