Tag Archives: Childhood

Bridgette’s Mustang

23 Apr

My Take

DiVoran Lites

 

 

Horse trader come down the draw
In a boil of red-powder dust.
I saw he had a stallion,
And own one that I must.

 

 

“You keep an eye on him.” the trader says.
“He’s mustang through and through,
A wild one from the range.
I’ve got a deal for you.

“You have fine boys and pups,” he said.
The trader wasn’t done.
You need to jaw around these parts.
It’s all that makes life fun.

“My little `un,” says I, “he’s four.”
Two boys are twins you see.
They won’t stay clean at all, at all
They are too much for me.

Them pups ain’t dogs, I say
They’re wolf cubs, as you see,
They’re cute right now, I calculate
But later might not be.

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A Peck of Dirt

17 Oct

My Take

DiVoran Lites

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Small child
Kneeling in the dirt,
Making mud pies
To crunch and grind
Between your teeth,
And swallow.

 

Draw a hopscotch pattern in the dirt.
With a stick from off the playground.
Throw ancient, broken glass
Onto a hopscotch square,
Pick-up broken glass
Balanced on one leg.

 

Eighth grade softball
With the other kids.
On a dirt diamond.
Never miss a ball.
Sit on it if you must.
Everybody bathe on Saturday.

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Nothin’ to Do

25 Jul

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Joanie and DiVoran

My friend Patricia and I grew up together from the time she was in first grade, and I moved to her town when I was in second. Patricia was the only child in first grade that year. We had a five grade schoolroom and we sat in rows according to grade. The teacher knew Patricia could handle skipping, so she transferred her to the second-grade row. My friend was so small that on the way home from school two of us would hold her down to keep her from blowing away in a strong wind.

When Patricia and I got a bit older we walked down the dirt road to the Grape creek bridge on the outskirts of town talking and playing word games. Our favorite was to top each other with bigger words that all meant the same thing. Big, huge, gigantic, etc. We loved to stand on the bridge and eat salted peanuts in the shell and say a word each time we threw a shell into the creek. They floated away like tiny boats bearing messages. On our walks, any time we said the same word at the same time we linked pinky fingers and said, “Jinx, you owe me a coke.” Then we’d go to the hotel and get chocolate cokes and sit at the soda bar and drink them and talk to the hotel owner.

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In the one solid block of businesses we called Main Street we went in to say hello to Mr. Cope at his pharmacy. He’d hire one of us and then the other to look after the little girls when he took his wife to my parent’s restaurant for a meal out. He also gave us comic books with the covers torn off. The company he got them from refunded his money on the unsold ones. I remember getting a whole stack and thinking I was the richest kid in town.

As we wandered, we sometimes came to the Catholic Church into which Patricia was born and raised. One time she showed me how to “do” the Stations of the Cross. You kneeled at each Biblical picture to pray. I liked that a lot. I attended the Community Church across the street and started teaching Sunday School there at the age of 12.

We’d go to Patricia’s cousin, Louise’s house to play Her backyard had an old barn where we put on our own dramas. Louise had plenty of siblings to act in all the scenes. It’s amazing how much fun we had when there was nothin’ to do.

 

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Memories

23 Jun

On the Porch

Onisha Ellis

I'm a winner

I remember Summer vacations and the trips we made from Florida to North Carolina to visit with my parent’s families.  Getting together with my cousins was always fun but the visits where my parents sat and talked with their elderly relatives were torture. They would sit in rocking chairs and rock, talk, rock, talk, asking if this relative or that one was still living. Had it not been for my love of books I would have disgraced myself and pitched a fit to relieve my boredom.

Years later as I reflect on my childhood boredom I have a better understanding of it. As a child my memories were written on a virtually blank space, consisting for the most part of things my brothers did to aggravate me.There was very little to stimulate pleasant memories, because only a few had been written. Now, in my senior years, my mind bounces like the steel ball in a Pinball machine. A scent, a song or even picking up a frying pan used by my mother all set my memory bells dinging. My present and past mingle in pleasant harmony and sometimes my mind is so refreshed that the sharp pain of an aching knee comes as a shock.

My body betrays.

Disconnected from my soul.

Childish dreams remain.

Back in the “day” I had a tape by Beth Nielson Chapman. Her writing is poignant, expressing deep feeling.  I love the song Emily which talks of lasting friendship and Like a Child Again, which portrays the inner being of a person with Alzheimer’s. I decided to share Years with this post as it seemed most appropriate. I hope you enjoy it and check out her other songs.

Am I only one who is surprised when their body is not in sync with their mind?

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The Shock of My Life

3 Sep

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

Bill

When I was about 6 years old, my sister, Judy, and I went to spend the summer with our grandparents on their farm on the south side of San Antonio, TX. Grandpa and Granny had a cow, some chickens, several peacocks, a goat and a large Victory Garden where they raised a lot of the vegetables they ate. We had a free run of the place, all day every day, once we had finished our assigned daily chores. What a grand time we had. One of the things I remember about our stay was, every morning my Grandpa would milk the cow, bringing in the pail of milk for Granny to strain, through cheese cloth, before putting it away in the refrigerator for the day. My sister and I had our own small drinking glasses, and would stand at the counter waiting for our morning glass of warm milk, right out of the cow. I’m not so sure I would consider that a “treat” nowadays, as we did then. I never did learn how to milk that cow. It seemed like a lot of work to me.

