Finally Friday QOTD 11/17

Happy Friday Everyone!! What is your favorite childhood memory? For me, it would have to be scratching my Grandpa's back. Sounds strange, but when we were over there he would be in his recliner in the living room (as usual) and he would have whatever kids that were there get behind him and scratch his back with a book of matches. I know it sounds very odd, but as kids, we all fought to be the one to scratch his back. He had tatoos all over his chest and arms from being in the service and the one on his chest was of a baby. He used to tell each of us, separately of course, that the baby was us. Little did we know that the tatoo was there long before we were ever born.

I have two that I can't decide which one is my favorite. Well, the first one was wrestling my dad. At the time he was like a mountain my brother and I used to climb all over him trying to bring him down. I would hop on his back and my brother was like a monkey he would climb all the way to the top of his head. The second was saturday mornings. My brother and I would wake up really early and sneak into the kitchen and get cereal then we would sit real close to the Tv and turn it on really low so that we could watch as many cartoons as we could before mom woke up. (Saturday mornings was major cleaning day) hence the sneaking around.

Mine would have to be playing with my cousins. My mom had 8 brothers & sisters, so I had a lot of cousins and we all lived near each other. Family events were loud & rowdy and FUN!! Lots of tree climbing, swimming in the river & shooting each other with BB guns - all things that I would NEVER let my own daughter do. Have a great weekend!! XOXOXO, Sharyn

Cooking with my grandmother. She was a kind, funny, loving, social woman who was very obese. As a result of the obesity she was in a wheelchair by the time I was a young boy. I grew up in an apartment upstairs from her and spent many days, just she and I, as her little helper - cooking up a storm. A pinch of this, a dash of that, "cup your hand and fill it with flour - that will be enough"... what a gift - it made me an adventurous cook and friends are always amazed at the things I can come up with in a pinch. Steve

One of my favorite memories as a kid was going to my grandmother's house for Easter. We lived in Michigan and she lived in Eastern Kentucky. We would leave our house real late on Thursday evening. My dad worked for General Motors and he would come home from work, we would all hop in the car, join the long line of cars carrying the other factory workers also going home to kentucky for Easter, and dad would drive almost all night to get there. (We lived in Ypsilanti, MI and the area was affectionately known as Ypsi-tucky because there were so many Kentucky boys who left home to come to that area to work in the car factories)It was like a 12 to 14 hour trip and us kids would be zonked out in the back of the car way before we go half way to our destination. We'd arrive sometime early morning, and we'd wake grandma up and she would right away start fixing breakfast. Fried potatoes, fried apples , fried chicken or porkchops, bicuits and gravy, bacon and eggs. Not just a few of these item, but all of them all together. She had had eight kids and didn't skimp when it came to her meals. The area she lived in was so beautiful. In the spring, at Easter time, the dogwoods and redbud trees would be in bloom so the mountain in back of her house would covered in a splash of pink and white. And the air smelled so fresh and clean. After breakfast, grandma would bring us kids some yarn and straight pins that we would bend into fishing hooks and we would go to the bridge that we had to cross to get from the area where the cars were parked toher house. We would sit on that bridge all morning fishing, baiting our hooks with leftover biscuits from breakfast. We never caught anything, but we sure had fun trying. We spent most of Saturday dyeing eggs for the next morning. Maybe grandma would make her famous apple pies. She would make apple pies really thin and then stack them three high and then cut slices from that. I was like an apple pie layer cake. On Sunday morning we would get up, and the Easter bunny would have made his appearance, and we would hunt for easter eggs. Then after breakfast, the family would pile back into the car, join the long line of cars going back home, and drive all day to be back for dad to go to work on Monday morning.