Happy New Years!
Category Archives: Holidays
Once they celebrated New Years…differently
This is a repost from last year but it has some folks calling for a repeat.
New Year’s Eve at the Farm
Growing up on the farm, we had a few traditions—mostly imported, that we upheld. New Years was a family holiday. Kith ‘n kin visited on Thanksgiving and Christmas. New Years, however, was just Mom, Dad, me and later Grandma.
The farm was located in the middle of coal country in southern Illinois. The population was mostly Scots/Irish/English who brought mining skills learned in the coal mines of England and Wales. During the Union/Mine Owner wars of the early 20th century, many East Europeans were brought in as strike breakers. After the strikes were resolved, the East Europeans—Poles, Hungarians and various Russians, became good union members and added their traditions to those of their predecessors. However, their new traditions were mostly religious holidays than of New Years.
One tradition that became almost universal was the tradition of the gift of coal. The tradition came from Wales, northern England and Scotland. The tradition was that the home would have good luck if the first person to cross the threshold in the new year was a dark haired Englishman, Welshman, Scot, Irish (add other nationality here) wishing everyone within Happy New Year and bringing a gift of a bucket of coal to warm the hearth. My Dad fit that job description and since I was the next oldest (only) male in the house, I assisted with the tradition.
Come New Years Eve around 11PM, earlier in some locales, the men of the house would leave with a bucket of coal, their shotgun, and, for those who imbibed, a bottle or mason jar of holiday cheer. In town, they would usually head for the closest bar or other gathering place and wait for the mine whistle to blow the arrival of midnight.
At the farm, we had three close neighbors; John Davis, our neighbor just across the road from the farm, Sy Malone, a friend of Dad’s who had a small farm a quarter-mile to our west, and Ken Shoemaker who lived a couple of hundred yards to the east. All were coal miners or had been. Ken Shoemaker was also a bus driver for the High School. John Davis’ place was the most central of us and he had a heated barn for his heifers. That was our gathering place.
Ken and Sy usually arrived early bringing some ‘shine that Sy made in the woods in back of his house. John would join next. By the time Dad and I arrived, they were sitting around a kerosene heater and usually well lubricated. The men talked and drank. Dad sipped tea from a thermos he had brought. I listened. I heard quite a bit of gossip, bragging and stories while waiting in that barn.
Remembering those times, I’m amazed that with all the drinking that occurred, there was never a firearm accident. I think folks were more used to guns and how to handle them. Many were WW2 veterans such as Ken and Sy Malone. John Davis supplemented his mine income by trapping pelts and as an occasional commercial meat hunter. Dad was a long-time hunter as well. They were experienced folks who acquired gun-handling habits that just weren’t broken even when one has consumed large amounts of alcohol.
In coal country, the time standard was the mine whistle. The whistle blew at shift change each day, at noon, and on New Years Eve, at midnight. The closest mine to the farm was about five miles away. That mine, Orient #2, was on the north edge of West Frankfort. Dad, John and Sy worked there. Ken worked occasionally at Orient #3.
When midnight neared, everyone loaded their shotguns—usually with #6 or #7 1/2 shot, and went outside to listen for the whistle. At the stroke of midnight, delayed only by distance, we heard the mine whistles; Orient #2 to the south, followed by Old Ben #9 to the south-east. Another whistle arrived from the west, followed slightly late by Orient #3 from the north. The men raised their shotguns and in turn fired three times into the air. Nine shots in all.
As the sound of their shots faded away, I could hear the patter of falling shot and the echoes of other shotguns rolling in from surrounding points. In the far distance, I could hear the Sheriff let loose with his Thompson sub-machine gun…a weapon confiscated from Charlie Birger decades before. Charlie Birger was tried for murder and hanged—the last public hanging in Illinois.
As the gunfire died away, each man picked up his bucket of coal, his shotgun and began the trek home to be the first dark-headed man to cross the home’s threshold. In lieu of hair, John Davis wore a dark hat.
It was a short walk for Dad and me, just across the road and up the drive. Dad walked up to our front door and knocked. Mom would answer and Dad would exclaim, “Happy New Year!” and we’d go inside to the warmth. Mom would have coffee or more tea for Dad, a glass of milk for me and either cake, sweet rolls or home-made doughnuts depending on what she and Grandma had made that day.
