Christmas program was success
I opened the cupboard door to get a cereal bowl. Then I step backward to pluck one from the dish drainer instead. I turn back around and run smack into the cupboard door. Hello, I didn’t know there were stars that color!
The Brightwater Christmas program was such a success. We all know that Audrey Pedersen is regaining her strength and health after a bout with tick fever. With the choir and her husband, Don, on the piano, and the Rev. Timmons, it all came together like Jell-O.
Members of the choir included: Dosia Bryant, Charlotte and Lloyd Jones, Dorothy Lynch, Joni Mellor, Roger Pedersen, Sarah Meyers, Lisa Summey, Betty Weston, Lilly Weston and lee Ann Yates. Chimes players were: Dosia Bryant, Charlene Chamberlin, Sarah Meyers and Jan Vitali.
A lady called and suggested that I leave the fruit cake out at room temperature to cure, especially if it had any liquor in it, which it didn’t. Thank goodness I hadn’t thrown it out yet. It did improve!
That story about hazel nutting when I was a kid is a simple story of robbing a mouse den of its winter storage. On the rafters in the wash house were four metal poles about three feet long and the circumference of a lead pencil. I have no idea what piece of machinery they were from. When they were put in the car we were off for Lottie Ogle’s pasture.
Now in the Ozarks we know that if you don’t keep your pasture brush hogged or cleaned up, it will grow up in cedar trees and black berry bushes. In Iowa, an unkempt pasture grew up in buck brush and hazelnut brush.
We would each take a stake and spread out looking for a mound of dirt or raised sod that looked like a mole run. Then, poke the rod into the mound until you could feel and hear it rattle. Down on your knees with a pocket knife and lay back a layer of sod, exposing a neat little cache of can kernels, acorns and hazel nuts. Dad always wanted us to remove the hazel nuts carefully and replace the sod good enough that the mice could repair it or move it. Now that I think about it — here was the tough, hardened, old farmer caring enough about mice starving to death in the winter time and yet, up around the building he was one of the first to use the new product, D-Con. Go figure!
Don’t forget the Christmas Eve candlelight service at Brightwater at 5 p.m. on Dec. 24.
••• Editors note: Edyth Lammey has been a resident of the area for nearly 40 years. She can be contacted through The Times at 451-1196 or prtnews@nwaonline.com.