The quilt has been hanging on the rack for at least five years, but the other night I wanted to look at it. There's a pattern I remember from Aunt Betty Lou's funeral. My dress was yellow and black. Aunt Orneda told mom it was too bright for a funeral. I was in third grade.



There's fabric from Mom's dresses and flannel from our pajamas.



Mom would work on the squares and when she ran out of pieces for the square, she would finish it with a similar color. When they were all stitched together, she'd have Dad bring in the "work horses" and stretch the quilt out and "quilt" it. I remember the rolls of batting, so soft and hours and hours of stitching. There are probably 10,000 or more tiny stitches. Our living room was filled with the quilt for several weeks. When it was done, us kids always wanted it - new and soft. Sometimes we'd have up to three quilts on our beds.

On October 17, 2011, at OzarksFirst.com it's written: "The Bolivar School District has now lost eight students in 17 months." That was after the death of three high school girls. Earlier in the year two other students died from cancer and another collapsed while out walking with a friend.

Again, last night, Bolivar lost another teen. This now makes nine in the past two years. Though I didn't know him, this one was a bit closer to home as one of my step-sons was close to his former girlfriend. My step-son wanted to go to the hospital to be of comfort to his friend and when we pulled into the parking lot, I was amazed at the number of teens and their parents outside the Emergency Room.

I first read about the accident on Facebook and at that time, no one knew who was involved or even how many were in the accident. The post said there were two people involved and a search was on for the second victim. I immediately called our two sons to hear their voices and make sure they were all right. It turned out that the Facebook post was wrong and only one person was involved.

I've never been personally affected by a teen's death, but last night, watching the teens cry for their friend and with their friends, I began to appreciate grief counseling at the schools for these kids.

Nine teens seems to be an awfully lot of kids to lose in two years for this very small town.

Lord, help me realize that quality time with my family is so much more important than how their rooms or my house looks.

The Green Thing

Checking out at the supermarket recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. I apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days“.

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations“.

She was right about one thing–our generation didn’t have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then? After some reflection and soul-searching on “Our” day, here’s what I remembered we did have….

Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 240 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Wales. In the kitchen, we blended & stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

We drank from a water fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

It's sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then.