New Years was a family celebration, but New Years Eve was one for males. A celebration in the cold or in a warm barn. A gathering of men, boys, talk, drink and memories. The communal celebration of the coming year.
The Clan at Christmas
It is my habit to repeat special posts from the past. I’ve done so for this a few times; it fits this Christmas Season. It depicts a family, an extended family, Christmas from the past. For some of us, it wasn’t all that long ago.
A Gathering of the Clan
When my Grandmother lived with us on the farm, Thanksgiving and Christmas was always a big deal. Many of our relatives lived at both ends of the state.
My Aunt Anna May (note: My Aunt Anna May, at age 99, passed from us last January,) and a bunch of cousins lived near Cairo, (rhymes with Aero. Kayro is a syrup. K-Eye-ro, another incorrect pronunciation is a city in Egypt,) Illinois. Mom’s other two siblings, Aunt Clara and Uncle Bill, lived near Chicago along with their batch of kids and cousins. We lived betwixt them with a local batch of cousins near by and therefore often hosted the gathering of the Clan at the farm for the holidays.
In the late 1950s, most of the cakes and pies were hand-made including pie crust. Betty Crocker was expensive and not to be trusted according to Mom and Grandma. A week or so before the guests arrived, Mom and Grandma started making pie dough. They would make it in small batches, enough for a couple of pies and then store it on the porch. The porch was unheated and was used as a large refrigerator during the colder months.
Mom and Grandma collected pie fillings most of the year. When cherries were in season, they canned cherries. When blackberries and raspberries were in season, they canned the berries—along with making a large batch of berry jelly and jam. When apples were in season, they canned and dried apples. When the holidays arrived, they were ready.
About the only things they didn’t can was pumpkins. Mom and Grandma purposely planted late to harvest late. I don’t remember a year that we didn’t have pumpkins or sweet-potatoes for pie filling.
The count-down started with the pie dough. When the dough was ready, Mom began baking pies. When a pie was finished, it’d go out to the porch covered with a cloth. The division of labor was that Mom would make pies, Grandma would make cakes.
Grandma liked sheet cakes. I rarely saw a round, frosted cake unless it was someone’s birthday. Grandma’s cakes were 12″ by 24″. Icing was usually Cream Cheese or Chocolate. Sometimes, when Grandma make a German Chocolate cake, she’d make a brown-sugar/coconut/hickory nut icing. The baking was done right up until it was time stick the turkeys, hams or geese in the oven.
The last item Grandma would make was a apple-cinnamon coffee-cake that was an inherited recipe from her mother. It was common-place that when everyone arrived, we’d have a dozen pies and another dozen cakes ready. That was our contribution. The guests brought stuff as well.
The holiday gathering wasn’t just a single day, it was several. Thanksgiving, for instance, lasted through Sunday. A Christmas gathering lasted through New Years. We weren’t the only relatives in the central part of the state, but we were the gathering place. Come bedtime, the visitors left with some of the local cousins and would gather again the next day at another home and the visiting continued.
It was not unusual for us to have twenty or thirty folks at the house at one time. Our barn was heated for the livestock, so the men and boys—and some girls, gathered there. Dad would turn a blind eye to the cigarettes, cigars and bottles—as long as no one started a fire. Grandma’s jugs of Applejack appeared as well.
The women would gather in one of our side bedrooms where Grandma’s quilt frame was set up. They would sit, talk, quilt and plan future family affairs. A number of weddings were planned in those sessions. Sometimes before the bridegroom was aware of his upcoming fate.
Come Christmas Eve, the women, along with a number of kids, put up the tree and decorations. At 11PM, those who wished went off to midnight services. There were a number of preachers in the Clan and those who didn’t want to drive to a service and were also still awake attended a Clan service in the barn. That was the only building able to house everyone at the same time.
On Christmas, the Clan dispersed to their more immediate relatives. Mom, Dad, Grandma, my Aunts and Uncles, my sister Mary Ellen, her husband Dick and their two kids arrived. Sometimes my Aunt Emily and Cousins Richard and Dorothy (Dad’s niece and nephew) from Dad’s side would come down from Mt. Vernon, IL for Christmas.
