Just Me - AmeliaJake, Kendallville, N. Riley House, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Sarah Shimp Grismore – October 8, 2015

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

Just Me - AmeliaJake, Kendallville, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

From old nooks and crannies to different ones

Because The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse is – now, don’t tell anyone on a conscious level – more of a state of mind than an actually stated place, moving should not be that difficult. But, my, a state of mind can get cluttered. Things are all over. Foo of The Foo Bar is having a dreadful time not tripping over boxes I’ve stashed behind her bar.

Of course, if she looked, she might find treasure – I think that’s one of Sarah Grismore’s homemade ice cream recipes in the box below:
recipe tin

And, then, she might even be able to get a little classy with some of books from Sarah’s extensive library:
mother books

Just Me - AmeliaJake, Kendallville, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Well, this was a fine How do you do

As I noted a couple of posts below, out of sentimentality, and a possible craving for traditional Bayou Billy Cherry Wine, I went to The Apple Festival in Kendallville. My grandson and I and his mother had first gone on a cold and rainy day when he was six, and now all these years later, he had it in his head to get me over there to see the sheep shearing.

I video-ed it on my phone, came home and uploaded it to YouTube and then discovered my granddaughter had logged into YouTube on MY computer and had left herself logged in. All of my uploads wound up in her stash. I know my mouth was in a grim little pucker when I copied all the embedding code to insert into my post; I just let the videos post attached to her email. Because I was PISSED.

Yesterday, she comes to me and says she’s getting emails about sheep shearing and I explained why and if she didn’t like it she could transfer them. Well, she did, but ACK! she did not re-embed them in the post. I have four blank spots down there. That is just soooo cool.

So, of course, it is up to me to fix it, while wearing my scrunchy face of irritation, which is slightly better than the Evil Look of Death.

Just Me - AmeliaJake, N. Riley House, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Just like that – a big, stabbing reminder

I have been packing things up and prioritizing where I put them; translated, that means, I am trying to minimize the amount of digging I will need to do when it suddenly occurs to me that I must have my paws on something.

This morning I came upon a Red Hots box that had been a gift:

redhot box

I like to stash things in these types of boxes – metal tins and wooden cigar boxes and whatever – and I wondered what was in this one. It didn’t rattle, but it had weight. And I opened it:

busy bones

A package of Busy Bones for Shane; he could smell them through the wrapping so I put one pack in a tin box. And there it has stayed. And then I cried.

Shane’s sudden death – it has latched onto so many other deep feelings. I have no real idea why, but there it is. Maybe Shane gathered the spirits of loved ones in his heart.

It is less than a week until the year’s marking of his passing. I am not the only one mentioning it. Maybe we need to have an old-fashioned wake.

Just Me - AmeliaJake, Kendallville, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Kendallville Apple Festival

I wasn’t going to go; it was chilly and rainy and I had been many times before. The eats and drinks were expensive. Sixteen years ago I went with Cameron and his mother and he was a lot shorter than I; we ate apple burgers in very chilly weather and I remember my leather-soled shoes sucked the cold right into my feet.

Cameron wanted to go, but I gave excuses . . . and then I decided to take one for the team and go for “old time’s sake” for “the family” aspect of it. We walked over and his sister joined us later. We got a Bayou Billy mug and shared lots of refills for a dollar a piece.

And we watched, because Cameron really wanted to do so, the hourly sheep shearing. You know,  it was interesting and the man who sheared was retired for five years, but had been shearing for 57 years. Once he had sheared the stomach, he was able to take the rest of the coat off as one piece. The sheep just sat there, completely docile. He said not all were like that. And when Cameron steered his sister to watch another shearing, we saw a sheep with an attitude. I filmed part of the shearing and I think I accidentally filmed the inside of my pocket as well.

We listened to some musicians in the Swine Barn, which they have a fancier name for when the festival is on and then listened to a really good quartet, which included a man and his daughter. The father had performed professionally on cruise ships and elsewhere and the daughter graduated from a Boston college that specialized in musical training – like you have to be very good to even get in. You know music is being performed well when even a tone deaf person truly appreciates it.

Actually, if I were able to carry a tune, I would probably be jealous of the singers for being so good; however, when you’re as clueless as I am (bad), you just embrace it and appreciate someone who can actually do this thing they call singing.

Then we ate a pretzel with cheddar cheese, but I think they were running low on the cheddar because there was a distinct jalapeno twang to the dip. I guess sitting on hay  bales – or is it straw? – and having your tongue tingle will become one of our memories.

But guess what? Yes, they had no apple burgers!!!!!! How could that be?

