My grandson is now four years old. I’ve been taking care of him since about two days after his birth. At his first birthday, I began splitting time with his other grandmother.

Anyway, I decided a couple of weeks ago that he might like to have a water gun fight with me. I bought the smallest guns I could find, filled them up, and gave him one. He didn’t seem to quite “get it,” so I squirted him. He ran off giggling, but his hands are still too small to retaliate effectively.

So some time later in the day I was busy doing something at the dining table. He came into the room, held the loaded gun about two inches from my chest and using both hands, he squirted me. When I yelled, “Oh! You got me!” He lit up.

Isn’t it amazing how terrific it is to see such pleasure on a small face?

A farm boy turned soldier, a nightclub singer turned WAC, they survived the Great Depression and World War II but will they survive the peace? It’s available at Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gravy-faith-colburn/1140249302

At Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Gravy-Depression-Families-Faith-Colburn-ebook/dp/B09QT3DQ7Z

At Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1127116

At Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gravy-3

And most other places where you can buy books. You can also see it on

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59149851-gravy

Struggling to act normal, whatever normal means, Connor William Conroy, just back from combat in the Southwest Pacific with shell shock, meets a girl. But he doesn’t remember how to behave—and then there are the flashbacks. Meanwhile, nightclub singer Bobbi Bowen joined the Women’s Army Corps because the nightclubs were cutting back on live entertainment and her band members were getting drafted. Now she’s building and repairing radios for B-24 Liberator bombers and singing in a nightclub when she’s off duty. And then, she meets Connor.

As a WAC, Bobbi understands Connor better than most, but he’s been through frightening experiences that may affect him for the rest of his life. He’s seen and done things she can’t even imagine. But then, Bobbi has had her own frightening experiences in nightclubs where she’s worked. Accustomed to not only noise, city lights, and glamour, she also knows poverty and despair. That’s what drove her into the nightclubs in the first place. Bobbi always thought farmers were dumb, but Connor’s given her a whole new way of thinking about them. AND his father drives a Chrysler New Yorker, so the family must be prosperous. If Bobbi knows one thing for sure, it is that she doesn’t ever want to be hungry again.

Besides, Connor’s tall, dark, and handsome. She thinks he’s The One. Does she dare give her heart to this dangerous man?

1. When I was a kid, we called it material.
2. It was the stuff from which we made our clothing.
3. Back in the ‘50s (and before), the companies that made feed and flour packaged them in cloth (material) sacks.
4. When we were little kids and didn’t require very much cloth to make a romper, my mom made our sun suits out of those flour sacks.
5. We wore those little rompers all summer while we poked around in the mud under the bridge capturing tadpoles; when we climbed trees peering in bird’s nests; when we turned over the empty tank and rescued a nest of baby mice.
6. I learned to sew with those free pieces of material.

I have decided to enter a blog hop hosted by Girlie on the Edge blog. The rules are you write six sentences, no more no less, using the week’s prompt word. This week it’s Matter.

1. I read about entangled particles in quantum physics—about how particles switch from matter to energy and back and how, if they’re entangled, they change simultaneously, even on opposite sides of the universe.

Now, I want to know how those particles/packets of energy keep in touch so they can change at the same time.

3. I’ve also read about matter awareness—studies that show how rats fed brains from other rats taught a maze already know how to get the treat.

4. Suppose, then, that a rabbit dies somewhere on the high plains and particles of its decomposed brain wash down into the Snake River and over the falls where they get caught in an eddy and picked up by the roots of a cedar tree.

5. Suppose further that a storm gallops across the grasslands with its sound and fury unleashing lightning that strikes the cedar, which, being full of resin and all, explodes into flames.

6. Does the fire have any recollection of having been a waterfall?

I’ve been out of town for the Nebraska Book Festival in Lincoln and tomorrow I leave for the Nebraska State Fair, so I’m spending my time trying to catch up all the caning and freezing I need to do to preserve my garden produce. I now have 60 pints of tomatoes and the pasta tomatoes are just beginning to ripen. I have six gallons of green beans frozen and all the lovely pumpkins I expected to use for jack-o-lanterns will have to be processed and used because the bugs got to them before they even got ripe. I’m hoping the homeless shelter can use them because I’ve already canned all the pumpkin and squash my son and daughter-in-law and I can use. Any more green beans will probably go to the shelter too.

Grandma’s Hill

My family lived on a farm at the foot of Grandma’s hill. My sister and I used to ride our bikes to Grandma’s. These were ordinary girl’s bikes with back-pedal brakes and no gears. We rode down our north lane to the gravel and looked a half-mile west, all of it hill—steep hill. Undaunted, we would start pedaling. Within a few yards, we stood on the pedals, pumping as hard as our legs would pump. I don’t remember ever riding all the way to the top.

But, oh what rides we had going home!

A Man or a Mouse

Years later, my oldest son was a little boy when he stood at the top of that hill with his bike. Grandma saw him before he hopped on, but not soon enough to stop him. He wiped out about halfway down. When she got to him, she asked what he was thinking.

“Well,” he said, “I thought ‘am I a man or am I a mouse.’ I guess I’m a mouse,” he said, lip quivering.

And yet, like Grandma said, he did it even when he was scared.

Sandwiches

My sister and I used to ride our bikes to Grandma Hazel’s house almost every day. When we got there, we were always hungry. (That was a really big hill.) We went immediately to the ‘fridge and built sandwiches—two slices of white bread, a slice of bologna, a slice of American cheese, some lettuce, a slice of tomato, and a few cucumber slices, mortared together with Miracle Whip sandwich spread. We tried a few other ingredients such as carrot slices and a bit of zucchini, but the carrots fell out and the zucchini didn’t add any flavor to our concoctions.

Sandburs

Grandma’s place, like ours, was a farmstead and a lot of sandburs grew there—the kind with the hard seed set off by a stiff spear, like a unicorn’s horn. Sis and I called them puncture vine because we often found them in our feet. We found them in our flat bike tires, too. We’d pull out the sandburs, but we had to walk our bikes home down that wonderful hill that gave us such thrilling rides when our tires were round.

My Aunt Nina, who lived with Grandma, declared war on those sandburs. In about two years, she’d pulled and burned every sandbur on the place and we never got a flat tire at Grandma’s house. I wish we could have persuaded her to repeat the performance at our house.