More often than not, Dad, Dick, my Uncles and I would go goose or duck hunting early on Christmas morning. The Muddy River was only a few miles away and if we arrived right at dawn, we were likely to find some Canadian Geese or Mallards sitting out of the wind on the river. We rarely spent more than three hours hunting before we’d return home, wet, cold and tired ready for breakfast.
We would have a large breakfast around 9AM and afterwards while Mom and Grandma started on dinner, we’d open presents next to the tree. I remember once that Mom hid a pair of snow tires for Dad’s pickup behind the couch. I really have a hard time believing Dad wasn’t aware of them.
Over the years, the Clan has dispersed. Most moving to locations where jobs were available. The elders have passed on and with them the traditions. Cousins have lost touch and few live on the old homesteads.
It was a different time, another era. Some families still maintain the old traditions. They are the fortunate ones.
May you and your family have a wonderful Christmas and a Joyous New Year.
Friday Follies for April 18, 2014
Today is Good Friday and many across the country stop, reflect and pray in gratitude for the events that occurred nearly 2,000 years ago. This will be a busy weekend for many of us, Mrs. Crucis and I included. We wish you all a great Good Friday and Easter.
***
The US is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to Russia’s military expansion in Eastern Europe. Putin all but admitted the recent events in the Crimea was conceived and led by Russia and manned by Russian troops. That placed Obama in a quandary. How can he oppose his buddy, Vlad?
International Space Station (ISS).
Sanctions? Not a good idea. Why? Russia is our only means of access to the International Space Station. We must use Russia because Obama has defunded NASA and the United States no longer has manned space flight capability. The Shuttles are gone to museums or scrapped and NASA has no plans for replacements. How can we have sanctions when we must pay Vlad half-a-Billion dollars for access to the ISS?
[Spacing out on sanctions – WaPo: “NASA recently renewed a contract that allows Russia to ferry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. The U.S. is, essentially, cutting Russia a $457.9 million check for its services — six seats on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, training and launch prep, landing and crew rescue and limited cargo delivery to and from the International Space Station. This contract also adds additional support at the Russian launch site.”]—FOXNewsletter, April 18, 2014.
Way to go, Obama!
***
When you want to know who is behind some act, watch and see who squeals the loudest. In the Bundy v. BLM controversy, it appears to be Harry Reid. Interviewed about the issue, Harry Reid called the Bundys and others, “Domestic Terrorists.” Seems to me, the act of the BLM and the Feds fit that description more than the Bundys and their supporters.
Reid called the Bundys lawbreakers. It appears hypocritical to me for Harry Reid to protest others for ignoring federal law when he has and does the same. Regardless, the controversy continues and no one believes it is over.
‘Patriot Party’ gathers at Bundy’s Nevada ranch, Reid deems them ‘domestic terrorists’
By Valerie Richardson, The Washington Times, Updated: 10:21 a.m. on Friday, April 18, 2014
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called supporters of rancher Cliven Bundy “domestic terrorists” Thursday, turning up the rhetorical heat on the already tense situation at the Nevada cattle operation.
“Those people who hold themselves out to be patriots are not. They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists,” Mr. Reid in remarks at a luncheon, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which sponsored the event. “… I repeat: What went on up there was domestic terrorism.”
…
Mr. Bundy stopped paying to graze his cattle on federal property 21 years ago after the land was declared habitat for the desert tortoise and he was ordered to reduce his herd from roughly 900 to 150 head of cattle.
In August, however, the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center announced that it would begin euthanizing half of the 1,400 tortoises at its facility as a result of federal budget cuts. BLM officials have emphasized that healthy tortoises will be relocated and not euthanized.
***
In my digital travels this morning, I found this piece that best describes the GOP establishment in Washington, DC, specifically Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and many others.
The Parable of the Pharisee Conservative
I thank thee Lord that I am not like those other conservatives.
Those xenophobes, nativists, obsessives about border security, drinkers of tea, and other bitter enders.
For I support comprehensive immigration reform.
I sup with the lords of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the chiefs of the AFL-CIO, and the titans of Silicon Valley.
I am welcomed at the editorial houses of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.