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One of our chores was to gather the eggs every morning. There would be a dozen or so eggs to find and some of the chickens didn’t want to get off the nest. When they pecked at me, it hurt, and I would sometimes throw an egg at them. Of course, when Granny found out about that, there was the green willow switch that found the back of my legs. That went for chasing the Peacocks around the yard too. But, they were better flyers and usually made it high into one of the trees before I could get even close to them.

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You might find this hard to believe, but the neighbor down the road from Granny’s house had a couple of very old Giant Century Plants in their front yard, and we smaller kids liked to climb up the pedals and slide down them. They had thorns down the edges of the pedals, but they had been worn down over the years and were dull, so with practiced skill, we could slide down them without getting scratched. I have never seen a Century Plant that big since; not even in pictures on the Internet, if in fact that is what they really were.

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But, the thing that gave me “The Shock of My Life” was of all things, an old metal bed frame and springs. Yep, an old metal bed frame! A couple of the older boys had scrounged up a car battery, along with an old Ford Model “A” coil (and I don’t know what all else), and had somehow wired it all up to that metal bed frame. Then with the operator holding onto one of the wires, we would all line up, holding hands, and he would grab hold of the bed frame. We all jumped and the girls screamed, as the electricity went thru us. But why was the last boy in the line jumping around so, I wondered? That is, until it was my turn to be at the end of the line. When that jolt got to me, let me tell you, it was electrifying!

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I guess you could say I got my Electric Shock Treatments early in life. DiVoran says, “Maybe those electric shocks had a calming effect on you, and that’s why you are so laid back.” Maybe she has something there. Who knows? I’ll never tell.

 

—–The End—–

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BLOG TOUR – LITTLE NANI REVISITED

30 May

Banner

 

I am so pleased today to welcome author Cinta Garcia de la Rosa to Old Things R New-Onisha

Thank you for visiting this wonderful blog today so you can know a bit more about Little Nani, her stories, her world, and her author. OK, her author is not as interesting as Little Nani, but what can we do? They go hand in hand, so please bear with her.

Why are we here today? Because Little Nani is suffering a series of changes. “The Funny Adventures of Little Nani” was published for the first time last September 2012, both in print and in ebook form, on Amazon and Createspace. However, along the months, I started feeling less enthusiastic about my book, thinking that the cover was dull and boring, and also thinking that the stories could be improved, maybe going through some extra editing and proofing. So that’s what I did, and now I am much happier about the result and I trust that I will start getting many more sales. Why? Because I will make the books available not only on Amazon and Createspace, but also on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and Feed-A-Read.

There will be also many different options to buy the books. Do you want to buy the whole set of stories? You can do it. Do you want to buy just some stories, the ones you think you would like? You can do it too, since I will publish the stories individually on Smashwords. So you see, different options to match different customers, different readers.

Once all this is settled and the books are republished on all those retailers, I will start to do the same process with the second book in the Little Nani series, which will be available next Fall.

Follow the whole blog tour since I will be announcing all the news in the different blogs!

NewCoverAmazon

BLURB

Little Nani is a little girl who likes helping people. However, when she helps people the results can be a bit unexpected. Why is that? Little Nani is a witch! Or at least she wants to be a witch. With her magic wand, she will try to cast different spells to help her friends, but she won’t be successful all the time.

Follow Little Nani in her funny adventures and meet her extraordinary friends. Funny ostriches, horses that love reading, super-fast turtles, grumpy zombies… Little Nani has lots of friends! You can also draw your own characters!

Little Nani is willing to become a good witch. Will she manage to do it? Who knows? Read the stories and discover what happens next!

AUTHOR BIO.

CintaAuthor

Cinta Garcia de la Rosa is a Spanish writer who has loved the written word since he discovered she was able to read books at age 5. Since then, she has become a bookworm and reads around 100 books every year. She also writes, every day, compulsively, even in the middle of the night. You cannot control when inspiration hits you, can you? She writes in English because she is convinced that in a previous life she was British, so writing in English feels more natural to her than writing in her native language. Yes, she is crazy like that. Cinta Garcia is the author of “The Funny Adventures of Little Nani”, a collection of short stories for children, and “A Foreigner in London”, a short story published on Smashwords. She is a member of Independent Authors International (iAi).

I love your book has drawing sections. Do you have any plans for children to be able to submit their drawings to a website devoted to Little Nani interactions?

 

Thank you! I really thought that including drawing sections in the book would be fun for the children and, definitely, it would also turn the book into an interactive entertainment. So I included them.