Just Me - AmeliaJake, N. Riley House, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse, This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Ah, the hole got me

Well, I didn’t fall through the hole in the kitchen floor; it really was way too little. I didn’t trip in it because it was pretty close to the wall and I put a tile over it. But I will tell you: Freeing up that hole from the relatively heavy exhaust mechanism of the Jenn-Aire and then being stuck up in the joists where the pipes were joined together for venting was, okay, repetitive pun coming – exhausting. That last part was while leaning off a ladder while bracing against a wall. Not bad for 67, but you know it left me with a few sore muscles.

Even my little fingers were inflamed from working with gunky screws and bolts that didn’t exactly want to turn easily or were not in a very accessible position. Oh, excuses, excuses. Actually,  I haven’t been at the computer because I have been guarding the oven, which looks so beautiful – much more impressive than in this picture.

oven

Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

That hole in the floor

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When the scheduler called yesterday to say the delivery guys would be here this morning, I mentioned that the old stove was vented through the floor. “Oh, that won’t be a problem; I’m sure they can handle it,” she said. I didn’t believe she was right. Those fellows bring things in and take things out; there is another group that does things more complicated than putting a plug in the wall. I figured I had better take preemptive measures.

Understanding the idea of looking from one floor to another through a gaping hole, uou might not think it but when I finally saw it, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had been working for close to three hours to free the big, strong, black steel exhaust pipe from the kitchen range to the conventional round vent pipe on the other side of the floor.

That baby would have come out without a bit of trouble had I: 1( been the person who installed it and 2) if it hadn’t been covered with grime so that you couldn’t see the little-headed but very strong screws that held it firmly INTO THE OLD THICK WOODEN FLOOR. Then there was the screw on the other side of the floor that secured the exhaust pipe to the vent pipe, and it was covered with that kind of silver tape that sort of melts into the surface when it gets hot. Scraping that gunk off was a lot of fun, really . . . over my head, at an angle to the ladder, up by a joist and amid cobwebs.

I am salvaging the old range because I think it has possibilities and in a few hours two men are going to come and but a black, shiny LG range in it’s place. I DO NOT WANT ANYONE TO TOUCH THIS APPLIANCE.

LET THEM ALL EAT COLD CUT SANDWICHES!!!!!

Just Me - AmeliaJake, Kendallville, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

I’m smarter in the morning

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I get up after getting quite a bit of sleep and I believe I’m smarter for a while. For instance, why should I be all upset about snarfle-faced, overly- whitened teeth JOE BIDEN even being considered as a presidential candidate? Centuries make up history – millennia. And more than that, even. I mean, whoa, that big crater in the Caribbean, deserts that were oceans, mountains that were seafloors and little one-celled life forms that must have been in awe when a two-celled Einstein appeared.

So, in the great bit expanse of everything, and in the little, tiny bit of time that I have here with my books and my French Silk Pie and my fascination with puzzles, is it really worth having a raging snit fit about JOE BIDEN? I really don’t suppose it is; however, it is, to an extent, quite enjoyable to become all worked up with arms waving around and foot-stomping and loud, concisely spit-out words that can’t come close to encompassing the buffoonery of the man (JOE BIDEN, in case you’ve forgotten).

When I’m gone and he’s gone, there will probably be a tombstone on his grave that has plagiarized quotes, along with an extended section that does quote him: “Now, we know that my I.Q. is higher than yours.” And what is it going to matter? Although, I do wonder if they will etch a picture of him with an inlay of brilliantly white marble teeth.

Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Reading Kindle book reviews

Whoa, someone out-AmeliaJaked AmeliaJake*. I don’t usually write book reviews because reading is such an individual activity, and because I wrote enough of them in school. Occasionally, I will feel obligated to comment that a book is really bad, unless you want to read for the purpose of finding a way to transfer an emotional need to barf into an actual one.

However, I just finished reading a review of a book that most readers agreed was a “good story” but also agreed with one long-winded and nit-picking reviewer about the exact use of words regarding it being women’s historical fiction about someplace in the South. Yes, the capitalized South. Heavens to Betsy, that one Southern Belle took the author to task for every little nuance, citing the fact that she had lived in that area and, by God, it wasn’t exactly the way she had understood the language of the area and era.

It was a STORY set in an historical time. From what I could tell, the gist of the background was correct, it was just these little miscues that were a sin against people’s eyeballs, not to mention minds. It was not a historical scholarly paper. Most of the people who thanked the lady for dissecting the writing, mentioned that they were also from that exact area. Yeah, they said, he was a good story but, uh, you can’t make a verb a noun in that part of the country.

There are a lot of little piranhas out there in reviewerland and to mix a metaphor, some of them deliver their bites with the annoying, repetitive knocking of a woodpecker at two o’clock in the morning.

* AJ can be scathing, as those who witnessed her “dud” analysis a few years back. Gee, reminding myself of that day, I feel as if I am back in the car, spouting off, “Dud! What a dud. A real dud. A dud. Dud!!!!” And that was before we had even cleared the parking lot.

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