A Tale of a trip around the sun

I can't believe it's been a year since I started The Appalachian Tale. I look back over the year and I have made quite a bit of progress on it but at the same time not nearly as much as I thought I would. I always think I have more time to do something than I really do. I am going to push myself to spend more time on it though. The older I get, the more I remember what happened decades ago and forget more and more what happened weeks ago. I guess the silver lining there is, I will remember those things in a few years.So here we are, a full trip around the sun later, and what have I told you? What have I learned myself in this experience? Where does this all go? I will probably repeat myself over time, so just prepare yourself for that. I don't read as much as I would like, so there is a good chance I won't read back to see if I have already talked about something. There is lots more to tell about Mary and Charlie. They meant so much to me growing up. I need to revisit MaryAnne, my grandmaw Barton, my grandparents on dad's side, some more of the kids I spent my early days running with and get a few more recipes in. I will, of course, tell you more about my parents and my brothers. Maybe I will throw in a few stories that others have told me too.My second entry was for #NationalSiblingsDay and here we are again. I pulled back from social media personally a while back. Mostly because I wanted to focus more on The Appalachian Tale and I work on social media for work, so I have enough of it to fill my time. I don't get to speak to my brothers as often and I was a little more up to date on what they were doing before, but that's ok. We know the other is there if we need anything. All we have to do is holler.

Here we all are, sitting on the couch in grandma Barton's living room. This was the room that we rarely got to go into. In later years it held all of the items that we ever gave her or made for her. That couch was the scratchiest thing there ever was. I never did like touching it, much less sitting on it. Left to right: Ricky, me, Bobby, & Pat. Pat's grandson looks exactly like him today.

Mom once told me that my oldest brother used to spend a lot of time keeping me quite. He realized that if I had a pacifier in my mouth, I didn't scream. So, he made it his mission to keep me from screaming. Apparently, I made it my mission to spit that thing out every chance I got. As you can tell, I have not shut up since. I think Rick gave up.Some of my oldest memories of growing up involved my brothers tormenting me. Every now and then they would bring in reinforcements to help. There was the time that they put all of the cushions from the couch in the middle of the living room floor. Then they grabbed me and began to throw me against the ceiling, just to watch me hit the floor. I am comforted in my memories that they took the time to pad the floor. I don't think they did as much for Bobby. And there was the time that one of my brothers came up with the hairbrained idea to see how long one of us could survive in the fold-out couch, folded up. Now I don't mind a tight space, but that was too much. But again, I think Bobby got it worse than I did.

This was in our den. We grew up in a 3 bedroom house. For the longest time us 4 boys had the master bedroom with 2 sets of bunkbeds. My parents took one of the other rooms, and the 3rd was our den. It helped keep the mess down. That was our play room for several years. At some point we needed more room to spread out and my parents ended up in the master finally. Left to right: Ricky, Bobby, me, mom, & Pat.

My mom must certainly have a special set of wings and the brightest halo in heaven today. All the things we put her through, and she still came back for more. She didn't go to work outside the house until I was in kindergarten. When she did, I think she always counted us to see if we were all still there when she got home. Sometimes we grew, but she didn't mind a neighborhood hooligan being added to the bunch. What she did mind was finding a new hole in a door or a piece of furniture broken. She had some "nice things" that she put up for when she really needed them or was afraid that they would get destroyed by us. We were the reason we could not have nice things. Today I have some of those nice things, so I guess it worked.

This is on the back porch steps at grandma and granddaddy Edge's house. I know I am pretty young here, but I seem to remember them having a dog that was out in that back yard. Several years later they would get a small dog they kept inside. I have no idea why Ricky is raising his hand. It looks like Bobby that has to go pee. Left to right: Ricky, Bobby, Pat, me, and mom.