A Simple Life

And no I'm not talking about the so called reality show that aired for a bit. That was so far from real it just wasn't even funny.

I'm talking about my simple life, growing up. My life during the early years was so simple; it's just hard to believe it at times. I wonder why things need to change. I think that has been one of my biggest gripes in life, why can't it stay the same?

Of course what I call simple others may view differently but I literally was raised up a dead end holler (and yes I do know its hollow not holler I’ll blog on my vocabulary another day) at the edge of the woods where we didn’t even have drinking water.  We heated with a coal and wood stove, one of my passions when I was younger was gathering wood, I loved splitting wood with an axe, I think it was because being the youngest my two closest siblings were brothers and I always wanted to outdo them when it came to things of that nature.

One of my fondest childhood memories was of time spent with my Grandmother Laura Riddlebarger, whom I am named after. She had a well beside her house, which was a log cabin, and the water from that well was always ice cold even when it was the hottest time of summer.  She had one of those aluminum buckets to draw the water up in, and then the aluminum dipper we all used. That’s what I call simple living, and I miss that so very much.  As we had no drinking water at our house we would wash out milk jugs and use those to carry water home in from Grandma’s.  City slickers would consider it hard work, but for me it was a simple task for much enjoyment. We actually didn’t get good drinking water in the house until around 1982, two years after I graduated high school.
Another simple thing I miss, fishing with my Dad, I loved sitting by a creek, a river or a lake listening to him tell stories. He was so wonderful at it. My dad was older, keep in mind he was 21 years older than my mom and was in his 50s when I was born. So the older he got the more often he repeated his stories, and I memorized them and now tell them for him! I was the typical Daddy’s girl too, I’d go hunting with him, help him clean chickens after he would kill them. Yes I know it sounds horrible but it was another simple fact of life, we raised chickens and rabbits for meat so we had slaughter days.  It wasn’t as bad as you would think either. Yea Peta would not be happy with it, but that’s just part of the country life. I hunted with my Dad, even worked on cars with him, those are the simple times I miss so much.

I think now I’m at a point in my life where I want to work to make the simple things return. It’s my time to share simple joy and happiness with my family and friends. My time to just simply be me and do simple things like carving a pumpkin with my grandson, because those are the things that will one day be his memories of a simpler time with his MeMaw. There will be no “slaughter days” now though, I’m way to kind hearted to even think about repeating that part, but I do have lots of stories to tell him while fishing!