Ice House Baby

Larry and I have spent the last three weekends down in Macon County helping my folks out and I know it's crazy but every time I go "home", I cry.  I cry for days gone by, people I've loved who are no longer with us, my schools that are no longer there, the general rundownness (is that a word??) of it all.  Yesterday, we went to the store for Mama and there it was.  My granddaddy's ice house.  Been there forever.  Ain't making plans to go anywhere now either.

Well, my granddaddy's ice house makes me cry, too.

When I got finished shopping for the things Mama needed, I got back to the truck and Larry says, "hold on a minute" and when I asked where he was going, he says, "I'm going in the store".  He comes out a few minutes later and goes to the ice freezer and gets a bag of ice, comes back to the truck and tells me he doesn't want me to cry anymore.  Awwww.

We drive over to the ice house and he takes my picture holding that bag of ice in front of it.  

Another Clark with ice there.  We've come full circle.

Larry said there was a bad glare from the sun but that wasn't it.

That was my granddaddy smiling down on me.  

All roads lead home

So I took my road trip, down the road that I know the best, the one that leads to my mama and daddy.

I went down yesterday, spent the night and came home this afternoon.  It did me so much good to be with them and we had so much fun!!!

They had gone to town yesterday morning and brought me home some Troy burgers for lunch.  Now if you grew up anywhere within ten miles of Montezuma, you know what a Troy burger is.  If not, then bless your heart. Troy's Snack Shack has been in the same spot in downtown Montezuma, Georgia for as long as I can remember, longer than I've been alive probably.  Their burgers are legend where I come from.  And the fries, the perfect mix of crispy and salty, are the absolute best I have ever had.  There's even a Facebook group of us who have moved away from Montezuma and would kill for a Troy burger.  Ha!  There is none like 'em.  

We visited, drank coffee, hung out in the yard and even had company yesterday evening.  My friend of 30 years, Lisa, her mama, Carla, and great-nephew, Dustin, came and spent a couple of hours with us, visiting and catching up.  It was really good to see them!  Lisa is expecting her first baby (a little girl!) in April and I'm so excited for her, I could just bust!!

 
Last night for our almost-midnight snack, we had ice cream and I made this banana split.  They kept adding stuff to it, Mama, the cherry, Daddy, the chocolate chips, until it looked like this.  It was soooo good!!!


After sleeping late and having a big breakfast of sausage, scrambled cheese eggs and oven toast with blackberry jam this morning, we went out visiting family cemeteries.  I LOVE going to visit graves!!  It might sound silly but I believe those loved ones who have passed on know that we're there to see them.  It makes me feel better to go and visit the ones I remember and I love the stories that Mama and Daddy tell about the ones they remember, the ones who were already gone by the time I came along.  Our family is mainly in three cemeteries and what's so cool to me is that we have family from both sides buried in this one cemetery, the one at County Line Baptist Church in Ellaville.  Mama's daddy is there and not ten feet away, Daddy's grandma and uncle are buried.  I realized that just today!  They are buried so close.  Daddy told me he remembered being there, six years old, right after his grandma died and his daddy crying at her grave.  That's a story I didn't know until today.  The older I get, the more I crave stories about my family.  I'm on a quest now to find all of my great- and great-great-grandparents.  One set of great-greats is buried at County Line and one set is in Oglethorpe.  Mama and I are planning a trip to Dooly County to find some more.

We found this grave today in the Oglethorpe cemetery.  This is the lady I was named after!  She lived in the same apartment house with Mama and Daddy when they were expecting me.  She was so good to Mama that she and Daddy gave me Irene for my middle name to honor her.  Miss Irene died a month and a half after I was born.  She gave me a silver spoon set that I still have.  I told her who I was today.  :)

I couldn't believe this thing was still there!  We were going home and passed the old primary school, where I went for 1st and 2nd grade.  When I was 6, I was running from the main building to this one, the lunchroom and library building, and I HIT MY HEAD ON THIS METAL BOX.  I still have the dent in my skull to show for it.  The school is falling down now but that dang box was still there!!  :)

Daddy's young river birch tree that I just thought was the coolest thing!  