I receiveith gold from George Soros, Bill Marriott and Mark Zuckerberg, and praise from the mainstream media, the Gang of Eight, and the princes of tourism.
Although my labors would enrich the treasuries of Corporate Mammon at the expense of the “least among us” of my fellow Americans of all races and ethnicities by lowering their wages and increasing their unemployment—I trust in my own righteousness.
For I am the Pharisee conservative.
***
In closing, I’m providing a link to a column in the National Review Online by John Fund, titled, The United States of SWAT. It’s an interesting, although long, read on the militarization of local and state police as well as the militarization of federal agencies—like the Department of Education.
Y’all have a great weekend, I’ll be back on Monday.
Reflections
Christmas is over, the holiday, that is. My family celebrated ours with our son-in-law’s parents, our son-in-law, our daughter and the grandkids. It was typical of many family gatherings, probably the majority of households across the country—arrive, greet one another, open presents for kids, watch the paper fly, eat, talk, eat dessert, and finally waddle home.
However, every year, a memory haunts me. Years ago, a couple of decades at least, we were on our way to somewhere for Christmas. We passed a restaurant, one with an empty parking lot except for one car. An old man was looking at the CLOSED sign on the door. All over town, restaurants were closed for the holiday. So were grocery stores. The only businesses open were a few pharmacies and gas stations.
My wife, daughter and I watched him try the door and when it wouldn’t open, walk slowly back to his car. He was alone and had no where to go.
An internet friend found himself in a similar situation. He was a recent widower in his 70s. His wife had died this last year of a long illness, complications of diabetes, I believe.
He was a good cook. He had planned on cooking himself a nice Christmas dinner. He started preparing dinner on Monday, leaving the centerpiece, a pork-loin roast, for the last item. On Christmas Eve, all was ready, all he had to do was heat a few items, some rolls on Christmas morning and he was ready: dinner by himself, watch some TV, read, exchange a few emails…a nice Christmas. Alone.
On Christmas Eve, he met a neighbor in similar circumstances. The neighbor was distraught. A son was supposed to come and pick his parent up for Christmas. I don’t know if the neighbor was a man or a woman. The son had called. He was still coming but he was broke. No money to take his parent out for Christmas dinner. The neighbor was on Social Security and also had no money for an unexpected dinner.
My friend gave them his—his dinner he had spent days preparing.
Come Christmas morning, my friend went out looking for dinner. No restaurant was open. No grocery stores were open. He had cleaned out his larder preparing for a dinner he had given away and now had nothing for himself.
If he lived closer, I would have brought him home. Unfortunately, he lives across the country with no close relatives.
At last, he found a few food items on the shelves of a pharmacy. Instead of roast pork loin, he had a TV dinner.
I know people want to be with family on Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years and other holidays. People complain when they have to work, begrudging the time spent away from home and family.
When our next major holiday arrives, let’s remember those who no longer have families to join. Let’s remember the elderly who have outlived their spouse and sometimes their children. Let’s remember the divorced or separated, divided by events from family. Let’s remember those who are alone on the holidays, and lonely.
Who knows, it could be, in a few years…or decades, that lonely person may be you.
National Empty Chair Day, 2012
I saw the photo below and had to steal…borrow it from FB friend Kim who got it from the RNC website. It seems more appropriate than Labor Day that celebrates organizations that should be investigated for RICO violations.
National Empty Chair Day
Put a chair on your porch or front lawn next to your flag. They complement one another.
***
I read portions of the Washington Times daily. I came across this interview of Mallory Factor.
Mallory Factor is a Forbes columnist, senior editor of “Money and Politics” for The Street.com and professor of international politics and American government at The Citadel. Formerly chairman of the New York Public Asset Fund and member of the board of governors of the New York State Banking Department, he co-founded the Monday Meeting, an elite confab of intellectuals, financiers, journalists and politicians that gets together to confer about the pressing issues of the day. His new bestseller, “Shadowbosses,” shines the light on how “government unions control America and rob taxpayers blind.”
“Shadow Bosses” in this context are those behind the scenes, the string-pullers, the puppet-masters, those unseen who really control groups and organizations. In the case of Factor’s book, it is unions.
Decker: Your new book is called “Shadowbosses.” What does that term mean in general and how does it apply to national politics?