I have had thoughts of doing just that: creating a space for children to submit their own drawings and create a kind of “fan board” where I can pin all the pictures. But first I need a proper website for my stories. I am planning on creating a Little Nani website, fully devoted to the stories and to the children. On that website, I will include a section for the submission of the illustrations drawn by my little readers. Even for the big readers too! I know of a couple of my readers who are not so little and would like to draw some Little Nani pictures (yes, you all know who you are).

I am really looking forward to seeing pictures drawn by children who have read and enjoyed my silly Little Nani stories. I would display them very proudly on my website.

Thank you, Onisha, for hosting me on your blog!

GIVEAWAY!

Don’t forget to leave a comment, so you can enter the giveaway for the opportunity to win a signed copy of “The Funny Adventures of Little Nani”. If you leave comments in several blogs during the tour, you will get an entry for each comment. So don’t hesitate to comment!

LINKS TO THE BOOKS.

Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/3914481

Amazon (US): http://www.amazon.com/Funny-Adventures-Little-Nani-ebook/dp/B009YMBXJW/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_in

Amazon (UK): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Funny-Adventures-Little-Nani-ebook/dp/B009YMBXJW/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Austenite78

MEDIA LINKS:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CintaGarciaRosa

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cinta-Garc%C3%ADa-de-la-Rosa-Author/333755993341596

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6470058.Cinta_Garc_a_de_la_Rosa

Amazon Author: http://www.amazon.com/Cinta-Garc%C3%ADa-de-la-Rosa/e/B009LHYYSM

Smashwords Author: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Austenite78

Website: http://www.cintagarciadelarosa.com/

Blogs: http://cintascorner.wordpress.com/ // http://icantstopreadingblog.com/ //

http://authorsyouwanttoread.wordpress.com/

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/CintaGarciaRosa/

Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/cintascorner

About.me: http://about.me/cintagarcia

Authorsdb: http://authorsdb.com/authors-directory/1034-cinta-garcia-de-la-rosa

Askdavid.com: http://askdavid.com/reviews/book/children-book/3237

 

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Speak Up Saturday- I Learned Life Isn’t Fair

12 May

We  welcome author, Rebekah Lyn to Speak Out Saturday.  Rebekah has published her debut novel, Summer Storms and is almost ready to release Julianne, a novel set in coastal North Carolina.  Rebekah  has her own blog, Rebekah Lyn’s Kitchen but since she was busy editing and needed to rant we offered Speak Up Saturday as a quick vent.  A link to her blog is in the sidebar. So, Rebekah, rant away.

Driving around this weekend, I saw a bounce house in a backyard, presumably for a child’s birthday party.  It made me think about how things have changed since I was a kid. Growing up, we had birthday parties at Burger King or McDonald’s.  I remember wearing a paper crown and sitting in a booth with my friends.  Those were great parties.

As I continued driving in my nostalgic state, I noticed many of the houses had plastic play sets in place of the metal swing-sets I grew up with.  These play sets are fine I guess, but I feel bad for the kids who don’t have the chance to ride the glider, one kid on each side, pretending it was a horse.  I learned not to let my bare legs touch the slide after the first time I burned them on the metal that had been baking in the sun all day.

Sure some of the kids I grew up with had big wooden tree houses or forts, and I only had the rickety old metal swing set, but I had monkey bars, a slide, and swings.  I could climb up the support poles and make my way across the whole set without touching the ground.  I wasn’t scarred for life because some of my friends had nicer things than me.  I learned life isn’t fair, but it is what you make of it.  I’m glad I grew up in the time  I did; I had the chance to learn from my mistakes.

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The Last Free Childhood

12 Apr

Oh the freedom and joy of being a child in the 50’s.  We had our chores but then we were free. We rode our bikes without helmets, the wind flowing across our faces and through our hair. We rode with no hands and crashed. There were no government regulations to protect us. We learned that crashing hurts don’t do it.

We didn’t just play on our street, the neighborhood was our kingdom and we were free to roam from a pick up baseball game to hopscotch or just sit on a street corner and talk until dark.  My husband and his brothers would cross the railroad tracks in the morning and roam the woods until hunger drew them home. They swung from vines and built tree houses and forts. They even used machetes without  supervision. Did they get a cut or two?  Of course, but they learned to be careful.

Our parents didn’t worry. The neighbors kept an eye out and we each knew our mother’s bellowing yell and were smart enough to reply “COMING”, when she called. My parents didn’t worry about us being   kidnapped; we weren’t rich so why would anyone want us? My mother would say, ‘don’t worry, if anyone took you they would bring you back in an hour.” I was kind of offended. Surely they would keep me two.

My parents grew up on farms.  Even when they were small, everyday except Sunday was a workday. Neither went past the eighth grade. They were too valuable on the farm to waste time in school. When my siblings and I came along, we had a very different childhood.  We had a freedom I don’t think any generation has ever enjoyed or will enjoy in the future.

Growing up in Orlando, Lake Eola Park was where families spent Sunday afternoons. It was hard to get the three of us to sit still for very long.

 

 

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