Look around!  There are orange pumpkins, scarecrows and hay bales, mums in gorgeous colors like burgundy, bronze, yellow, white and splashes of colored leaves nestled among the cedar trees. Yes, my friends ‘fall has fell.’ The chill in the air brings out our heavy jackets at least for the mornings. 

I don’t mean to frighten anyone but Christmas is only eight weeks away. Time to pick out your Halloween costume, decide how big your Thanksgiving turkey needs to be, and start your Christmas shopping. Oh, yes everyone, the holidays are upon us. 

The October Sisters Day gathering took place at the home of Betty West. Those in attendance were; Betty West, our hostess, Lucy Branson, Mary Jo Crider, Shirley Huffman, Linda Crider, Pam Hale and Susie Kleffner.

We gathered around the table just off Betty’s kitchen, with our coffee and tea in hand, Pam pulled the hot biscuits out of the oven. She plated them and placed them on the table with butter and “Bear” honey from California. Large platters of apple and raspberry pastries helped fill the table at least for a while. We looked like ladies at a tea party… until we started licking the butter and honey of our fingers. We did however do the meal justice.

I always learn a lot listening to the girls talk about the goings on in the family and neighborhood. The first thing I learned today was that I made a “glaring” error in last month’s article.  I will now correct that error… Betty’s tiny great-granddaughter’s name is not Addie Rae. It is in fact Haddie Rae. Sorry Betty!

Shirley if finally feeling better. Thank God.

Lucy showed us a beautiful green table runner in an orange peel pattern and a couple table toppers pieced by Miss Katie in a Dresden plate pattern. Miss Lucy is a master at the art of quilt making. By the way, that is a completely unbiased opinion. (If you believe that I have a bridge in Jeff City I will sell you, cheap. Ha!) 

A discussion about the folks in the area who are ailing was held. Some families have the Covid virus and are just passing it around to each other. We talked about whether you could get the virus again once you’ve had it. There seems to be at least three or four different sets of symptoms victims are having. We wondered if that means there are different strains of the virus and if you had one set of symptoms you could have it again with a different set? None of us are virus specialists so all we could do is speculate and even the most reasonable hypothesis can be completely wrong.

Since it is fall, the subject of cleaning the gutters came up. That is one of the many things you can no longer do as you get a little age on you. Younger members of the family will volunteer to do it for you, but then you have to wait until they have time. We all “kind of” understand that they can’t drop the thing in their lives to rush over and help us but that doesn’t make the waiting any easier.

There was a brief discussion about the house that burned while the owners were in Florida. Where exactly was the house located? The were three or four different locations going around.

We talked about the stock pile of embroidery thread that accumulates over time.  Katie had a large plastic jar (three or 4 gallons’ size) full of thread that Shirley inherited. Shirley may never have to buy embroidery thread for the rest of her life, even if she continues to embroidery blocks at the rate she currently does.

Betty’s little three-year-old, great granddaughter walked up to her Mom and said, “If we didn’t have bones in our body we would just fall down on the floor and flop around.” How in the world did she figure that out?

We talked about the earthquake in Alaska. That lead to the Alaskan pipeline. Our brother, Norman, helped build it. Shirley has a tourism dvd about the building of it. She thinks she found Norman in some of the scenes. Betty has book about the pipeline and she thinks she found him in some of the pictures.

One of our favorite past times growing up was going to the creek to swim. From the time I was six-years-old, I thought Shirley and Harold were very mean to their baby twin sisters. Shirley took Lois and Harold took me out into the deep water, over our head not theirs, and dropped us and yelled “swim or drown.” When I got to the bottom I thought I better get back to the top of the water and swim. So I did! I found out today that was the way all of them learned to swim. Daddy (Sam Crider) threw them into the creek and shouted “swim or drown.” Mom (Anna Crider) could not swim at all. If she got over calf deep she would pitch forward into the water. However, if any of the kids got in trouble in the water she would rush right out to save them.

We discussed other things from the past. Once the weather was great, sunny late fall weather, the kids including the older Crider sisters wore sweaters to walk to school. By afternoon it was cold and snowing. The Crider kids went to uncle John Sudheimer’s house. He and his wife, Mamie, outfitted them all with boots, coats, scarves and gloves for the walk home. They reminisced about making dishes for their playhouse, which was a board laid across two sticks of wood. The girls would go down to the road ditch in front of the house and get red clay. They then shaped it into cups and plates and bowls. It would dry in the sun and they had their dishes, at least until it rained. They would find pretty bottles and other things to stock their play house in the junk pile at the corner of Uncle Jo Buschmann’s property and ours. Uncle Joe would bring a truck load of stuff out from town where he lived and dump it on the pile. When he left the kids would run down and scavenge the pile. We could always find lots of treasures in his trash.

Lunch time rolled around. We feasted on homemade vegetable beef soup that was made with broth instead of gravy. We also had garlic bread sticks hot from the oven. The soup was so good. With a breadstick it was perfect. Yum Yum. Dessert was yellow pound cake and Neapolitan Ice cream. It was a very good ending to a wonderful dinner. We talked about unions and moving and politics. I won’t go into the discussions. All we need is more opinions about the election, even though they would be as relevant as most of the ones on the TV news.

After a brief discussion and a slight change in procedure we drew names for Christmas. We keep it secret whose name we drew. It is a good thing we only have to keep it a secret for a couple of months. 

Thank you for once again sharing our day. It is rewarding to know others find it as nice as we do.

Be safe and God Bless you one and all.

Thought: Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.  Albert Einstein

Advice from an old Farmer:  The best sermons are lived not preached.