Factor: In our own lives, our shadowbosses are the people we really work for, the people who hold us accountable for the decisions we make in our lives. Unfortunately, as I found while writing this book, for many of our political leaders, their shadowbosses are the government-employee union bosses. The shadowbosses are there to pat politicians on the back when they support the union agenda, and to tear them down if they act against those interests. Our government is no longer run by “We, the People.” It’s run by government-employee union bosses who spend billions on politics and expect their client politicians to do their bidding. These shadowbosses dictate which legislation to support, how much workers should be paid and what the future of our country should look like. It is time for the American people to ask our politicians who their shadowbosses are: the government-employee union bosses or the American people?
Decker: How are shadowbosses relevant to our out-of-control bureaucracy? What is their effect on policy?
Factor: The shadowbosses drive government spending. When our governments make outrageous concessions to the unions, our government becomes immensely bigger and more expensive. The government-employee unions don’t bankrupt our government like private-sector unions drive some private corporations out of business. The American taxpayers are on the hook. We show that union-supported politicians deliver votes that grow the number of government employees and their compensation, making our government ever more bloated and inefficient. These same politicians also tend to cast other liberal votes: anti-business votes, anti-Second Amendment votes and anti-family-values votes. This means union dues are used to support policies that go against the views of rank-and-file union members. The data show union members are more conservative than their union bosses and are given very little information about how their dues are spent.
Read more: DECKER: 5 Questions with Mallory Factor – Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/31/mallory-factor-5-questions-with-decker/#ixzz25QFV5kNd
The column is too long to quote here. It continues with a description of union tactics and examples from Wisconsin and other locations that can be said to be, “corruption and thuggery.” I urge you to follow the link above and read the entire article.
***
Continuing on a theme. Today’s Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell chimed in on the Union Shadow Boss topic today.
Amy Payne, September 3, 2012 at 8:59 am
This election year, millions of Americans will donate to the political candidates and initiatives of their choice at the local, state, and federal levels. But for unionized workers, union dues come out of their paychecks and go to political causes—and they aren’t consulted on where that money will go.
In July, The Wall Street Journal’s Tom McGinty and Brody Mullins published an eye-opening report that “Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought.”
They broke down the unions’ political spending from 2005 to 2011: $1.1 billion “supporting federal candidates through their political-action committees, which are funded with voluntary contributions, and lobbying Washington, which is a cost borne by the unions’ own coffers.”
But that was only the beginning. Add to that another $3.3 billion for political activity from “polling fees, to money spent persuading union members to vote a certain way, to bratwursts to feed Wisconsin workers protesting at the state capitol last year.” Who pays for this? The workers, McGinty and Mullins report: “Much of this kind of spending comes not from members’ contributions to a PAC but directly from unions’ dues-funded coffers.”
Despite findings that 60 percent of union members object to their dues being spent on political causes, this practice continues. Why?
In the 27 states without right-to-work laws, many unions are able to put clauses in their contracts that allow them to fire workers who do not pay union dues. If a worker wants to work for a unionized firm, he or she is forced to join the union and pay the dues, which can run from several hundred to several thousand dollars a year.
In a new paper, Heritage’s James Sherk gives an example of this rule at work: “The United Auto Workers (UAW), which organized General Motors’ Michigan factories in 1937, is a case in point. Michigan does not have a right-to-work law, so union-represented workers must pay the union’s dues or get fired.”
Notice the year there—1937. The workers coming on the job in 2012 are bound by a vote taken by their ancestors, essentially. “General Motors’ current employees never had the chance to vote for or against the UAW. UAW representation was a non-negotiable condition of their employment.” — The Morning Bell.
The article continues via the link. It’s an interesting read. I’ve been told that Right to Work will be an issue in the upcoming Missouri legislative session.
It’s about time.
***
Y’all have a great National Empty Chair Day!
Repost: A Gathering of the Clan
When my Grandmother lived with us on the farm, Thanksgiving and Christmas was always a big deal. Many of our relatives lived at both ends of the state.
