I’ve been writing about the Apple Festival, but even though it has been around for three decades, this is really the time of the year when Corn School is held in LaGrange County. My mother was born on this day in 1926 and it was during Corn School. Her sister was 18 years older and came home to find her new sibling swaddled up and sleeping on the old Morris chair. I assume they had it pushed up against something so no one would/could sit on her. It was that sister, Lucile Boehmer, whom I would always call “Auntie” who gave Mother the nickname Toots.

Six years ago today, yes on her birthday, she had a CAT scan that revealed what she had been hiding for approximately a year – she was full of cancer. She died nine days later. She died here in this house on a sofa out on the old North Porch; Daddy died in this house in February, 2000 up in the big, big room over the garage with all the windows. And while we’re on this line of memory, Shane died suddenly almost a year ago on the same North Porch.

Mother would have been 89 today. I don’t think she would have been that happy about it – she wasn’t one who could grow old easily. Already by the time she died at age 83, she was worried that she would have a stroke and not be able to take care of herself, let alone use a hammer for some project or keep a real fire going in the cast iron stove in the kitchen.

And Corn School? This is its 110th year. Gee, it would have been around for about two decades when Mother was born. Kind of ironic – I wonder what the Apple Festival will be like in 80 years or so.

Old pictures of Corn School HERE