I have been writing children’s stories for my granddaughters for the past couple of years. When I hear about one of their misadventures I usually say, “I feel a story coming on”! I keep these special stories in a black binder marked "Top Secret". My middle granddaughter, who just turned three, is now asking for the "binder".
The stories are easy to write but the illustrations I visualize are much harder. I am not an artist. People who have the gift of being able to illustrate their own work are very fortunate. If I could have chosen a few more skills to have in life, being artistic would definitely have been one of them.
The stories are easy to write but the illustrations I visualize are much harder. I am not an artist. People who have the gift of being able to illustrate their own work are very fortunate. If I could have chosen a few more skills to have in life, being artistic would definitely have been one of them.
I also have several puppets that the Grans absolutely adore; including Jack the donkey and his girlfriend, Tina, a white alpaca. The puppets often travel with me and the little kids are disappointed if the puppets don't come along to visit.
My oldest granddaughter loves to hear stories from my childhood. I keep a point form list in my phone of my memories from back in the day.When I get summoned to report for bedtime stories, I can peel through my memory list and easily find stories to tell. I can’t even cheat and skip any because she remembers what is on the list.
We could talk for hours about those old stories. I have told her about things we had on the farm like stone-boats, hay racks, haylofts, ice houses and bikes with balloon tires. She is fascinated by the injuries we suffered, the stitches we got and the mischief we were supposedly involved in on the farm. There was always somewhere to explore around the farm and surrounding countryside or something to climb up on, so a mishap was never far away.
1961
We never really stop to think about how much things change in our own lifetimes. We think that is just something that happened to our parent's generation.
In the nineties Mom wrote about how many things had gone by the wayside since her and Dad were first married; travelling in the winter by horse and caboose, hired men sleeping in the bunkhouse, wood stoves as the only heat source in the house, butter churns and cream separators. Mom and Dad exchanged love letters in the mail and of course, there was the good old telephone party line.
Winter mode of travel 1949
The advancements in agricultural practices and machinery from 1947 to 1997 when my parents farmed were staggering. Going from a horse-drawn plow, seeder and swather, a steel-wheeled tractor and a thrashing machine to a modern drill, swather and combine were huge changes in a relatively short time frame historically speaking.
What things will be on my list of life changes when I write that story one day; records, eight-track tapes, VCRs, cassette tapes, typewriters and Polaroid cameras come to mind. We no longer get film developed or rent movies at a store.
We can order almost anything we need from clothing to electronics to groceries online now - what will we be up to in the next quarter century? What other things do you think will be on my list one day?
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