My Aunt Anna May (note: My Aunt Anna May, at age 99, is still with us,) and a bunch of cousins lived near Cairo (rhymes with Aero. Kayro is a syrup. K-Eye-ro, another incorrect pronunciation is a city in Egypt,) Illinois. Mom’s other two siblings, Aunt Clara and Uncle Bill, lived near Chicago along with their batch of kids and cousins. We lived betwixt them with a local batch of cousins and therefore often hosted the gathering of the Clan at the holidays.
In the late 1950s, most of the cakes and pies were hand-made including pie crust. Betty Crocker was expensive and not to be trusted according to Mom and Grandma. A week or so before the guests arrived, Mom and Grandma started making pie dough. They would make it in small batches, enough for a couple of pies and then store it on the porch. The porch was unheated and was used as a large refrigerator during the colder months.
Mom and Grandma collected pie fillings most of the year. When cherries were in season, they canned cherries. When blackberries and raspberries were in season, they canned the berries—along with making a large batch of berry jelly and jam. When apples were in season, they canned and dried apples. When the holidays arrived, they were ready.
About the only things they didn’t can was pumpkins. Mom and Grandma purposely planted late to harvest late. I don’t remember a year that we didn’t have pumpkins or sweet-potatoes for pie filling.
The count-down started with the pie dough. When the dough was ready, Mom began baking pies. When a pie was finished, it’d go out to the porch covered with a cloth. The division of labor was that Mom would make pies, Grandma would make cakes.
Grandma liked sheet cakes. I rarely saw a round, frosted cake unless it was someone’s birthday. Grandma’s cakes were 12″ by 24″. Icing was usually Cream Cheese or Chocolate. Sometimes, when Grandma make a German Chocolate cake, she’d make a brown-sugar/coconut/hickory nut icing. The baking was done right up until it was time stick the turkeys, hams or geese in the oven.
The last item Grandma would make was a apple-cinnamon coffee-cake that was an inherited recipe from her mother. It was common-place that when everyone arrived, we’d have a dozen pies and another dozen cakes ready. That was our contribution. The guests brought stuff as well.
The holiday gathering wasn’t just a single day, it was several. Thanksgiving, for instance, lasted through Sunday. A Christmas gathering lasted through New Years. We weren’t the only relatives in the central part of the state, but we were the gathering place. Come bedtime, the visitors left with some of the local cousins and would gather again the next day at another home and the visiting continued.
It was not unusual for us to have twenty or thirty folks at the house at one time. Our barn was heated for the livestock, so the men and boys—and some girls, gathered there. Dad would turn a blind eye to the cigarettes, cigars and bottles—as long as no one started a fire. Grandma’s jugs of Applejack appeared as well.
The women would gather in one of our side bedrooms where Grandma’s quilt frame was set up. They would sit, talk, quilt and plan future family affairs. A number of weddings were planned in those sessions. Sometimes before the bridegroom was aware of his upcoming fate.
Come Christmas Eve, the women, along with a number of kids, put up the tree and decorations. At 11PM, those who wished went off to midnight services. There were a number of preachers in the Clan and those who didn’t want to drive to a service and were also still awake attended a Clan service in the barn. That was the only building able to house everyone at the same time.
On Christmas, the Clan dispersed to their more immediate relatives. Mom, Dad, Grandma, my Aunts and Uncles, my sister Mary Ellen, her husband Dick and their two kids arrived. Sometimes my Aunt Emily and Cousins Richard and Dorothy (Dad’s niece and nephew) from Dad’s side would come down from Mt. Vernon, IL for Christmas.
More often than not, Dad, Dick, my Uncles and I would go goose or duck hunting early on Christmas morning. The Muddy River was only a few miles away and if we arrived right at dawn, we were likely to find some Canadian Geese or Mallards sitting out of the wind on the river. We rarely spent more than three hours hunting before we’d return home, wet, cold and tired ready for breakfast.
We would have a large breakfast around 9AM and afterwards while Mom and Grandma started on dinner, we’d open presents next to the tree. I remember once that Mom hide a pair of snow tires for Dad’s pickup behind the couch. I really have a hard time believing Dad wasn’t aware of them.
Over the years, the Clan has dispersed. Most moving to locations where jobs were available. The elders have passed on and with them the traditions. Cousins have lost touch and few live on the old homesteads.
It was a different time, another era. Some families still maintain the old traditions. They are the fortunate ones.