Life on the Farm Memories

Posted on February 28, 2012 by moonbridgebooks

I have discovered a new blog to follow! Earl B. Russell writes about growing up poor on a Tennessee farm. He’s posted on such memories as his mother doing laundry with a washboard, smoking fresh sausages and salting hams after the hog-killing, living without electricity, and racing around with the boys in a ’59 Dodge Pickup. Among other stories of his life. One of his links led to the RootsWeb.com page (part of Ancestry.com) for  Mary Carol’s Weakley County Tennessee Genealogy and History site where I found fabulous stories of life in days gone by. Mary Carol’s site and some of Earl’s posts are all about my husband’s side of the family, all from the East Tennessee countryside. I’m thinking about how I need to write down all those stories, and soon.

Farm life is just not the same anymore. Small family farms are disappearing fast, replaced by big factory farms, so if you’re from a farm family you’ve definitely got history worth writing. My husband remembers pulling eggs from under crabby setting hens lined up on shelves of hay in a long chicken shed. His mother and her siblings picked cotton by hand, hoed out weeds, and shelled peas when they were yet little kids. Actually she still shells peas (beans). I remember eating Granny’s supper of backbone and beans – and liking it – when I first joined the family. And then there’s the big breakfasts of fried tenderloin, milk gravy and the red-eye gravy made with fat and coffee, homemade biscuits, and scrambled eggs. Oh, heaven.

I do have a videotape of Granny and her daughter (my mother-in-law) sitting at an old wood table, reminiscing. During our Christmas visit to Tennessee I wrote down some of my mother-in-law’s famous recipes and her comments about them. I’m supposed to be reflecting on how to write her stories of early life in the Tennessee countryside mixed with her classic Southern recipes. Thank, you Earl, for setting some kindling under me.

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Mardi Gras, and digital vs print photo memories

Posted on February 20, 2012 by moonbridgebooks

Mmm, Mardi Gras is… delicious! I can’t help but post about this today since Fat Tuesday is a couple days away and we’ve already dined on red beans and rice and king cake. St. Louis, where we live now, is actually thought to have the second biggest Mardi Gras celebration in the U.S., but my history with New Orleans goes way back to when I was just married, lived in Florida and watched Justin Wilson cooking his Cajun magic on TV – “I gar-on-tee” dis will be delicious wit a little wine, lak so (sip, sip). Using a basic Southern Living cookbook, I made seafood gumbo for some new friends from New Orleans and it turned out fabulous. We were hooked on Cajun. Never been to the big Mardi Gras, only the Jazz Festival, but loved our jump-up-and-go trips to the Big Easy, b.k. (before kids), where we ate our way through town.

We have taken the kids to the St. Louis Mardi Gras parade a couple times, to the Krewe of Barkus pet parade and the wiener dog races once. We went to the tail end of the parade route, right by Anheuser Busch (now In-Bev) where the crowd was much smaller and the debauchery almost nonexistent (a bit of drunken swearing). Best part about having little kids at the end of the line is the colorful folks on the floats throw all the leftover beads to them – the girls were happily covered with cheap sparkling necklaces! The photos remind me of all my favorite New Orleans memories.

Linda O. commented on my last post (on important photos) that “the best pictures can evoke an essay.” While a memoir is a big story of a certain timeframe, lifewriting is much easier to do – write your short stories and include a photo that goes along with it. Some like to do this in a scrapbook, which means there is only one copy unless you do it the new digital (online) way to share, but I’d suggest collecting the stories and photos and putting them into a booklet that any copy shop can whip up for you. If you want to get serious, upload to LuLu.com for a real paperback or hardcover version. They may only be in black & white, but I gar-on-tee you will be delighted!

Whatever you do, don’t leave the stories stuck in your head or the photos forgotten in your computer. I love digital cameras, but I think too often the pictures get loaded onto the computer and nobody looks at them again. I have a number of photo albums, the later ones including scrapbook-style entries of 4×6 collage or cutouts, because I’m not ready to start a big scrapbooking hobby – yet. I love looking through these albums of fond memories. The girls have enjoyed looking through them with their friends and especially love seeing their baby and toddler pictures. In the albums, I write comments and dates. No, none of us scrolls through the digital files on my laptop or looks at the CDs I’ve copied photos to. And while e-books may be the latest rage, they are not the ideal medium for collections of photos with stories, at least not yet. Think print.

At the New Orleans Jazz Festival '88

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The most important photos may not be what you think

Posted on February 13, 2012 by moonbridgebooks

Karen Fisher-Alaniz, whom I interviewed here about her memoir, Breaking the Code, had a shock recently. The diner where she and her father sat and talked each Wednesday is going to close. This was where Karen worked on getting her father to talk about his WWII past, where she worked on bonding with her dad. Memories. Memories that made it into her book. Fortunately, she has photos.

I figured out that some of the most important photos are not the family portraits where everyone pastes on a smile, not the school pictures, maybe not even the staged wedding photos (especially not these days where divorce is common). The most meaningful photos are the ones that show personalities and what is important to our lives, the pictures of our everyday lives.

What is it your family members like to do, what are they known for? I have photos of my dad working a puzzle, my mom trimming a bonsai, my mom-in-law cooking—and my dad-in-law happily holding a plate full of her comfort food. I love the pictures of one daughter asleep cuddling a cat and another fluffing the floppy ears of her dog. I love the photo of my dad-in-law working on his tractor. And there’s the pic of my mom in her beloved 15-year-old car with only 30,000 miles on it, taken just before it was sold to retire in the country. My daughter with her beloved yellow Mustang before it was totaled on Lake Shore Drive, Chicago. Don’t forget to take pictures of the front of houses you’ve lived in.

I met fine arts photographer David Coblitz at my booksigning this past Saturday and had a good time looking through his art loaded on his iPad. He doesn’t advertise he takes portraits for bios, but he should because somehow he captures personality. It’s hard, he says, because people feel awkward at photo shoots and he has to get them comfortable and into character. Most of us bawk and feel self-conscious when anyone points a camera our way.

Most portraits won’t capture personality, and we’re better off catching our beloveds right in the middle of doing what they love. Let the picture tell a story.

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