I love how the bark just sheds like that.

Mama and Daddy's goldfish pond with the most gorgeous natural moss growing on the fountain.  I took this picture of all of the fish so I could show just how big that one in the middle is!

 Just LOOK at her!!

She was so hard to take a picture of!!  She kept swimming away, swishing that tail at me. I told her she was gonna end up on a plate with some hushpuppies if she didn't smile and say cheese for me.  She said this was the best she was gonna do.  :)

We had such a great time!!  I cannot wait to get back down there!!

Wrappin' it up

I'm packing up, bagging up, wrapping up on this Christmas Eve Eve because tomorrow will be a whirlwind for me!  I'll be with Larry until 3:00, church at 5:00 and then I'll head on down to Macon County as soon as church is over.  I've had such a peaceful, calm December that I won't mind one crazy day.  I got all my shopping done early so I wasn't out in the crowds much, although I DID have to go out and get a new toilet seat today.  The hinge finally broke after being wobbly for two weeks.  Guess it got tired of me ignorin' it.  Since I live so close, I was just going to run to Target and get another one.  When I got there, though, I could not find a parking place.  At ALL.  And traffic was horrendous.  Did everybody wait until the last minute??  So I went to Lowe's instead.  No trouble there.  I was in and out with my new beige guaranteed-to-be-wobble-free toilet seat in less than ten minutes.

These are all the presents that were under my tree.  They ALL get opened at Mama and Daddy's house.  :)

 Here are some goodies I'm taking!

Dinner rolls and chess bars that sweet Beth Yoder made for me, reindeer food for Rudolph and the gang that a precious set of triplets made for us at work and I brought home today, some homemade cranberry sauce that I made and a gallon of my apple cider that I made Wednesday.

Close up of Beth's chess bars. There were 12 of 'em. 

I put them in this gift box and one of 'em got lost during the move. :)

Maw's sweet little bird casserole dish will serve our cranberry sauce.  I am really going to miss her Sunday.  :(  My first Christmas in 44 years that I won't tell her what Santa Claus brought.  But you know what?  I bet she already knows.

Here's everything ready to go!

Two huge Christmas gift bags, one jumbo IKEA bag and one Trader Joe's bag.

Gotta leave this in the mailbox!

I have to share my Christmas cards!

Well, one wall of them anyway.  I get so many because my sweet husband makes sure I get one every day in December, right on up until Christmas.  He sends me 26!  He gathers some and makes some.  Precious boy, that one.

One more of our tree.

Merry Christmas!

Dirt road home

I grew up on a dirt road in an entire neighborhood of dirt roads. They were all around us. I remember long summer days walking those dusty, red roads with Odie and Reckless and Copper and Bull and all the other dogs we had over the years along with my brother and sister and all the neighborhood kids, I remember being so excited when it rained 'cause I knew the road scraper would come and dig us a deep ditch to play in and I remember learning to drive on those roads.  I remember one night driving by myself when I probably shouldn't have been driving by myself and ending up in one of those ditches and my daddy had to get somebody to help him pull me out.  I remember days spent playing in the ditch, building forts and houses and playing dolls and Barbies with my sister when she got old enough to play and playing war with my brother.  The road scraper made the BEST dirt clods ever!!  Only Daddy wouldn't let us throw them at each other because they might have had rocks in them we couldn't see.  To this day when I see a dirt clod, I think that it might have a rock in it.  :)

What's sad is I don't see very many dirt clods anymore.  I don't see very many dirt roads anymore.  I've been living in the city for eight years now and part of me yearns for the country.  (The part of me that has to live beside the MOON, especially)

I miss it.  

Mama and Daddy live on a paved road but there is a dirt road that leads to it.  You have to go out of your way to get to it but I did that yesterday.  Went out of my way.  On purpose.  :)

This is me driving and taking a picture with my cell phone at the same time. It's a wonder Daddy didn't have to get somebody to help him pull me out of the ditch!